Terry Karrens, the nephew of Dollhouse client and Rossum stockholder Bradley Karrens (Michael Hogan), is put into a coma after he is struck by a car. Bradley has the young man transferred to the Dollhouse, ostensibly because he does not believe the hospital will be able to revive him. But when Topher looks at Terry's brain scan, he realizes the truth: Terry is a sociopath!
Bradley confesses to Adelle that several women are missing, and that he is certain Terry has taken them. They need to question him so that the women can be retrieved before it is too late. Adelle agrees to imprint Victor with the personality of the sociopath, and assigns Paul to question him. The interrogation is going fairly well... until Bradley decides that he'll be better off talking to his nephew directly, and frees him from the Dollhouse. Bradley is knocked unconscious for his trouble - leaving Victor out on the streets, with the mind of a serial killer, with no way to track him!
CHARACTERS
Echo: In a crisis situation, she has enough mental will of her own to fight back control by a harmful personality - though not enough to win the fight, apparently. The ending indicates that she has gathered yet another mind into her growing composite, this one a mind she would probably just as soon not have floating around up there.
Doll of the Week: Kiki is an airheaded college co-ed who signed up for Medieval Literature figuring that since it was "Mid-Evil," it wouldn't be as hard as "Advanced Evil" would be. She has basically been created as a fantasy object for a very literate English professor (Arye Gross) who likely feels discouraged at his inability to get his students to share his interest in literature such as The Canterbury Tales. She is there not just for the professor to sleep with, but for him to teach first. So your basic "teacher/student" fantasy, in other words.
The Ice Queen: Adelle works quite well with Paul. And while Paul may be plotting against the Dollhouse, he does seem to be very much in sync with Adelle. She aids his interrogation of Terry/Victor by sending the uncle down to visit Terry's comatose body at the very point at which Paul shows "Terry" his actual body. When Paul compliments her on the timing, he also knows that a part of the reason that she did that was that she couldn't stand another second with Bradley. Adelle's basic idealism also shows itself again. She will do a lot to accomodate an influential client, but she is very willing to send Terry back to the hospital unless Bradley tells her the full truth.
The Genius: With a serial killer loose in Victor's body, Topher is pressured to come up with a way to remote wipe an Active without so much as a telephone connection. What he comes up with isn't exactly glitch-free, but it does have an impact - which I suspect is a big step toward the future we saw in Epitaph One.
The (Ex-) FBI Agent: Paul gets to use his FBI training in dealing with Terry, in Victor's body. He does very well interrogating Terry, successfully putting him off his guard and gleaning a lot of information from the man's offhand comments. Paul's fascination with Echo continues, as he very visibly reacts to her nudity in the shower, and to the prospect of guarding her on another "romantic" engagement.
THOUGHTS
OK, that was good.
Not to mention, quite disturbing. The teaser, with Terry playing with his "dolls," is initially disorienting. We only see closeups of his hands adjusting the clothing on the captive women. My immediate assumption was that we were in the Dollhouse... and then we see Terry talking to his mannequins, and for a moment I thought that was all they were: mannequins. Right up until "Aunt Sheila" begins whimpering and sweating.
The episode provides a field day for Enver Gjokaj, who is quite chilling when Victor is imprinted as the sociopath. He's also hilariously funny when he receives a second, abrupt and random, imprint. It may say something about where the acting strengths of this show do and don't lie that, in every case that multiple Actives receive the same imprints, Eliza Dushku's performance has come across the weaker. Here, she and Gjokaj each play the same two imprints at various points in the episode - and in both cases, Gjokaj outacts Dushku by a considerable margin.
I did appreciate that Claire's disappearance (finally) receives a mention, with Adelle and Langton sparring over how much of a priority her retrieval should be. Given that the absence of Dr. Saunders leads to a crisis in retrieving Victor, I would think at the very least that Topher should be imprinting one of the lower-earning Actives to be a new doctor as soon as possible.
Oh, and a final, stray thought. Bradley is able to not only whisk the Terry-imprinted Victor out of the interrogation room, but right out of the Dollhouse, with nobody noticing before he made it all the way to the street? They really should bring Laurence Dominic out of the attic, because Langton's obviously doing a lousy job replacing him as Security Chief.
Rating: 8/10.
Previous Episode: Instinct
Next Episode: Belonging
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