Spoilers. After the thrilling and mythology-expanding "Man On The Street" last week, it's back down to earth with a bump in "Echoes". The frustrating thing about this episode is that half the story involves a fairly interesting back-story for Echo/Caroline (Eliza Dushku) that also delivers some answers about the Dollhouse itself -- but it's all undone by rather embarrassing comedy antics and slips in the plausibility department.While on assignment as another promiscuous bimbo for a rich kid, Echo notices a news report on TV about a situation at Rossum University that triggers latent memories of her pre-doll existence as undergraduate Caroline. The university itself is the source of a leaked experimental drug designed to manipulate memory, which leads to the infected having their inhibitions reduced and impulses heightened. The Dollhouse (which we learn funds the Rossum Corporation, who run the campus) imprint all their actives to help contain the outbreak and find a second missing vial of the drug, as they're immune to its effects.
Echo is compelled to leave her assignment and go to the university (still wearing her sexy knee-socks, natch) and is rather inexplicably allowed to indulge this distraction by handler Boyd (Harry Lennix). Really, it's another of example of how elements of Dollhouse's concept can get in the way of a good story, so Boyd is strangely easygoing about Echo's self-diversion and even finds it highly amusing when his belated attempt to take her in for "treatment" is ignored!There's a lot that sits wrong in "Echoes", basically. It's messy. The Dollhouse's full complement of actives do nothing beyond act like plain-speaking agents and organize screenings of students who may be infected, with little sign they're trying to find the missing vial. Back at the Dollhouse itself, Topher (Fran Kranz) and DeWitt (Olivia Williams) both start suffering from the effects of the drug (I'm still not sure how it transferred there), which results in them acting juvenile. Clearly it's supposed to be amusing to see these characters acting so strangely (particularly the ordinarily austere DeWitt), but it's instead rather embarrassing for the actors and tonally awkward for the show after last week's more pleasurable sincerity. Having built up DeWitt and her assistant Mr. Dominic (Reed Diamond) as slimy villains, having an episode that reduces them to giggling kids just felt like a huge backwards step.
Anyway, Echo's imprint is once again glitching (already a cliché of this show), allowing her to retrace her steps to the university's secret laboratory, which she half-remembers breaking into with animal activist friends when she was enrolled at the university as Caroline.
At the Dollhouse, Topher realizes that the drug does effect the actives after all -- just in a different way to regular people, by stirring their memories. His revelation comes when Mellie (Miracle Laurie), the neighbour of Agent Ballard who's unaware she's a brainwashed spy, undergoes a check-up and starts to remember her actions when she was activated by DeWitt last week. Out in the field, Sierra similarly starts to remember her sexual exploitation at the hands of her dead former-handler, to no real effect.
Overall, "Echoes" wasn't totally retarded and it was actually nice to get some information about Echo's life before she joined the Dollhouse. My own theory that the dolls sign a contract to undergo the mind-wipe procedure in return for financial security or deletion of a criminal record also appears true, with Rossum University essentially a recruiting ground for troubled students that fit their psychological template.But I do wonder why nobody's realized so a few students go missing for five year periods, if this has been going on for awhile now. Possibly the Dollhouse construct a plausible reason for candidate's sustained absences? But if so, how does Agent Ballard know Caroline has been taken by the Dollhouse and not just gone on a backpacking holiday, say? Did her family get him involved? Are they happy about the fact Ballard is chasing an urban myth to find their daughter? Then again, does Caroline even have a family who care?
Right now I'm interested to see if questions like these are answered. There are only six episodes left this season, and "Man In The Street" was strong enough to keep me watching until the end. But "Echoes" is further evidence that the concept starts to crack when it's put under too much strain, and the obvious way to spin a Dollhouse yarn (let an active malfunction during assignment) is already gnawing at the credibility of the Dollhouse as a professional business. Wouldn't they have terminated Echo's contract by now, after so many problems and mishaps?
27 March 2009
Fox, 9/8c
Writers: Sarah Fain & Elizabeth Craft
Director: James A. Contner
Cast: Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Olivia Williams (DeWitt), Enver Gjokaj (Victor), Tahmoh Penikett (Ballard), Eliza Dushku (Echo), Harry J. Lennix (Boyd), Fran Kranz (Topher), Miracle Laurie (Mellie), Reed Diamond (Laurence Dominic), Mehcad Brooks (Sam), Leslie Andrews (Female Student), Josh Fadem (Owen Johnson), Nick W. George (Trevor), Cantrell Harris (Guard), Michael Ng (Team Member), Ted Porter (NSA Active), Rome Shadanloo (Ingrid), Brett Claywell (Matt), Philip Casnoff (Clive Ambrose), Octavia Spencer (Professor Janack), Josh Cooke (Leo Carpenter) & Drew Wicks (Man)
