WRITERS: Maurissa Tancharoen, Jed Whedon & Andrew Chambliss[SPOILERS] It's time for Joss Whedon to put away his dolls and consign them to the attic. Dollhouse comes to a premature end after two short seasons, hobbled from the start by a bad timeslot and network insistence that they launch with a string of episodic stories. The series hit its stride once Whedon was allowed to build a serialized mythology mid-season, to quickly tackle some weighty existential themes. And, ironically, once he was given carte blanche to do whatever he pleased when the show was cancelled a few months ago, Dollhouse became one of the most enjoyable and stimulating sci-fi action shows of the past few years. Dollhouse won't be remembered as fondly as Buffy The Vampire Slayer or Angel (or even the briefer spark that was Firefly), but it was a more intelligent and mature piece of work in many ways, and at least Whedon managed to tell a complete, if heavily condensed, story...
DIRECTOR: David Solomon
GUEST CAST: Felicia Day, Adair Tishler, Zack Ward, Nate Dushku, Maurissa Tancharoen, Christian Monzon, Brandon Dieter, Noah Harpster, Brandon Molale, Alan Tudyk & Summer Glau
"Epitaph Two: Return" will be unfathomable to the vast majority of viewers, as it's a sequel to "Epitaph One", which was only available to American audiences who bought the Dollhouse season 1 box-set. But, hey, I'm pretty sure Dollhouse's audience is entirely comprised of fans who are au fait with what's going on.It's 2020 A.D (one year after the events of "Epitaph One"), where the world has become a dystopian wasteland thanks to Rossum using its remote imprinting technology to erase, amend or replace people's identities en masse against their will. A band of "Actuals" (people still have their original personalities) -- Mag (Felicia Day), Zone (Zack Ward) and Caroline (Adair Tishler) – are rescued from Rossum by the legendary Echo (Eliza Dushku) and Paul (Tahmoh Penikett), who are there to retrieve Topher (Fran Kranz), who's being forced to create a worldwide, cascading mind-wipe. The rescued are taken to the "Safe Haven" commune, where DeWitt (Olivia Williams), Priya (Dichen Lachman) and her young son T (Brandon Dieter) have been living in isolation.
They soon realize that Topher has the ability to create a reversible mind-wipe, effectively restoring everyone to their original mental states, but he needs technology only available inside the abandoned L.A Dollhouse. So, teaming up with Victor (Enver Gjokaj) and his Mad Max-ian team of "tech heads" (people who replace components of their mind with specialist skills, ad hoc), the gang decide to return to the City of Angels war zone, where the street are now stalked by mindless killers known as "Butchers", and hopefully launch a "wiping signal" into the ionosphere from DeWitt's penthouse office...As finale's go, "Epitaph Two: Return" was entertaining, but obviously lacked the intrigue that its forbearer had because we've already visited this future world. Still, it was fun to see what had happened to various characters a decade from now, despite the fact only Priya and Victor's relationship had actually developed anywhere emotionally engaging. Once the team arrived at the Dollhouse it was a neat surprise to find that Alpha (Alan Tudyk) was already there, having evolved beyond his psychosis to become a trusted ally, but there weren't too many other big surprises. It was an episode of fun nods and moments, really – like Rossum bigwig Harding's (Noah Harpster) lifestyle being one of pure gluttony, growing obese, then simply selecting another well-toned, young body for his mind to inhabit.
The story was quite straight-forward, really, and I wasn't very convinced by Topher's sudden realisation that he could reverse all his damage. This didn't seem feasible, given what we know of the mind-imprinting process. Quite how Topher's device could restore everyone's original personalities was just one of those things you had to go along with, because otherwise there's just no feasible way to give Dollhouse a happy ending. And it was quite an upbeat ending, despite fears Joss Whedon would leave us on a real downer, although quite why Rossum can't just re-wipe everyone Topher saved is something I'm still pondering...Topher himself became the saviour of the civilisation he'd helped destroy -- sacrificing himself by detonating the pulse while in DeWitt's office -- and it's worth reiterating the fact that Topher's character went from annoying, dislikeable geek in season 1 to a very fun, spirited, and appealing individual in season 2 – having grown a conscience over his actions and, briefly, found love with soulmate Bennett (Summer Glau, who made a cameo in an instructional video.) Topher actually became my favourite character on the show this year, so I was pleased to see him earn redemption here.
I was a little puzzled that Paul had been making unrequited moves on Echo over the years, because wasn't a condition of his healed brain using active architecture that Topher took away his feelings for Echo? Maybe he was still capable of developing those feelings again. I guess. It also felt a little anticlimactic to have Paul killed by a stray bullet during the mission to get to the Dollhouse, but I kind of liked how Echo decided to imprint Paul's personality into her brain during the denouement -– effectively "letting him in" in a far more personal way. It was just a shame that, frankly, the "great love story" between Paul and Echo just never really took flight during the series, which lost this scene a lot of emotional impact the writers intended. I think Penikett and Dushku are just so different (physically and as actors) that it was always difficult to see them as a couple –- especially now, because Paul's romantic story had primarily been focused on Mellie throughout season 2.Overall, I was entertained but not especially thrilled by "Epitaph Two: Return", but it was a decent way to bring the show to an end. It was just unfortunate that Dollhouse basically had to fill nine episodes with storylines and developments that would otherwise have taken years to evolve more naturally, because recent episodes have felt slightly rushed. But, given the unfortunate behind-the-scenes problems with the network and early cancellation[*], I think Whedon and his writers did an admirable job turning Dollhouse into must-see TV for those clever enough to have sought it out (however ragged the tales became towards the end.) I hope Joss Whedon and his team get a chance to work on a similarly complex and intelligent genre series in the near-future, hopefully on cable television as rumoured.
But what did you make of this episode, and Dollhouse in general? Are you glad it ended like it did, or was this a disappointment to you?
29 JANUARY 2010: FOX, 9/8c
[*] Although I think it's worth remembering that, bad timeslot aside, Fox did renew Dollhouse for another season (despite bad ratings and poor DVD sales), they gave Whedon's team enough time to complete his story, and they aired all the remaining episodes. A better timeslot may have helped, but I think it was ultimately a clear-cut case that Dollhouse didn't appeal to many people, beyond Whedonites and sci-fi aficionados.
