Dollhouse: Season 1, Episode 8: "Needs"

Season 1, Episode 8: “Needs”
Grade: 8.0

Holy hell I did not expect to learn this much about everything so soon. The Actives wake up with their personalities but no memories as in an experiment administered by Dr. Saunders my other favorite character. They each know nothing about themselves but we eventually learn a bit about each of the 4 active Echo, Victor, Sierra and November.
I’m not so sure this episode completely worked. It’s been a long time since I have seen it but I simply remember not being entirely satisfied with it. Still there are so many interesting things going on here.

The most interesting part was seeing everyone with their basic personalities and with no memories. We get to see what they are each like on the most basic level. This was great as a building block to later further establishing their characters.

Ballard had a dumb dream that I did not like as it furthered along this obsession with Echo that he has which is really lame.

It was really interesting to see things from the ex-for-the-moment- Actives point of view and how barbarically they view whatever is going on because it really just is horrible.

We learn that November had a daughter named Katie who died.

The saddest thing here is Sierra’s past in which she refused to sleep with the scuzzbag to end all scuzzbags and he actually put her in the Dollhouse as opposed to her volunteering. Now she is a regular client of his. That is so sick and her visit to him is all the more horrifying. Fuck this guy. I hope she castrates that fuckwad. Ugh. I hate that guy.

Victor is charming but ultimately not that interesting. I have a feeling that I am going to be more interested in Victor in the Dollhouse as opposed to Victor outside of the Dollhouse if that ever happens. That being said I love him and Sierra and their stuff together was some of my favorite of the episode. I adore them.

Caroline of course wants to save everyone and go back in. Yay. Again I’m just not all that intrigued by her. But her conversations with Topher and Adelle were really great.

So all in all it was an experiment and so even though Caroline succeeds in letting them out it does not matter because at a certain time they pass out and are brought back to the Dollhouse to be put back. So yeah it’s obviously been a while. I can barely remember the episode but I know that I really liked it even if it was flawed for whatever reason.