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“Twenty seconds ago, you unsnapped your holster.”

This week on Dollhouse, more secrets are revealed, and we finally learn what exactly it means to go to “The Attic”.

The very opening moments of the episode show a POV shot of a struggling someone who is being led by their arms and legs through a dark room with a chair, electricity buzzing and crackling all around them. It cuts then to outside that room where Echo and Sierra are looking at the room where the unknown person was dragged to and from their point of view, we see the exterior of the room, hear a gunshot and we see blood spray against the frosted window. Then we cut to several hours earlier. Adelle and Mr. Dominic are in discussion because The Rossum people have asked Adelle to come in for an evaluation. She has to leave and Mr. Dominic is in charge for the next 48 hours.

After she leaves, November is re-imprinted with the Mellie persona and goes back home, across the hall from Paul. Paul is apparently in extreme paranoia mode since he discovered very high-tech surveillance equipment in his house, and he’s been looking into every single possible connection to The Dollhouse. Mellie is quite concerned with how far Paul seems to be taking this, and as she starts to express her concern physically, she pulls an Echo and Paul receives another message from the spy inside The Dollhouse. She tells him that he cannot talk about The Dollhouse or any discovery he makes about it to Mellie, or Mellie will be sent back to kill him. She also says for him to not look into where the Dollhouse is, but why the Dollhouse is. Also Victor has been re-imprinted with his suave and sophisticated “Lonely Hearts” persona, because the client keeps insisting on it. Dr. Saunders has warned against the dangers of the same imprint being given over and over.

Back at the Dollhouse, Topher has had to practically rebuild the imprinting system due to Echo shooting it in the last ep, and when he does this, he finds some kind of strange tech that he identifies as something that will allow someone to alter imprints. Dominic puts this on Topher, whereas Topher believes that it’s Dominic’s problem since he is the head of security. They endeavor to contact Adelle about the breach, but she’s nowhere to be found. Even her phone’s GPS service is down. Thus the investigation into the spy begins.

The usual suspects are looked at, like Boyd and Dr. Saunders, both of whom have voiced grievances about the morality of the Dollhouse. But to look at the unusual suspects, Topher decides to imprint Sierra as a tough-as-nails lady spy, who is able to infiltrate the local NSA field office to try to get any intel on who the spy is. Echo, during the episode, is curious as to what is going on, and she goes to Topher. She realizes that people come in the room as one person and come out as another, and while what most of Topher explains to her goes over her head, she does get through when she asks if she can help. She is willing to volunteer to be imprinted, which is a first for an Active.

Meanwhile, Victor arrives with roses at the “Lonely Hearts” client, a nice older lady. He immediately splits out the back, losing his handler, and goes to a house by the ocean, where he goes to meet his real client; the person who really wants him. And that person is Adelle, which is a heck of a shock to see that she’s essentially dipping into her company pool and apparently has been with Victor for some time.

Back at the Dollhouse, Echo has been imprinted with similar traits to Sierra, who is now on the run from NSA agents who discovered her breach. She will be doing interrogations on the internal staff instead of going to the outside. She interviews Boyd, Dr. Saunders, and Topher’s sexy pixie assistant, Ivy (Liza Lapira) and they all have something interesting to say that could point to them… but the true culprit is much more insidious.

This is one of the mythology shock episodes that is similar to the style of “Man on the Street” where something is uncovered that changes everything. And with the revelations that Adelle is helping herself to her own treats (but it is meant to fulfill a deeper emotional need other than sexual), and that she has something of a heart, and of course the big reveal that one of the spies on the inside is Mr. Dominic, and another big reveal as to the true nature of ‘The Attic’, and also the reveal that Boyd is going to be the new head of security and Echo will have a new handler… it’s a lot to take in. Especially Dominic’s reasons for being a spy, because they make sense in a practical way, but it just seems like it’s a way to shake things up other than being one of those mysteries that takes a while to find out what the real answer is. But it’s becoming more obvious to me, as I’m sure it is to fans of the show and people who are following the rumor mill that this show seems to be headed toward cancellation, so perhaps in a bid to keep Whedon’s initial message of the show intact, they are speeding up the process so they can get everything out just in case it ends up on the chopping block.

The two real stars of this episode are Olivia Williams, who gets to show an extremely vulnerable side to her character while still keeping people at arm’s length, and Reed Diamond, who, as Mr. Dominic, has had to be Mr. Super-Stoic, but in this episode, he shows some actual humanity. The ep was directed tightly by David Solomon (who directed 1.3 “Stage Fright”), who plays around with time quite a bit, and it works. The writing is also solid, but the episode seems rushed, as I said before. It’s even but at the same time, a little uneven. It’s a strange dichotomy but one that eventually plays well.

I hope that this series does continue because it has hit a good rhythm and the characters are becoming more identifiable. And if the rumors that Alan Tudyk (Wash from Firefly) is going to be playing Alpha, I REALLY want to see that. Keep this series, Fox. Defy our expectations.

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