"You just woke up a lot of people... and they all think you're a bitch."
-- Echo (Eliza Dushku)
[SPOILERS] Back after a month's break, Dollhouse begins the first of a two-month run of double-bills before it's wiped from existence. What makes its demise particularly cruel is that Joss Whedon's troubled series is capable of giving us memorable, fascinating and engrossing science-fiction, and "The Public Eye"/"The Left Hand" were this season's best examples yet...
Focusing on the subplot of Senator Daniel Perrin's (Alexis Denisof) desire to expose the existence of the fabled, unethical "Dollhouse" to the world, this episode revealed that Perrin has former-active Madeleine (Miracle Laurie) on-side, and she's willing to go public about her existential slaveholders. A press conference is called that points the finger at the Rossum Corporation, with executive Matthew Harding (Keith Carradine) holding DeWitt (Olivia Williams) accountable, as it was her decision to release Madeleine early over an "internal matter".
However, the plot thickens and practically coagulates when DeWitt theorizes that Perrin's idyllic wife Cindy (Stacey Scowley) is herself a doll (the clue's in the name?) and has been installed by Rossum as a sleeper agent, possibly to be activated and murder Perrin if he pries any deeper into their company's affairs. But, shortly after Topher (Fran Kranz) creates a handheld "disruptor"* to K.O dolls in a 15 foot radius in order to capture Cindy, and Echo (Eliza Dushku) is sent in to distract Perrin as an imprinted call girl called Bree**, events conspire to reveal that Cindy's actually a "handler" from Washington D.C's Dollhouse and it's her husband who's the active –- or, rather, someone with political pedigree whose dropout personality was augmented...I personally adore episodes of Dollhouse that keep you on your toes and pull the rug out from under you. "The Public Eye" was very much that kind of episode, with a sequence of surprises and twists that worked very well. The script by Andrew Chambliss was involving and developed at an intelligent pace, and I was happy to be swept along without stopping to second-guess too many of the shocks in store. It was fascinating to realize that Rossum have political plans beyond anything the L.A Dollhouse are aware of, and by involving a sense of inter-'house rivalry, the writers have created some fresh wrinkles for the show to explore.
In the final 10 minutes we were introduced to the D.C branch's version of wunderkind Topher, Bennett Halverson (Summer Glau) – a prissy-looking bluestocking who dresses like a schoolgirl from the '70s, and appears to be respected far more than her L.A counterpart. But there are signs she's just as twisted as Topher (if not more so), as her mask of tranquillity occasionally dropped and she quietly babbled to herself. Even more interestingly, when malfunctioning rogues Perrin and Echo end up in her lab after being captured by Cindy, it became clear that Bennett knows Echo's de facto personality Caroline, but there's clearly no love lost when she uses her imprinting chair to torture Echo before disabling the room's security camera..."The Left Hand" concluded the storyline in fine style, as DeWitt and Topher head to the Washington D.C Dollhouse to retrieve their errant active Echo. This entire episode was awash with counterparts, doubles and soulmates, as DeWitt met with her D.C equivalent Howard Lipman (Ray Wise) and Topher fell in love with the quirky genius of Bennett -- and vice versa. We were also given the sublime comedy antics of Topher having imprinted Victor (Enver Gjokaj) with his own personality to keep the L.A Dollhouse running smoothly in his physical absence. I've championed Gjokaj's skills many times before on this show, but he was truly magnificent in this episode, giving an eerily accurate impersonation of Fran Kranz's gesticulatins and wavering vocals.
A lot of time was dedicated to the geek-love between Topher and Bennett, which was sweet and often amusing, but at times felt like padding because the episode didn't have enough material to go the distance. Still, Glau and Kranz really clicked playing opposite sides of the same coin, and it was refreshing to see Topher in a more sympathetic and genuinely amusing role. Bennett herself proved to be quite a complex and captivating personality, as she alternated between making goo-goo eyes at Topher and mind-frying Echo/Caroline as punishment for the time Caroline left her trapped under building rubble –- resulting in her now useless left arm. She even delivered a strange form of vengeance by giving Caroline her memory of the ordeal she suffered.
Right now it hasn't been explained how Bennett and Caroline came to be best friends, nor what the flashbacks to Caroline having apparently helped destroy a lab are all about, but hopefully those gaps in our knowledge will be filled soon. Are we meant to assume that Caroline and Bennett were both eco-terrorists once, and their meeting again is just a big coincidence, or is there more to Caroline's pre-doll life than we've been led to believe?The guts of the episode concerned the escape of Perrin and Echo from the D.C Dollhouse, helped by an unknown sympathizer who imprinted Perrin with enough information so he could evade their security -– which is typically lapse of the Rossum Corporation (they need to put some funding into that whole area, pronto.) With Perrin and Echo on the run as fugitives and ridding each other of the trackers implanted in their necks, it was up to Topher and Bennett to think of a way to upgrade the "disruptor" to function over vast distances on selected targets.
While on the run, Perrin had to deal with the knowledge he's a patchwork man -– a George W. Bush-type turned John F. Kennedy by the nebulous Rossum Corporation, to threaten their company's credibility very publically before absolving them of any malpractice during a Senate hearing alongside star witness Madeleine. But can Perrin fight against his constructed psyche and use the political nous he's been given to bring them down once and for all?
Overall, as the Dollhouse's first foray into the world of a political thriller, "The Public Eye" and "The Left Hand" were a near-perfect double-whammy that gave us fresh angles on the idea of mind-fiddling, and packed in plenty of big surpises and memorable backstabbings. It also broadended the scope of the series by involving politics and by giving us a D.C branch of the Dollhouse run by people who are arguably more insidious than those of the L.A division. By giving us more overt villains, is this a sign that the L.A staff are going to grow enlightened about their immoral technology and spearhead an in-house rebellion against their paymasters?
The two-parter concluded with Perrin unable to defeat his "programming" and claiming that it's the Rossum Corporation who are the victims of a conglomerate that have killed his wife in a car-bomb attack, and he throws out all question of their offences by claiming to have evidence that proves Madeleine's a mentally-unstable former psychiatric patient. Elsewhere, Echo goes off-the-grid and is seen wandering the streets of Washington D.C all alone, so it will be interesting to see how the series develops from this gamechanging halfway point. Will we be given more of a Fugitive-style storyline, for awhile at least? Can Eliza Dushku carry the show in her Echo persona, without the gimmick of fresh identities and skimpy clothes every week? However things progress, these episodes were so great that the imminence of Dollhouse's end is all the more bitter.4 December 2009
Fox, 9/8c
written by: Andrew Chambliss (2.5) & Tracy Bellomo (2.6) directed by: David Solomon (2.5) & Wendy Stanzler (2.6) starring: Eliza Dushku (Echo), Harry Lennix (Boyd Langton), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Keith Carradine (Matthew Harding), Alexis Denisof (Senator Daniel Perrin), Nelson Franklin (Burt Styne), Summer Glau (Bennett Halverson), Miracle Laurie (Madeleine Costley), Stacey Scowley (Cindy Perrin), Maurissa Tancharoen (Kilo), Brandon Merrell (Male Active) / Nelson Franklin (Burt Styne), Chris Gann (DC), Matt Riedy (Senator), Ray Wise (Howard Lipman) & Selena Johnson (News Reporter)
* Fun trivia to note that Topher's guinea pig to test the disruptor was a new doll we've never seen before called Kilo, who was actually played by Dollhouse staff writer Maurissa Tancharoen.
** Adding credence to my belief Dushku's only really convincing when playing hookers and bimbos, and even the writers know this.
