TV Review - Dollhouse (S1, E8)

Needs

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO REMAIN UNSPOILED ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS DURING EACH EPISODE, READ MY OVERALL REVIEW OF THE SHOW, WHICH WILL BE POSTED SOON

So ask and you shall receive. We finally get a full episode of a few of the dolls, namely Echo, November, Sierra, and Victor, in the personalities they entered the dollhouse with. Unfortunately they do not have any of their memories, and though this kept the viewer from learning too much about them, we did get to learn what was driving these four.

The story line breaks down like this: because many of the dolls are “misbehaving” something must be down to quell their evolution process. Victor is having “man reactions,” Echo has been remembering things from engagements, and now because of their exposure to that drug in the previous episode, all are showing similar signs of both remembering and recognizing things they should not.

Though this episode revolves around the games that DeWitt and the other members of the dollhouse are playing with the dolls, it still manages to be quite poignant. Think about it. These people have been wiped clean of their memories of who they are, but there are still memories so intense and horrible that have led them to this point that it is ingrained inside of their being. But once it is all done I don’t know what I actually feel worse about. On the one hand there are those traumatic events that they have to get past, but once they do fulfill what they need to they will become the mindless dolls that they are supposed to be.

But there is one thing I have to know. DeWitt says that everyone volunteered to become a doll to escape the life they had (in this episode she tells Caroline: “You wanted to forget”), but in actuality no one really knows but her if this is true or not. Take Sierra’s character, when she confronts the man who put her in the dollhouse we learn that he paid to put her there. That doesn’t sound like much of a decision on her part to me. So who knows how else the other characters actually came to be there.

Final Grade: A

Quote(s) of the Episode:

Caroline - "Hey, I woke up in a five-star floor coffin just like you, pal."

Topher - "We’re good people. Nice people. We help people become better people by giving them what they need. I don’t usually do the sales pitch."