Dollhouse 1x07 Review: Alice in Wonderland

“Echoes”
Written by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain
Directed by James A. Contner
 
The Story
Echo has another engagement with that motorcycle-riding dude from “Ghost.” Elsewhere, in a lab, something goes horribly wrong, and a kid bashes his own brains out against a window. He took some kind of drug that made him lose it. The other two college kids who go in there start tripping too. The lab is owned by Rossum, the same company that owns the Dollhouses. One of the higher-ups, Clive Ambrose, has Adelle send in a bunch of dolls to control the situation, since they’re supposedly immune to the effects of this memory drug. Meanwhile, Topher will try to learn how the drug works and hopefully make an antidote. Echo sees a news report about the drug situation on that campus, and she leaves the motorcycle-riding dude tied to a bed to go follow the hints of Caroline’s memories she’s getting about Rossum. She teams up with Sam, one of the drugged students, who is now sober again, and she lets her memory flashes guide her to the secret entrance to the lab building. Meanwhile, Boyd, Dominic, Topher, and Adelle all start tripping on the drug. November (Mellie’s Doll name) starts glitching, and then so do Victor and Sierra. Topher realizes the drug eventually breaks down in a person’s system, and the reason the first kid died was that he’d been given a lethal dose on purpose. And it turns out the person who drugged him is Sam, who then drugs Echo. She plays out the rest of Caroline’s memories about that lab. She and her boyfriend, Leo, were trying to collect enough evidence against Rossum for animal testing to take them down, but they found a bit more than that. However, they got caught by guards, and Leo was shot on the way out. He died, and that incident was what put Adelle on Caroline’s trail, though it took two more years to catch up to her. In the present, Sam gets caught, and then Adelle offers to make him a doll in exchange for all the money he needs to take care of his mom.
 
“Echoes” is great. Mostly, anyway. The Caroline stuff was pretty meh, but everyone else tripping on that drug made it all worth it. And we got to meet the Rossum Corporation and see that they’re indeed doing more than Dollhouses.
 
Things I Liked

• “I might throw up. That’s a compliment!”
• Topher asking Adelle for a juice box
• Boyd on the drug. “Hey. Wow. Did not maintain control of that situation.”
• Dominic on the drug!
  

• Topher and Adelle on the drug together.
• “It’s made of brown.”

• “Our problems are huge and indomitable.” “Ooh. I could eat that word. Or a crisp. Do you have any crisps?” “You haven’t seen my drawer of inappropriate starches?!”
• Topher’s drawer of inappropriate starches
• Adelle jumping on Topher’s mini trampoline and climbing over the little railing thing
• Pianist Boyd (can’t be completely sure, but it looks like that’s the actor playing the piano for real)
• Seriously everything they do while high is hysterical
• Including realizing it’s a murder
• That the scene where they figure out it’s a murder is right before the scene where “Alice” and Sam reach their destination, and we find out Sam is the culprit.
• “Just because you didn’t mean it doesn’t mean you didn’t kill him.”
• Adelle and Dominic both being super awkward after getting back to normal

 
Things I Didn’t

• The dude who engaged “Alice.” So he has one fantasy about a very competitive tomboy party girl and another fantasy about a super innocent-and-trusting-yet-curious-to-try-anything girl? If he’s rich enough to afford the Dollhouse, why can’t he just get actual girlfriends?
• Caroline. Woohoo, a hardcore animal rights activist.
• Security guards on a college campus are authorized to shoot fleeing, unarmed students? Not just subdue them for questioning and disciplinary action?

 
The Characters
So...I care more about Echo than I do about Caroline so far. I think part of that is the way you can’t really see the intuitiveness, quiet thoughtfulness, or protective instincts (towards vulnerable humans, not animals) in Caroline, so it doesn’t even feel like Echo is the foundation of Caroline, which is what I would have expected.
 
Adelle keeps getting more interesting. She’s loyal to whatever purpose she believes Rossum is pursuing, but not to the people in it unless they’ve proven their competence. She respects Dominic and Topher because they’re good at what they do, even if their personalities sometimes grate against hers.
 
Topher is so much like a real life nerd! I feel like a big part of being a nerd is being completely unabashed about the stuff you like, especially when it’s stuff many adults would dismiss as childish. To be a nerd is to fight the idea that in order to be cool, you have to project a sort of ennui, of not caring too hard about anything. Screw that! Topher likes juiceboxes and inappropriate starches, and he acts the same way with his boss as with anyone else.
 
So now we know Victor ended up in the Dollhouse because of some kind of war PTSD. Poor guy. But I love how he instinctively tries to hold onto Sierra when he’s slipping into his scary flashbacks. It’s just too bad he didn’t realize what the physical contact was triggering in her brain.
 
Overall Rating
4.5/5