Dollhouse: Needs

One thing I’ll say about Dollhouse is that with each episode, you never know what you’re going to get. Even if the show isn’t a slam dunk (yet?), at least it ain’t dull. This latest episode breaks the format; there are no engagements. Dewitt confers with all of her underlings and assesses the fallout of the drugs that everyone was exposed to last episode. They agree that four Actives in particular-Echo, Sierra, Victor and Millie-need some adjustments. They’re misfiring a little bit and that makes them dangerous. So DeWitt and Dominic agree that they need to have some maintenance work done.

But, seemingly before said maintenance can be performed, Echo wakes up in her little pod and starts freaking out. Hey, not that I can blame her; if I woke up in a New Age coffin, I’d be a little perturbed too. After bloodying her hand, Echo gets out. She’s not alone: Victor, Sierra and Millie all arise. The hook is that they’re no longer robots. They talk normally, they’re self-aware, they have their original personalities and they have flashes of their memories back. Sure, it’s all a little fuzzy, but more and more starts coming back to them as the episode progresses.

Is Alpha behind this? Is it a glitch in the maintenance Dewitt was planning? No one knows. All the Active quad knows is that they’re in some kind of prison and have to find their way out. So the episode becomes about their quest to figure out where they are, how they got there, and how to get out. What’s curious is that we know that Dewitt knows what’s going on, but she doesn’t really try to stop them. She just goes through the motions, and that may be a clue.

The escape process goes exactly as you would expect, and it’s entertaining. You know the drills: steal keycards from guards, surveillance cameras, running, close calls, etc. It’s done well. There’s a kick-ass fight scene-quickly becoming one of the show’s specialties-involving Echo, a handler, and a fire extinguisher. Yeah! The last blow Echo lands to win the fight is spectacular. That sequence alone makes the episode worth watching.

Throughout the escape, the memories start to become more clear for the four. Victor remembers/senses that he is close to Sierra and that something bad happened to her. Sierra remembers that some guy named Nolan is responsible for being in the Dollhouse. Millie remembers that she has a daughter. Echo/Caroline keeps seeing mountains and peace and wants to find them. She helps the other three escape, but at the last second she turns back to go rescue everyone else from the Dollhouse. The rest of the episode intercuts between the four as they go off on their separate quests, though Victor and Sierra stay together.

When all is said and done, we get some good revelations about the characters and their backstories, and while the final twist of the episode isn’t entirely unexpected, it is rather clever. Langton and Boyd make requisite appearances but don’t do much. I don’t know where things are going to go from here, but I’ll keep watching for a while.

Season 1, Episode 8: Needs (originally aired April 3, 2009)

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Fridays at 9/8C on Fox

Photographs courtesy of Fox and IMDbPro