Quick spoilers for last night's "Dollhouse" coming up just as soon as I jump on a trampoline... "Echoes" wasn't on the review DVD that Fox sent out that included last week's "Man on the Street" and next week's "Needs," and I can see why. While it fills in important pieces of backstory about both Echo/Caroline and the Dollhouse itself, it also spends a lot of time on elements of the series that viewers haven't really liked to this point.
Basically, it's the "Dollhouse" equivalent of Star Trek's "The Naked Time," or Star Trek: TNG's "The Naked Now," or "Band Candy" on Buffy, or any other episode of a sci-fi series that has some outside element (drugs, alien mind control, whatever) unleashing the characters' inhibitions so we can watch them be silly for a while. The problem is, I don't want to see Topher or DeWitt or Dominic be silly. From where I sit, they're the villains of the piece, loathsome in just about every way, and watching them unleash their inner child, strip down to their undies, or whatever other ridiculous behavior they did isn't amusing or endearing the way it is when Mr. Sulu runs barechested through the Enterprise with a fencing sword; it's just creeps acting creepy in a different way.
At the same time, this is already the third or fourth instance in seven episodes where the imprinting process has gone awry -- not to mention the ongoing problem of the Dolls not having some sort of default memory of each other in the event of an incident like Echo turning up in someone else's mission -- and so this gross and evil institution also seems like a very incompetent organization. If they're going to be so awful, they can at least be good at it, right?
I'm glad to know more about Caroline, and about who's funding the Dollhouse, but if I hadn't already seen "Needs," I'd be dismissing "Man on the Street" as a one-time fluke before the show went back to putting Eliza Dushku into fetish wear.
What did everybody else think?
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