Dollhouse: Season 1, Episode 10: "Haunted"

Dollhouse:
Season 1, Episode 10: "Haunted"
Grade: 8.0

While “Haunted” in many ways gets back to a lot of the one shot episodes that were at the beginning of the show, it is a very intriguing episode. For the first time on the show I really cared about the engagement. I have been interested in other engagements on the show involving Echo but I really found myself totally intrigued by Echo’s or rather Margaret’s interactions with her relatives. It was pretty obvious it was the son early on but whatever, I still found myself captivated by the story and actually somewhat impressed with Eliza’s acting (even though Dichan is such a better actress its ridiculous). I also liked how the main plot of the episode suggested the possible eternity of life that the Dollhouse can offer. I am sure that they are setting that up for something that will eventually come up even though it won’t get to come up because it will probably be cancelled.

I really liked seeing Topher interact with someone that he connects with. We essentially got to see what Topher’s perfect day would be like. I wonder if that day ends with him having sex with the active or if he even uses a girl every time. Topher however will always to me remain creepy and difficult to sympathize with.

On the Ballard/Mellie front we have some intense stuff going on. Ballard has to deal with knowing that Mellie is a Doll as she asks questions about the Dollhouse. He does not know how to deal with this predicament so he basically deals with it by having angry rough and hatred filled sex with Mellie. He finds out that November’s real name is Polly but she has a bunch of different names and mug shots it looked like.

Overall this was a solid episode that for me showed that they could go back to the old format of the show and have a compelling episode unlike the earlier shaky episodes.

Dollhouse: Season 1, Episode 9: "Spy in the House of Love"

Season 1, Episode 9: “Spy in the House of Love”
Grade: 8.7

Wow. This is a great episode. Using a plot told from each Actives perspective this could have been really overdone and hacky. However it is glorious. We learn so much here.
Mellie: First revelation: We see Paul find out that Mellie is an Active and not only an Active but a sleeper agent. She goes back to thinking she is Mellie while Ballard now gets the fascinating task of pretending she is not an Active and trying to act normal. The first great scene of the night.

Sierra: While essentially this does not end up really doing much for the episode we got to see Sierra basically be in an episode of “Alias” complete with awesome heels and wig. I would so much rather watch Sierra do this than Echo. Sierra is my third favorite character after Adelle and Saunders. Fourth would be Boyd.

Victor: ADELLE IS MISS LONELYHEARTS!!! How depressing is that? But also how freaking great is it for her character? Seeing her cry at the end of the portion and then seeing the way she reacts to what happens in front of people makes her so fascinating to me. I also just really like how we see the day that Adelle plans for Victor and herself. This whole section just completely knocked me for a loop. Williams does such a great job in this episode.

Echo: We see Echo voluntarily offer to be imprinted as she speaks to Topher which is really quite surprising as well and not something I expected to happen. She interviews everyone about why they are at the Dollhouse and we learn some very interesting slight insights into particularly Saunders who never leaves the place. It turns out Mr. Dominic is the spy although I’m a bit confused as to whether or not there are more than one. Still a little confused about his motivations and such but whatever, a lot of things about this show confuses me. It all leads up to us seeing what The Attic specifically is which is not real surprise outside of the fact that the whole process is much more disturbing than it might have been. Then we get in my opinion the greatest moment of the series so far: Adelle getting nicked by a bullet and literally not reacting at all and staying for the Attic process as she bleeds through her shirt. Adelle in this scene has been my favorite part of the series thus far. Until Friday…

Sorry in particular these review suck. Dollhouse has a lot going on which I do not normally catch and this plus it being a while since I have seen it makes these reviews pretty difficult outside of the basics.

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.

Dollhouse: Season 1, Episode 7: "Echoes"

Dollhouse:
Season 1, Episode 7: “Echoes”
Grade: 7.8

This is the second of a string of great “Dollhouse” episode we are to see. All of this leads up to my personal favorite of the series thus far “Spy in the House of Love”. Here we see a really heavy amount of humor that surprised me with its effectiveness particularly with the interaction between Adelle and Topher and anything involving Dominic. While the plot had a ton of holes to it and altogether basically no effort was put into having any of it make sense as long as the characters were acting zany and wacky apparently that is all anybody cared about.
We get to see Caroline through flashbacks. Eliza Dushku and the problem I have with ever feeling any sort of emotion when she is on screen is starting to take its toll. Caroline did not interest me at all and while the incident involving her boyfriend was very traumatic and awful, I never felt it or anything for that matter at all and thus it did not hold a lot of power for me. Still though, it was nice seeing some stuff with Caroline. We also learn that Adelle had been trying to get Caroline to join the Dollhouse for 2 years which means that something else must have happened to make Caroline actually join. We get mention of the Rossum Corporation.
Blah blah more stuff with Mellie and Ballard the most annoying pairing of all time although not nearly as annoying as the ridiculous idea of Caroline/Paul that they seem to be slowly pushing at. She leaves Thank the Lord.

Ok so again anything involving Adelle and Topher – that’s right- Topher was tolerable- in this episode was gold. Adelle is my favorite character on the series at this point based on the last episode that aired. Boyd playing the piano was great. And of course Dominic who was hilarious.
Sam the person who had been helping Echo out has bad intentions and drugs her.