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The Dollhouse has more surprises to come! Plus a Bridge Troll!

This week on Dollhouse, we go to the man on the street to get an idea of what the inhabitants of Los Angeles think about what exactly the Dollhouse is. And as a special bonus, Agent Ballard finally catches up with Echo, something terrible is being done to one of the Actives,  and even more Actives are revealed!

It opens with Agent Ballard browsing around the office of adversarial fellow Bureau agent, Tanaka (again, the wonderful Mark Sheppard), as Ballard starts to put together some pieces of the Dollhouse puzzle. Tanaka and Ballard get in each other’s face and Ballard puts a hurtin’ on Tanaka, and you just know that’s going to catch up to him. He plays connect-the-dots and comes up with a possible new client of the Dollhouse. Meanwhile at the Dollhouse, Victor’s state of arousal around Sierra is still of concern, and becomes even more concerning when Sierra screams at the very touch of him. After an examination, Dr. Saunders discovers that Sierra has had sex since her last engagement, which should absolutely not be possible. It looks bad for Victor. But Echo has more on her mind when she becomes part of a new engagement. A dot-com billionaire, Joel Mynor (the surprisingly poignant Patton Oswalt) is looking to relive the day when he was going to show his young bride their new home. Unfortunately for him, Agent Ballard played enough connect-the-dots to get to Mynor as the engagement begins and sees Echo, who Ballard only knows as Caroline. Unfortunately for Ballard, he had to attack Mynor’s private security staff to get in, and therefore has broken the law. Ballard seeks tea and sympathy from his neighbor Mellie, and gets a lot more than a ‘neighborly’ interaction.

Back at the Dollhouse, Boyd has discovered the real abuser of Sierra: her own handler. Unfortunately for Boyd, he’s sidelined from Echo’s next gig, which just happens to be a confrontation with Ballard again. Unfortunately for Sierra’s former handler, he gets assigned to take out Mellie, since she knows too much. As Echo confronts Ballard with an arsenal of ass-kickery at her disposal, she breaks her imprint for a few moments to tell Ballard that there is someone on the inside of the Dollhouse that wants him to expose the truth about it. Who it is remains unknown, but apparently it’s not the usual suspect Alpha. She then goes back into character for a few moments to cause Ballard to accidentally shoot and wound a police officer, and then flees. Ballard is suspended indefinitely from the Bureau due to the issues with Tanaka and Mynor’s security people and the wounded cop. Adelle and Mr. Dominic think that he’s nowhere near out of the game, and they’re right. Now that Echo has given him more resolve than ever compounded by an attack on Mellie can only give him more strength to shut down this Dollhouse.

But that’s just speculation. What is fact is that this was the best episode of the show so far. It was written by Whedon himself, and designed specifically to give the series the kick into high gear it needed. It had been slowly building, but now it’s definite. The director of the ep was David Straiton, who has also directed a lot of other genre shows such as Enterprise, The 4400, John Doe and a few eps of Angel. Whedon does most of the heavy emotional lifting on this episode, and a good amount of humor with the ‘man on the street’ segments that bookend the acts of the show. The only somewhat disappointing moment of the show is the ultra kung-fu throw down between Ballard and Echo because it was just too easy to spot their stunt doubles. Dushku and Penikett can really throw punches and kicks well, and it was just kinda… blah as far as how it was filmed. But with terrific surprise shocker moments and a really great scene between Penikett and Oswalt make this a great ep of TV and certainly the best ep so far.

Unfortunately, we have to wait to find out more secrets!

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