2-13. Epitaph Two - The Return.

Readers of my reviews will note the lengthy (4+ years) gap between my review of The Hollow Men and this one. There's a simple explanation: I did watch Epitaph Two at the time, and wrote a little over half of the review. I intended to complete that review within a few days... And somehow just never got up the interest to actually do so.

I'm revisiting it now, mainly because it bothers me to leave this review blog one post short of completion. Most of what follows is a polish of what I wrote at the time, but it's also supplemented by my thoughts on the series today.

Note that the "Characters" section has been left out of this review.  That was the one section in which I had written virtually nothing four years ago... And I suspect a lack of ideas as to what to write about the characters in this episode was a large part of why I found myself unable to finish the review.

So with no further ado, I present... The semi-reconstructed, vaguely abridged, mildly touched-up Special Edition of my lost and incomplete Dollhouse review... Epitaph Two - The Return!


THE PLOT

Picking up where Epitaph One left off, we find Mag (Felicia Day), and the young girl imprinted with Echo's personality (Adair Tishler) finally reach their goal, and are united with the surviving Dollhouse crew. But things are far from over. In a recent raid to the Rossum headquarters of Neuropolis (formerly Tucson), Echo has discovered that Rossum is forcing Topher to build a new technology, one which will wipe the entire world in one blow. But Topher is putting his own spin on the assignment: Rather than wipe everyone, he is planning to adjust the tech so that it resets the original personality and memory of everyone who was ever wiped, putting an end to Rossum's "dolls" forever!

To achieve this, Echo and Adelle will need the help of their new refugees to guide them back to the Dollhouse. There, they can get the tech Topher needs, and wait underground so that their personalities are not reset along with the rest of the world's. However, not everyone making the trip has the same agenda. Echo may just be able to save the world - but doing so will come at a cost...


THOUGHTS

As the title implies, writers Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon return to the post-apocalyptic world of Epitaph One and, along with writer Andrew Chambliss, create an epilogue to the series. This might work better if they weren't burdened with having to salvage dropped threads from the somewhat botched finale that was The Hollow Men. Like too much of Season Two, it is so busy hitting obligatory plot notes that it never is able to match the haunting atmosphere of Epitaph One, which may well be my favorite Dollhouse episode.

With some distance from the series, I find myself wondering if it wasn't a bad creative decision to spend Season Two filling in the gaps between the "highlights" glimpsed in Epitaph One. Instead of chasing plot points, I think a Season Two that stuck with the post-apocalyptic world could have made for something atmospheric. It would have been a sharp break from what had been seen, but the gap between Season One and the apocalypse could have provided good opportunities for backstory as we revisited the characters now, without the obligation of connecting every single dot in 12 episodes.

Certainly, I found it interesting to revisit Harding and Ambrose, both of whom were largely forgotten by the last part of Season Two. These Rossum bigwigs have shuttered themselves up in one city, living a life of luxury among slaves. Even so, as Ambrose observes, they are themselves declining. They may be lords of a small section of the wasteland, but they actually had better lives before the fall... something Ambrose seems to be aware of, though Harding seems content enough with his lot.

The conclusion feels a touch overly-pat, but it does a better job of closing out the series than the rushed action movie heroics of The Hollow Men did. But revisiting it, I can't help but feel something more interesting lay in the shadows of the entire second season. I understand why many fans prefer Season Two, with its tightly-linked arc and twists and turns. But I preferred the atmosphere of the first season, which I felt all but vanished in the second. The need to cram too much story into too little time left it all feeling a bit rushed... Which is probably why, despite quite enjoying this episode, I just couldn't find the will to finish the review then.

So for the sake of completeness, here is my final Dollhouse review. It's a positive review, as it should be said was true of most of my reviews of the series... But that doesn't stop me from seeing the entire second season as a bit of a near-miss... Interesting, well-made and well-acted, but ultimately not as compelling as it feels like it should be.


Rating for Epitaph Two: 8/10.

Previous Episode: The Hollow Men


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2-7. Meet Jane Doe.

THE PLOT

It's been three months since Echo's escape from Rossum, and both she and Paul remain unaccounted for. At the Dollhouse, things have changed - and not for the better. Adelle is no longer in control of the house, Harding (Keith Carradine) having effectively taken over. Harding has given Topher a blank check for extensive research, with no real indication of what the research may be for. Meanwhile, Adelle continues to push Langton to find Echo, "even if it's in a ditch somewhere."

As for Echo, she and Paul have settled into a life on the run. Echo has taken a job as a nurse in a small town in Texas, using the knowledge of one of her old imprints to gain access to the county jail. The jail is run by a particularly cruel sherriff, who along with his guards are abusing Galena (Ana Claudia Talancon), a pretty Spanish-speaking inmate. Echo gains access in order to break the young woman out. But her plan may not take into account her own deteriorating mental state.

CHARACTERS

Echo: Her development now is fully even with the one clip from Epitaph One, with her a full partner with Paul but suffering increasing headaches as a result of the composite memories and personalities. In her confused post-escape state, she got Galena arrested, and now she is making freeing the girl her "training run" to go back into Rossum. The limpse Bennett gave her of Caroline has disturbed her, and she worries that her "real" self is not the person she hoped for.

The Ice Queen: In the wake of Echo's escape and Rossum's increasing ambitions, Adelle is left powerless - something we've never really seen from her before. She has lost control of her own house, and drifts around the halls almost like a ghost, all but flinching in Harding's presence. It's a shame we didn't get a chance to see what happened to take her from the confident Adelle of even the last episode to this cowed version, but I'd guess Harding probably stepped on her hard (metaphorically, if not literally).  erhaps that explains the choice she makes at the end, when she undertakes an act that seems to go against all of the more idealistic shades of the character.

The Security Chief: Langton urges Adelle to take back her house from Harding, and tries to boost her self-confidence to get her to take the chances necessary to do it. When she hesitates, he tells her that "the Adelle (he) knew wouldn't ask" how to do it - She would already know. Though it's a sure bet that Langton likes Adelle a great deal more than he likes Harding, he does a good job of concealing his feelings in Harding's presence, playing the good employee.

The Genius: With Harding elevating Topher to the inner circle and giving Topher anything and everything he needs to advance his research, Topher is the proverbial kid in the candy store. Or at least he seems to be. As we've seen before, Topher really does have more of a moral sense than his surface personality shows, and he's more than smart enough to figure out the shape of a puzzle from a handful of pieces... which leaves him in shock when he figures out the extent of Rossum's true ambitions.

The (Ex-) FBI Agent: Paul finally seems to have what he's been obsessing over. He is sharing an apartment with Echo, and has her complete trust. But while Paul has at times seemed creepily obsessive, he still has moral qualms about taking advantage even when Echo offers herself. To him, it would be wrong to sleep with Echo unless Caroline is present in that body to grant her consent. He sees Echo's deterioration, with the increasing headaches, and worries that if they don't move against Rossum soon, they will miss their chance.

THOUGHTS

I suspect this episode is one of the major points of the season in which the "back nine" not having been picked up becomes visible. I would tend to assume that, had the remaining nine episodes of a 22-episode season been greenlit, there would have been at least a couple of episodes filling in this three-month gap. The script does a good job of giving us the backstory, or at least enough of it for us to make some guesses about what happened in the meantime, but it would have been nice to have seen it. Still, I can suffer one bumpy mid-season transition for the sake of getting a proper ending to the tory - and this episode probably achieves this transition as well as would have been possible.

It's a good episode too, for the most part. Keith Carradine's coldly sinister Harding is always a welcome presence, and this time he gets more than a cameo appearance. Seeing the always collected Adelle reduced to flinching every time he so much as looks at her is very effective shorthand for demonstrating just how formidable he is (though, again - I really wish we could have seen how Harding reduced her to such a point). Really, the Dollhouse scenes are uniformly excellent, with the ending being both effectively shocking and likely representing the point of no return for the future seen in Epitaph One.

The standalone plot, with Echo breaking the girl out of jail, is reasonably entertaining too, and makes good use of both Echo's composite personality and of several of the imprints we've seen in past episodes. Notably referenced are the imprints from Ghost, Gray Hour, and Man on the Street. On the other hand, the sherriff and his deputies are cartoon characters, recycled wholesale from Macon County Jail, and as such are hard to fully take seriously. I can buy a corrupt sherriff. But this sherriff and his deputies have no shades of anything to their characterizations. They're evil, brutish, and stupid: Cartoon baddies designed to make us cheer when Echo unleashes her various imprints on them. The plot is interesting insofar as seeing Echo move through her imprints deliberately, and seeing Echo work on her own initiative toward a goal. But the bad guys make the child molester/kidnapper in Ghost look like a carefully-shaded characterization by comparison.

Still, the episode moves swiftly and represents major developments in the plot. The overall effectiveness is substantially raised by the outstanding scenes involving Harding, Topher, and Adelle. Despite some issues with the standalone plot, a strong episode with a genuinely chilling ending.


Rating: 8/10.

Previous Episode: The Left Hand
Next Episode: A Love Supreme


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2-5. The Public Eye.

THE PLOT

Senator Perrin (Alexis Denisof) is proceeding with his investigation of Rossum and the Dollhouse. He has found a witness, someone who can testify to the existence of the Los Angeles Dollhouse: Madeline Costley (Miracle Laurie), the woman formerly known as November. After Perrin parades her in front of a press conference, Harding (Keith Carradine) comes to the Dollhouse to upbraid Adelle and to tell her to do nothing - Rossum has the situation in hand.

Neither Adelle nor Ballard much like the sound of that. When they do some research on Perrin, they uncover discrepancies in his wife (Stacey Scowley)'s background, leading them to conclude that she is an Active. A "sleeper," who will doubtless be used to permanently silence Madeline. Topher produces his latest gadget, a device that will take out any Active within a 50-foot radius. But when Ballard arrives on the scene to use the device to retrieve Madeline, he discovers that the situation is far more complex than they had realized...


CHARACTERS

Echo: Recognizes November on the news feed that Topher and Ballard are watching, and wants to help her. This causes her to initially resist when Langton offers her a treatment. Langton actually has to pause to explain that Topher will turn her into someone "who will help November" before she will consent to the treatment. We also discover a bit more about the gap between Carolyn's escape from the Rossum medical center and her enlistment in the Dollhouse. Somewhere in between those two points, she was taken deeper into Rossum, encountering at least one person who seems to be far higher up the Rossum chain than anyone at the L. A. Dollhouse.

Doll of the Week: Bree is an escort, an upscale prostitute who enjoys her job, but isn't particularly troubled at the thought of being used in the blackmail of a U. S. senator. She's not unsympathetic to Perrin when he realizes she is a Doll and expresses a desire to "save" her, seeming content to go along with a potential fantasy... but he does warn him that it may not be wise to introduce his "hooker mistress" to his wife.

The Ice Queen: When Adelle decides to stop Rossum from murdering Madeline, Ballard echoes Harding's words about her going soft. Adelle replies pragmatically, that she wants Madeline silenced just as much as Rossum does - just using less extreme methods. When she discovers enough to guess at Rossum's full game, she finds her interests in direct conflict with her employers' agenda, and coolly announces her intent to stop them.

The (Ex-) FBI Agent: Ballard continues to feel a strong connection with November, whom he can't help but think of as "Mellie." He has saved her once, and very much wants to do so again. When directly confronted with her, he is able to explain himself in a way that seems to satisfy her. However, she is also able to give him pause by pointing out that if she's free, then she's free to "make mistakes," prompting Ballard to let her go - which I suspect will prove to be a major tactical blunder on his part, though the scene works very well emotionally.


THOUGHTS

The Senator Perrin plot finally gets moving, with a few surprises along the way. I figured there would be a twist in the tale, but I genuinely did not see some of the plot turns coming. I was particularly surprised by the ending, which sees a major shift in the tone of the series. The situation in which the episode ends is not one that can be easily reset, and I suspect the show is now building momentum toward the series' final Act.

The episode itself is a good one. Eliza Dushku's performance, both as "Bree" and as the re-awakened Echo, is her best so far this season, and she is matched by a terrific performance by Alexis Denisof. The episode is well-paced, and I suspect this may have been the last real chance for new viewers to "jump aboard" and still follow the plot.

The direction is as polished as you would expect from David Solomon. There's a particularly interesting fight scene, with Echo flashing to fights from earlier in the series and matching shots from those fights in this episode's fight. It really conveys the sense that she's reliving those moments even as she replicates them. There's also a brief, but nicely creepy, performance by Summer Glau, as a character whose story I suspect will prove to be an interesting one.

Rating: 8/10.

Previous Episode: Belonging
Next Episode: The Left Hand



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