Echo is held captive in a Rossum lab, presided over by Bennett (Summer Glau), a brilliant but unstable scientist. Bennett has a personal grudge against Echo - or rather, against Caroline - and tortures her mercilessly before imprinting her with a particularly vicious memory. But Adelle has no intention of letting Rossum claim Echo. She has set up a meeting with a Rossum executive (Ray Wise), while directing Topher to meet with Bennett. Adelle uses her particular blend of directness and feminine wiles to get Echo released, while Topher uses his own technical wizardry to figure out what Bennett's been up to.
But Bennett's grudge leads to an unpredictable turn. Soon, Echo and Senator Perrin (Alexis Denisof) are on the run, with Rossum's finest in pursuit. And there's one final twist to Bennett's revenge, one which could turn everyone's plans upside-down!
CHARACTERS
Echo: Before she became an Active, Caroline apparently got into this Rossum lab, sometime after her first foray into Rossum. She was friends with Bennett, whom she probably used to get into the lab. Something Bad happened, resulting in Bennett's arm getting pinned, and Caroline was rather callous about leaving the other girl to her fate rather than trying to help her. In the present, Echo has pretty much become fully aware, as she pushes Perrin to use his position to expose Rossum while at the same time making her own escape. The episode ends with Echo on the loose, with no way for the Dollhouse to track her - a situation that presents a lot of interesting possibilities...
The Ice Queen: Adelle may have been out-manipulated by Harding and Rossum, but she's still a formidable woman. With manipulation no longer an option, when presented with a weak-willed Rossum executive (Ray Wise), she opts for brute force. She's quite skillful at it, and the only reason she doesn't get everything she wants out of the exchange is Bennett's personal baggage taking her off-script.
The Genius: This episode gives us a double-dose of Topher. There's Fran Kranz's usual, entertaining performance, as Topher goes out into the field. His nervous fidgeting in Adelle's limousine is quite funny, as he alternates between behaving like a small child with ADD and admitting, with nice vulnerability, that he is "outside (his) comfort zone" when out of his lab. His attraction to Bennett (Summer Glau) is convincing, and I enjoyed every moment Kranz and Glau shared on-screen. We also get Victor-as-Topher, Topher having duplicated himself in order to work on the problem both in his lab and in person. Scenes in which Topher literally talks to himself are hilarious, as Enver Gjokaj does a fantastic job of imitating Kranz's mannerisms.
THOUGHTS
As a resolution to the cliffhanger posed by The Public Eye, The Left Hand does its job well. It's entertaining, particularly when Topher is center-stage (in either guise), and it moves the plot that little bit closer to the future we saw in Epitaph One.
Really, that's becoming one of the great strenghts of Season Two, now that the season's properly underway. Having seen the future, there is a sense of steadily approaching doom over all of the proceedings. With each new step, from Topher's well-intentioned inventions to Rossum's manipulations, the possible paths for the characters to turn away from disaster are steadily closing down. Now each episode closes off another opportunity to prevent the future, turning a maze of possibilities steadily into a one-way tunnel... one that's heading for a collision with an oncoming train.
The Left Hand is not as strong an episode as The Public Eye, however. It's less compelling, with less of the sense of a thriller hanging over it. It gets where it needs to go, and it's a fun journey to take. But even the ominous note struck by the ending doesn't have the same gut punch to it as the revealtions in the previous episode did. It's a good episode, make no mistake, and yet another episode that leaves me anticipating what's going to come next. But it just lacks that certain extra "something" that the strongest episodes have, limiting my score to a solid and enjoyable:
Rating: 7/10.
Previous Episode: The Public Eye
Next Episode: Meet Jane Doe
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