Dollhouse Finally Starts To Get It Right

It’s ironic I suppose, and maybe a little sad, that Dollhouse finally starts to get its act together on the heels of the news that the show will go on hiatus in November and air its remaining episodes back-to-back in December; Fox’s way of powering through them as fast as possible and moving on to (hopefully) greener pastures.

I’ve said consistently throughout reviewing the show that its main problem is that it seems to prefer doing stand-alone episodes instead of building the serial mythology and that, while it almost always manages to be clever and cerebral, it fails to engage on an emotional level and prevents viewers from connecting with the characters. But although Echo once again has very little to do this episode (odd, her being the protagonist and all), Sierra, Victor, Topher, Boyd and even DeWitt manage to make emotional connections. Woo hoo!

The episode functions somewhat as an origin story for Sierra. We already learned that she ended up at the Dollhouse after a power-mad scumbag raped her because she refused to become his plaything, but now we get to see exactly how that transpired and who she was before she was made into a doll.

In her pre-Dollhouse era, Sierra was actually Priya, working in what looked to be Santa Monica, taking pictures and selling her artwork. Her frequent caller was a guy named Nolan Kennard (the aforementioned power-mad scumbag), who kept coming up to her and buying her work and flirting. This time, he commissions her to do a larger, more expensive piece for him, and offers to set up a showing for her. We know what his intentions really are and so does Priya, but she’s a nice girl so she accepts his invitation.

The showing is a true white-collar affair, and Priya/Sierra is clearly out of her element and comfort zone. Amusingly enough, she runs into Echo, who is on assignment as someone’s arm candy (is that the right expression?). Echo tells her to stay close to Nolan and use her power over him to get whatever she wants, but Priya isn’t like that. It’s an interesting irony that Priya potentially had all kinds of power and chose not to use any of it, then became a doll and gave even basic powers up.

Also at the showing is Harding, who has ties in both the Dollhouse and its parent company, the Rossum Corporation. He doesn’t understand Nolan’s obsession with Priya and all the money he is spending to woo her when Harding could build Nolan the perfect woman (yeah, right) at the Dollhouse. Harding also introduces Priya to an art dealer named Luca, who is actually Victor, also on assignment. Victor points out that maybe Priya’s motif of using birds in her artwork is emblematic of a spiritual connection she has with the creatures, the need to be free and untamed. They make an immediate connection and begin to leave the party together when Nolan flips out and…we know the rest from there.

Back in the present day, now we see Priya/Sierra still with Nolan. Nolan takes a picture of her as she leaves and places it in a drawer filled with pictures of Sierra, all of her with different personalities on different engagements. Only Nolan, the client, remains constant. Thus, it seems Nolan found a way to tame Sierra and maker her his plaything after all. This whole thing really crystallizes the immorality and abuse of human rights the show tries (but rarely succeeds) to explore.

Keep in mind though that while we the audience know that Nolan is this monster that raped Priya/Sierra, the Dollhouse people don’t. We learn in this episode that when Priya/Sierra (damn that’s getting repetitive) came to be at the Dollhouse, she was being unsuccessfully treated in a mental hospital, a damaged paranoid schizophrenic. Nolan had been pumping her full of neuroleptic drugs which helped drive her to that fractured state. But Topher went there to help her and brought her to the Dollhouse.

Echo sees Sierra painting a disturbed picture of birds in the Dollhouse and brings it to Topher. In her own way she tells him that something is wrong and so Topher and company start investigating, trying to uncover the link between her and Nolan and why he’s such a good repeat customer. (After this, as I said, Echo disappears from the episode). This also brings Boyd into the mix, who I always thought was one of the most interesting characters on the show and he has all but disappeared this season. Ballard is curiously absent this week, but oh well.

I don’t want to give the rest away, but suffice it to say that the episode weaves back and forth between multiple timelines and gives Topher a compelling chance to prove that he does have morals and feelings. Boyd also becomes aware that Echo has learned to lie and remember her engagements, and his response is surprising and casts a potential new light on why he came to be at the Dollhouse in the first place.

It’s quite an intricate piece of writing, and the fact that the showrunners manage to finally make us care or at least feel something for Sierra and Victor and Topher and DeWitt makes the explorations of morality play that much better. Themes are always much more effective when you can take them out of the realm of the abstract and view them through the life prism of a character. I hope the rest of the season…whenever it airs…can build on this episode’s positive improvement and end the series strongly, since clearly it’s not coming back for a third season.

Season 2, Episode 4: Belonging (originally aired October 23, 2009)

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Fridays at 9/8C on Fox

Photographs courtesy of Fox and IMDbPro