EPISODE REVIEW: Dollhouse: “The Public Eye (Part 1)”(Season 2, Episode 5)

…And we’re back! Dollhouse is back from a month-long hiatus, all tan, rested, ready, and sentenced to death. It’s cancelled, but it’s back. As if slouching to its execution wasn’t enough, the powers that be (A guy named Lenny and his friend Sam, over at Fox. One of ‘em is a lunch guy, the other, I think is a janitor or something) have decided the show should spring in sprightly fashion to the gallows, rushing to its fate. Which is a pointlessly hyperbolic and sarcastic way of saying that the network (Or at least Lenny and Sam) decided to burn off the episodes of this already-cancelled show two at a time for the next several weeks, mostly during the Holiday Season doldrums when ratings are crap anyway, and they won’t hemorrhage viewers quite as badly as they would during a time of year when people are actually watching TV.

Which is a shame, really, as Dollhouse was getting better and better all the time, and tonight’s two-parter is very likely the best thing they’ve ever done, or damn close to it.

PLAY BY PLAY

This year’s Helo plot - Senator Perrin, who’s been trying to expose the Dollhouse, just like Paul Ballard (“Helo”) was last year - comes to the foreground when he brings out a material witness, a woman who was used, abused, and cast off by the organization. It’s November/Mellie! She explains how she was hired as a doll while under emotional duress, used for three years, then was let go. She’s found evidence of what she did during those years, and it’s unspeakable, and she wants to bring the Rawson corporation down.

Back in the Dollhouse, Adel and Paul are very freaked out by this - “She was happy when she left here, and she’s not happy now. What happened?” - but a Rawson exec chides them for their ineptitude, then says it’s all taken care of, and they should just sit tight and stay out of it. He leaves, but of course they do no such thing. Looking in to it, they conclude - as have we all - that the senator’s Stepford Wife is a doll, and Paul finds some forged personal history that seems to confirm that. Topher fits him out with a ‘Disruptor’ - “That’s not too Star Trek is it? TOS?” - which will shut down any doll with in 500 feet. Paul heads off to rescue Mellie/November while, unbeknownst to him, Adel decides to send in Echo.

Echo is programmed to be a call girl, and the senator, having been drugged, wakes up in bed with her, with a camcorder a-runnin’. Initially he freaks out, but then his moral outrage kicks in, and he realizes he’s being used. He also realizes she must be a doll, but can’t quite manage to explain that to her. He heads off to tell his wife, with Echo amusedly in tow.

Paul gets in to the Senator’s house, and attempts to explain things to a very freaked out Mellie/November, but she won’t listen. The Senator’s wife comes after him just as the Senator and Echo pull in the driveway. Paul activates the disrupter, and Mellie, Echo, *AND* the Senator go down, but the senator’s wife doesn’t. She takes out a very surprised Paul. Echo and the Senator run away,