Dollhouse: True Believer

“Echo herself will see no evil”

It’s a Waco episode. A series of events unfold which are remarkably similar to what happened in Texas back in ’93, which, as far as the script is concerned, makes this another episode where the plot can just chug along in its deliberately predictable fashion while we have a lot of arc stuff going on.

Mainly, though, this is a chance for Eliza Dushku to really show us her acting chops, playing a blind God bothering type. This she does superbly whilst things go bang around her and the David Koresh of the episode twirls his moustache. Arc- wise, this shows us once again that Echo, for an active, displays a huge amount of initiative and balls.

The episode ends with a rather interesting parallel as DeWitt refers to the “purity” of what the organisation is doing, raising the interesting idea that it is just as much of a cult as the organisation which it is investigating. We learn that the organisation will work for such official government types as Senators which implies that the organisation is, if not legal, at least tolerated to some extent. There is also a rather amusing subplot concerning an illicit erection on the part of Victor, an active, which leads to the viewing of much footage of naked actives. Nice work if you can get it. Victor’s capacity for sexual arousal is our first sign that it may not just be Echo who is different from what the organisation seems to expect from its actives. Could it all go horribly wrong?

Meanwhile, in the slowest subplot known to humanity, Agent Paul Ballard continues, very slowly, to amass information concerning Caroline. I’ve seen enough Joss Whedon  shows by now to suspect that she may not necessarily be Echo. She could be a clone, a twin sister or anything. Whedon never does the obvious. Except when he does.