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Structure
Interesting Questions, Facts and Information
- There are a total of 60 general entries. We are selecting 30 for display.
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 Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information
 Dollhouse
| In the first scene of the show, a nervous young American woman – the future Echo – is pacing frantically as a calm Englishwoman tells her she has a chance to start over. What is the "real" Echo's name before she becomes a doll? | "Dollhouse": "Ghost"
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Caroline. Caroline (Eliza Dushku) is clearly in a desperate situation; she insists that she was just trying to help people, and it’s clearly gone terribly wrong, although we get no sense of just who or what is after her. Adelle DeWitt (Olivia Williams) has clearly seen situations like this before. She’s trying to get Caroline to sign some sort of a contract, and tells her it’s her best chance: she can have a "clean slate."
Caroline is not impressed: "You ever try and clean an actual slate?" she argues. "You always see what was on it before." Of course, a slate can be wiped clean – but, as we’ll discover later, the same does not appear to be true of the human mind.
| Some unspecified amount of time later, the woman we know as Echo is riding a motorcycle at night. She falls off, foolishly removing her helmet to give TV viewers a good look at her face (kids: don’t try this at home!), and then races after her friends. Where are they going? | "Dollhouse": "Ghost"
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Into a restaurant where a birthday party is being held. The restaurant is lavishly decorated with East Asian art and a "Happy birthday" banner. Strangely, no one seems to react much when the motorcyclists come riding straight in – this dramatic entrance is apparently par for the course. Echo wastes no time getting into a rather provocative dress so that she can dance with Matt, the birthday boy. It quickly becomes clear that they’re in the early stages of a relationship, and she’s surprised and pleased when he gives her a little gold heart on a chain. So it’s all the more odd when, after he leaves for a drink, she gets up and walks away – out of the restaurant, down the street, and into a black van waiting at the curb.
| Excited and bubbly at having found "something real" in the man she spent the weekend with, Echo is looking forward to her "treatment." This seems to consist of lying down in a dentist-style chair and being zapped – we see Echo’s memories played back in reverse, all the way back to infancy. What does Echo say after the treatment? | "Dollhouse": "Ghost"
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"Did I fall asleep?". We see later that this is her response after every treatment – she’s been programmed to follow a script. Topher Brink (Fran Kranz), the scientist who developed the technology used by the Dollhouse to wipe the dolls’ personalities, does his work – cleaning her slate after every engagement – and, as the docile and incurious mind-wiped Echo comes back up, she asks, "Did I fall asleep?" Topher replies, "For a little while," and she leaves, satisfied.
Topher is clearly uninterested in Echo as a human being; she’s merely a convenient vessel for what he obviously thinks of as his genius. We see here, though, that her handler, Boyd Langton (Harry Lennix), is much more protective of her and concerned about how the Dollhouse is using her – too concerned, perhaps?
| We soon cut to the reason for Echo’s next assignment. A small girl, about ten years old, is kidnapped from her home as she’s on the phone negotiating TV privileges with her father. Soon, the father is in Adelle’s sunny office, asking for help in the form of an "Active." What role does he want the Active to fill? | "Dollhouse": "Ghost"
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Negotiator. Gabriel Cristejo (Kurt Caceres) is a desperate man. A Mexican businessman, he and his daughter Davina live in a well-patrolled U.S. mansion in part to avoid the risk of kidnapping – so this is a longtime nightmare come true. He’s willing to pay the money (five million dollars) that the kidnappers have asked for; he’s willing to obey their instructions not to go to the police; but, terrified of losing his daughter, he seeks a negotiator who will make things go "like clockwork." Adelle, while warning him of the risks, says that they can provide.
| Back at the Dollhouse, Echo has been primed with a new personality for her role. She believes her name is Eleanor Penn, and her look is now distinctly no-nonsense. Boyd is surprised that she has to wear glasses now. What other disadvantage has Topher given her? | "Dollhouse": "Ghost"
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Stress-induced asthma. Apparently, "Eleanor Penn’s" nearsightedness comes along with her new personality imprint, which changes the way her brain processes the information coming from her eyes. The stress-induced asthma works in a similar way. Each one is a souvenir from one of the many personalities that Topher wove together to create Eleanor, the perfect negotiator (despite Gabriel Cristejo’s initial doubts on seeing her). As we’ll see later in the episode, it might have been a good idea for Topher to do some more filtering.
| We’re back to Agent Ballard, who is at a nightclub with a Plan. He’s watching a glib young Russian man who he thinks has connections with the Borodin crime family, and follows him to the bathroom in order to have a private conversation – at gunpoint. What does Ballard demand that the young man do? | "Dollhouse": "Ghost"
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Find out where the Dollhouse is and inform Ballard. Coming up behind the young man – whose name is Anton Lubov, and who is played by Enver Gjokaj – when he’s in a vulnerable position, Agent Ballard holds a gun to the back of his neck and begins by insisting that he say the word "dollhouse." Unsurprisingly, Lubov cooperates: "Dollhouse! Dollhouse! It’s fun to say. Dollhouse!" Knowing that the Borodin family is involved with human trafficking and that Lubov is involved with the Borodins, Ballard believes that Lubov can get the information he needs and help him crack the case.
Ballard likes to call Lubov by his last name, which is more interesting than it might seem. It might be what Ballard does to everyone, or it might be a way to assert dominance – since Lubov is most commonly seen in Russia as a woman’s first name. Curious, that …
| Time passes, and arrangements for an exchange are made with the kidnappers. Echo and the girl’s father stand at a dock and hand over eight million dollars – and then Echo realizes that the handoff is going to go wrong. What tips her off? | "Dollhouse": "Ghost"
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She recognizes one of the kidnappers.. One of the personality profiles that went into creating Eleanor Penn was from a woman who was herself kidnapped as a girl, at the age of 9 – and she recognizes one of Davina’s kidnappers as the man who abused her terribly during that time. He’d killed his co-conspirators to take the girl for himself, hurt her for months, and left her for dead in a river. Seeing him again, Echo is sure that the self-styled "Ghost" intends the same thing for Davina.
Unfortunately, her stress-induced asthma kicks in as soon as she recognizes her abuser. She grabs for her inhaler, drops it, can’t function – but when Gabriel tries to help her, she manages to tell him not to let them back on the boat, because they aren’t going to return the girl. He tries to stop them, but is shot, as is the lead kidnapper; Boyd, whose primary mission is always to preserve the Dollhouse’s secrecy, swoops in to extract Echo.
| On the way back to the Dollhouse for her treatment – and what a time to have your mind wiped! – Echo pulls herself together and starts trying to figure out how they can find Davina. She realizes that the child must have known one of the kidnappers already. Who does this kidnapper turn out to be? | "Dollhouse": "Ghost"
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Davina’s science teacher. Earlier in the episode, Echo had managed a phone call with the kidnappers, and they put Davina on the line. The little girl had mentioned that one of the kidnappers wore a mask whenever he was with her – leading Echo to surmise that he must have been concealing his face out of concern that he would be recognized. One of the kidnappers had also mentioned a schoolteacher. When this insight is shared with the Dollhouse higher-ups, they put their considerable intelligence-gathering team into play and discover that Davina’s science teacher has not been to work in over two weeks. Interesting!
Boyd is deeply worried that "Eleanor Penn’s" personality will be erased before the child can be saved, and he makes an emotional appeal to Adelle to let Echo remain Eleanor for a little while – after all, he points out, she likes to say that the Dollhouse exists "to help people." When he arrives in Topher’s lab to find Echo just rising from the chair, he fears the worst – until, in a very nice touch, she reaches for her glasses. Perhaps she was wiped and re-imprinted (with a touch less asthma, maybe?); perhaps it was just a placebo treatment; we never find out.
| Once they’ve established the identity of one of the kidnappers, they realize where Davina has been taken – to a remote shack on property owned by his sister. A determined Echo bangs on the door and warns two of the criminals that their comrade plans to kill them. What does she do to persuade them that they should listen to her? | "Dollhouse": "Ghost"
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She tells them that they’ve put Davina in the refrigerator.. Apparently, the Ghost’s modus operandi is to get involved with the kidnapping of a young girl; wait until his companions are distracted, usually by counting the money; and then kill the fellow kidnappers and make off with the girl. But there was one, Echo explains, whom "he dumped in the river before he was sure she was dead" – and this girl, who eventually committed suicide, is the part of "Eleanor Penn" that remembers her abuse at the Ghost’s hands and provides the detail about keeping the child in the refrigerator.
The Ghost hits her, but she is unfazed: repeating the line he once taunted her with, she tells him, "You can’t fight a ghost." The other two kidnappers, persuaded by her tale, turn their guns on him, and Echo runs to the refrigerator to free Davina. They’re almost out the door when another Doll – Sierra, whom we saw receiving her initial personality wipe earlier in the episode – shows up with a full combat team and kills the other kidnappers.
Job well done, Echo and Sierra return to the Dollhouse for their "treatments," and we learn that Davina’s father looks likely to survive. And that’s a wrap! Thank you for joining me for Episode One of "Dollhouse"; I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride!
| "The Target" begins with a flashback to "three months" previously, at a Dollhouse full of panicked employees. Dolls are rushed into the safety of their beds early; security teams, led by chief Laurence Dominic, spread throughout the building; and Topher incoherently demands a gun. Why is there such a brouhaha? | "Dollhouse": "The Target"
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One of the Dolls has suddenly started killing people.. It seems that both the security sweep (led by a somewhat upset-looking Mr. Dominic, played by Reed Diamond) and Topher's demands for armaments are in response to a rampage. At first, given the size of the security team and the presence of a number of bodies, it might seem that there are several people rampaging through the Dollhouse -- but, as Adelle tells us, this is apparently the work of a single Doll named Alpha. He's had a "composite event" -- which seems to mean that he's become self-aware in his mind-wiped state, and that his memories of past imprints have given him the skills to kill.
The security team doesn't find Alpha in the Dollhouse, but they do find Echo, sitting in the shower, covered in the blood of the Dolls around her, anxious because "they won't wake up." We are left to wonder why she alone has been spared ...
| After the opening credits, we're back in the present, where Adelle is interviewing a client. Richard is looking to hire a Doll, whom Adelle tells him will be his "heart's desire made flesh" -- but there's a hitch. It seems that the computers have flagged this engagement as special, and there will be some additional cost. Why does Richard have to pay this extra fee? | "Dollhouse": "The Target"
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His engagement poses a moderate risk to the Doll.. Although the Dollhouse promises strict confidentiality, it does run engagements through some risk-judging software for more accurate pricing. Adelle describes this additional risk fee as small, which surprises Richard (Matt Keeslar) when he sees the sum; she dryly notes that it's "very" small to her employers.
Despite the size of this additional fee, Richard ends up signing the dotted line. He's looking, he says, for a woman who is what she says she is -- unlike the women he's been with before. Adelle assures him that the Doll will be exactly that, "completely and honestly," and he promises her that he'll make sure the engagement stays "low-key."
| Echo -- re-imprinted and reborn as Jenny, athletic and game for anything -- begins a wilderness weekend with Richard, whitewater rafting and climbing up a cliff face. Meanwhile, FBI agent Ballard manages to find a clue from the previous episode ("Ghost"). What is this object, linked to one of Echo's earlier imprints? | "Dollhouse": "The Target"
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The glasses she wore as hostage negotiator Eleanor Penn. The glasses and the necklace both come from Echo's assignments in "Ghost"; the other two assignments are from later episodes. What Ballard turns up, however, is the pair of glasses. He's in the cabin where Echo (as Eleanor Penn) confronted little Davina Cristejo's kidnappers and managed to rescue the child. It seems that the girl, talking to police, attributed her rescue to the "pretty lady," but the forensics team isn't taking it seriously; they believe that all that happened was the kidnappers shooting at each other, contrary to some ballistics evidence pointed out by Ballard. He's also the one who finds Echo's glasses (which she had lost when one of the kidnappers hit her in the face), and he suspects that they belong to a Doll.
Later in the episode, when he's disheartened over his failure to find harder evidence of the Dollhouse's existence, Ballard receives mail from an unknown person: an envelope with a photo of Echo, with her pre-Dollhouse name (Caroline) written on it, and with the exhortation to "keep looking." Don't worry -- he will!
| After a hunting lesson and a romantic interlude, Richard finally tells Echo/Jenny what he really wants from the weekend: to hunt her and kill her. Yikes! This was not in the contract. What does Richard offer Jenny to even the odds? | "Dollhouse": "The Target"
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A five-minute head start. Echo, as Jenny, is playfully romantic, enjoying her date; suddenly, Richard tells her that she needs to get going if she's to have any hope of reaching "the main road" before nightfall. She asks what he means and is told to begin running, since she only has five minutes' head start, "and then I'm coming after you." This last is said as he picks up the fancy modern bow that they'd recently used to kill an elk, and his meaning is thus unmistakable. Jenny runs, but Richard doesn't provide her with any tangible tools whatsoever. He's the one with the gear and the weapons; he's the one familiar with this part of the wilderness; and he's the one in charge of the game.
Interestingly, Richard's full name -- Richard Connell -- is shared with the author of a 1924 short story, "The Most Dangerous Game," which follows a similar plot. A big-game hunter, fallen overboard en route to South America to hunt jaguars, is washed ashore on an island run by another hunter, a General Zaroff, who has abandoned the hunting of animals in favor of the hunting of humans -- "the most dangerous game," as he calls them in the story. The hero of Connell's short story survives the hunt; how will Jenny fare?
| Boyd is stationed in a surveillance van at the end of an access road, complaining to the driver about how terrible satellite reception is on the edge of the wilderness. But before he has the chance to notice Echo/Jenny's radically altered vital signs, he's accosted by a man dressed as a park ranger, who tells him that the road is restricted. What does Boyd claim he's doing there? | "Dollhouse": "The Target"
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Shooting background footage for a local news program. Part of Boyd's job as Echo's handler is to keep an eye on the situation -- whether listening in, watching via video cameras or keeping an eye on the satellite feed of her vital signs (also monitored by Topher at the Dollhouse). At this point in the chase -- she's managed to climb down a cliff face barehanded, but Richard, still up high, has grazed her leg with an arrow -- her pulse and adrenaline levels should show that something's wrong, but as the ranger approaches, Topher is still adjusting the satellite feed to improve Boyd's signal.
Boyd has an excellent patter about just being a lost newscaster; he and the driver arrange to be consulting a map when the ranger gets out of his car, and Boyd has a station identification card to back up his story. Unluckily, the "ranger" is not there to protect and serve -- he's a hit man, and he kills the driver and captures Boyd at gunpoint. His aim is to prevent the Dollhouse from sending backup in to rescue Echo; he wants Boyd to tell them that everything's under control.
| Having (mostly) evaded Richard's first shots, Echo/Jenny heads for apparent safety at a forest ranger cabin. It soon becomes clear that there is no safety there; in fact, someone has left the body of the ranger in the closet. Jenny does find supplies, but it soon becomes clear that they've been tampered with. How does Jenny become drugged? | "Dollhouse": "The Target"
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From the ranger's water canteen. At this point in the episode, multiple threads are unraveling. Boyd is fighting a man with a gun at the van (and winning); at the Dollhouse, Mr. Dominic is suggesting to Adelle that Agent Ballard should be killed; in flashbacks from three months ago, Boyd is just beginning his job as Echo's handler. And just when it appears that Jenny has reached safety, it turns out to be just another trap.
Hoping to call for help, Jenny takes the dead ranger's walkie-talkie, but it's Richard who answers. He tells her that he's putting her through all this in order to discover whether she deserves to live. Rejecting the possible reply of "So who are you to play God?", Jenny opts for informing him that she's going to kill him. That's when the drug starts to kick in; that's when Richard gleefully cops to having poisoned her. As a viewer, I certainly have strong opinions about who doesn't deserve to live at this point, and it's not Jenny.
| In a flashback, Topher is laying the groundwork for Echo to trust her new handler, Boyd. Like many of his procedures, this one relies on a scripted call-and-response. In this flashback -- and in the present, when Boyd joins her in the woods -- Boyd tells her, "Everything is going to be all right." What does the Echo of three months ago say in response? | "Dollhouse": "The Target"
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"Now that you're here.". In the flashback, Topher refers to this script as "a neural lock and key," which will give Echo a visceral trust of Boyd no matter what personality (or lack thereof) she's currently living. Other scripts involve what Echo and Topher say after her personality has been wiped, as well as the conversation between Boyd and Echo at the end of an engagement (when Boyd asks if she's ready for her treatment).
The Boyd of three months ago regards Echo as "an empty hat" and is not impressed by the script, finding the lines extremely cheesy -- especially when he's holding her hand and looking into her eyes. The Boyd of the present has clearly grown to care for Echo, and thus he finds her in the forest, promises to get her out this nightmare scenario -- and finds himself shot in the side with an arrow. He tells her that everything will be all right, but she doesn't respond in the right way -- a clue that the drug is helping things go wrong in her neural wiring. Things get even more topsy-turvy when she takes his next line in the script, asking him, "Do you trust me?" He pauses, he thinks, and he adopts her line: "With my life."
| The episode is in its final minutes. Boyd is bleeding from an arrow wound to the side; Echo/Jenny is still suffering the effects of being drugged; and Richard is still on the loose. Clearly, he needs to be dealt with. Who kills Richard? | "Dollhouse": "The Target"
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Echo (as Jenny). After Boyd tells her that he trusts her, he gives her a gun (he has several!) and checks whether she can use it. She tells him, deadpan, "Four brothers. None of them Democrats." Looks like Jenny knows what she's doing around firearms. He waits, bleeding, under a tree; she sets off to find Richard. They end up wrestling, with Richard larger and stronger but wounded from Jenny's two shots; he's strangling her when one of Jenny's hallucinations, an Echo in her mind-wiped state, tells her, "I try to be my best." Jenny reaches for a spent arrow and stabs Richard in the neck. Among his last words are a rather mysterious comment: "He was right about you. You really are special!" Who do you think "he" was?
The Dollhouse does send in other Dolls to rescue Echo/Jenny and Boyd, but they arrive too late to encounter Richard. Some mysterious individual -- implied to be Alpha -- kills the hit man who had been disguised as a forest ranger; Boyd had left him incapacitated in the surveillance van. All is back to normal, except of course for Adelle's nerves: after all, "Richard Connell" was an entirely false identity cloaking a psychopath, and the Dollhouse's extensive background checks never revealed that crucial fact.
| Her ordeal over, Jenny's personality is wiped and she becomes Echo once more. Or does she? After a confrontation with the Dollhouse's security chief, the supposedly blank-slate Echo makes a gesture only Jenny -- thanks to Richard -- would know. What is the gesture? | "Dollhouse": "The Target"
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A fist to the shoulder: shoulder to the wheel.. Throughout their time in the wilderness, Richard used this gesture to symbolize hard work and dedication. He told Jenny that this work ethic, inherited from his father, means proving your fitness to survive. (Lest anyone be tempted to take this at face value, let it be remembered that while he was hunting Jenny, he made sure he had not only all the weapons and all the climbing gear, but also all the unpoisoned water!) Now, back in the Dollhouse, Mr. Dominic approaches a mind-wiped Echo to tell her that if he had his way, she'd be put "put in the attic -- or the ground." Does Echo's gesture -- which she should have no way of remembering -- mean that she anticipates a to-the-death contest with Mr. Dominic? Only time (and upcoming episodes) will tell ...
Thank you for joining me in watching "The Target." I hope you've enjoyed the show!
| "Stage Fright" opens with a young woman in a cage. The music swells, the cage opens, and she strides onstage. "You're a superstar / Driving in your car," she sings to an enthralled crowd -- and then it all goes horribly wrong. What happens? | "Dollhouse": "Stage Fright"
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The stage pyrotechnics set a backup singer on fire.. As part of the number's complex staging, flash bombs are going off as the backup singers and dancers pass between them. On one of them, however, the timing is off and the explosive charge is double what it should be -- and one of the backup singers is caught in the flames. The fire is put out quickly, but it's something of a showstopper.
| In Adelle's office, we learn that Rayna (the singer) is not concerned about the threats to her life -- but her chief of security is. He wants to hire a Doll to protect her, without Rayna realizing it. What role does Echo therefore adopt? | "Dollhouse": "Stage Fright"
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Backup singer. It seems that the pyrotechnics incident that left a job opening for Echo (as the security chief Biz, played by Jim Piddock, rather callously describes it) has not been Rayna's only near-death experience. The musical superstar, portrayed by singer Jaime Lee Kirchner, has received threatening letters from someone styling himself her "number-one fan" -- and then there is the matter of the mysterious dropping sandbag at a previous performance. It isn't just random mayhem, either; the malfunctioning pyrotechnic would have caught Rayna instead of her backup singer, if it hadn't been for a last-minute choreography change just before the show.
To protect Rayna, Echo becomes Jordan, an aspiring singer and dancer with hidden martial arts and tactical skills. The goal is for her to be a deep-undercover bodyguard, protecting Rayna with her life -- without really realizing that she's doing it.
| After Echo (now known as Jordan) is hired, she is quickly immersed in the stress and chaos of Rayna's backstage world. In the middle of a dance practice, the music star reveals herself as an extreme diva. What does she complain about? | "Dollhouse": "Stage Fright"
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Someone has eaten a mint.. When a pop star like Rayna turns up in a show like this, you have to expect some caricature. Rayna is a professional, running her own dance rehearsals; a perfectionist, insisting on the purity of her artistic vision; and a micro-manager, controlling her staff down to the last breath mint. Jordan/Echo is breathlessly excited to be here (and to be Rayna's new favorite), but even she is a little taken aback by Rayna's behavior -- and by the minute size of the costume she's expected to wear.
| FBI agent Paul Ballard is still investigating the Dollhouse, and he's still counting on his informant Lubov to feed him clues. He may be trusting Lubov too much, though. What do viewers learn about Lubov in "Stage Fright"? | "Dollhouse": "Stage Fright"
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Lubov is a Doll.. Lubov has been spending the early part of the episode chasing after Ballard, trying to set up a rendezvous. (He tells a neighbor of Ballard's that he knew him in the Navy, and -- at her blank stare -- hastily amends it to, "Old Navy. I did retail, before. He would, um, buy slacks.") After he dangles a little bait for our favorite FBI fisherman, we learn that Lubov himself is not what he seems, in a quick cut to the actor in the Dollhouse's fancy chair just after a personality wipe.
When he turns up a scene or two later to phone in a tip to the basement of an abandoned hotel, it's very like the anticipation in a horror movie. No, Ballard! Don't go in there!
| Rayna is a superstar, and no one wants to lose her. In light of the high stakes of Echo/Jordan's mission, the Dollhouse sends back-up in the form of Sierra, programmed with the personality of an Australian woman named Audra. What is Sierra/Audra's reason for staying near Rayna? | "Dollhouse": "Stage Fright"
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She is the winner of a fan contest.. Sierra/Audra is introduced to Rayna as her "number-one fan," winner of an enviable package that includes both plane tickets from Sydney to the U.S. and nearly unlimited backstage access. Audra is both nervous and thrilled beyond belief to meet her idol; Rayna, deeply unimpressed, has to be reminded to be polite to her. Jordan, however, seems to form an instant connection with Audra; could this reflect the gentle, shallow friendship shared by Echo and Sierra in their mind-wiped time at the Dollhouse?
| Acting on a tip from the mysterious Lubov, Ballard goes alone to the basement of an abandoned hotel in search of clues to the Dollhouse. What happens there? | "Dollhouse": "Stage Fright"
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He is ambushed by Russian mobsters, and is seriously wounded fighting them off.. It's an odd choice for Ballard to go to the Devonshire Hotel, alone, without back-up, and without anyone at the FBI knowing his plans. Hasn't he ever seen any television? But he does waltz in solo, and he's surprised by a group of three goons from the Russian crime family he's been investigating. They are not looking for friendship.
Despite his ill-conceived entrance (even one of the goons mocks him for not having back-up!), Ballard does have the scriptwriters on his side, which is why he's able to kill or subdue all three of his opponents despite being shot in the gut fairly early in the fight. By the time he manages to call 911, however, he's nearly passed out, and we get some suspense as the camerawork and music imply he might not make it. (He does.)
| Meanwhile, backstage with Rayna, Echo/Jordan makes a shocking discovery: the superstar is in league with the deranged fan who's trying to kill her. How does she find out that Rayna is a co-conspirator in her own murder? | "Dollhouse": "Stage Fright"
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Rayna's dressing room is filled with flowers and notes from her would-be killer.. Rayna's dressing room is filled with orchids, all sent by her would-be killer, and they're accompanied by creepily written notes on red construction paper. Echo/Jordan realizes first that all of Rayna's fan mail is supposed to be going directly to the police -- and then she picks one up and realizes what they say. Rayna pouts, telling Jordan that she feels imprisoned by her life -- just another factory-made pop star, right down to her start in Disney's Mickey Mouse Club. The killer, Rayna says, is her "number-one fan," and she just wants to give the audience a performance they'll never forget. "I'm not crazy," Rayna argues, despite all evidence to the contrary. "I just want to be free."
| At Rayna's show that night, her stalker -- now known to us as a skinny young man with strawberry hair -- takes some shots at the stage, but no one is hurt. The frustrated gunman, however, is furious with Rayna over something she said onstage, and in the chaotic aftermath, he kidnaps someone to teach the singer a lesson. Whom does he kidnap, and why? | "Dollhouse": "Stage Fright"
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Sierra/Audra, because she's Rayna's "number-one fan". We've seen in the dressing room that the stalker (played by Graham Norris) believes himself to be Rayna's number-one fan, and takes inordinate pride in being the one chosen to take her to the next level of stardom. (Yes, their plans are that twisted.) So it's not surprising that he's hurt and offended when Rayna introduces Audra on stage, in front of everyone, as her real "number-one fan," in order to cover for Echo/Jordan's disruption of the show. He snatches Audra off the street as everyone is distracted by the aftermath of the shooting, and sends a threatening video to Rayna. "You gave her what was mine," the stalker accuses, and tells Rayna that she knows how to reach him in order to save her fan's life.
| The time has come for the final showdown, which (naturally) takes place on a catwalk. The two sides appear to be at an impasse, until Echo/Jordan takes control of the situation. How does she persuade Rayna of the value of life? | "Dollhouse": "Stage Fright"
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She throws Rayna off the catwalk.. Echo/Jordan, fired by the music star she's programmed to protect, goes off-mission as soon as she sees that Sierra/Audra is in danger. When Rayna isn't fast enough to take action, Jordan hits her over the head with a chair and drags her to the rendezvous with Audra and her kidnapper. There, Jordan summarizes the situation neatly: Rayna, in love with a romantic ideal of death at the top of one's art, wants to die. The stalker wants to kill her. And Jordan doesn't much care one way or another. So she simplifies things by throwing Rayna off the catwalk -- which is when we, and Rayna, learn that she has a rope harness, so that she dangles harmlessly below Jordan's feet.
In her brief plunge, Rayna -- facing mortality -- discovers that the real and immediate possibility of death is far less romantic than the idealized version she's been pursuing. She wants to live! And, in the ensuing uproar, the stalker is arrested, everyone is saved, and the Dollhouse breathes a sigh of relief that Jordan wasn't off-mission after all; she was just stopping the person who truly wanted Rayna dead, namely Rayna. It may not have been the best way of doing so, but this justification allows the Dollhouse brass to avoid asking themselves hard questions.
| Back at the Dollhouse, Audra's and Jordan's personalities have been wiped, and Sierra and Echo wander about, blissfully blank-slate. Or are they? After Sierra approaches Echo in bright-eyed friendship, the two of them share a moment which may mean they know more than they let on. What happens? | "Dollhouse": "Stage Fright"
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Echo warns Sierra off with a subtle head shake, and Sierra walks away.. Echo knows that the two of them are being watched (at the very least by their handlers, Boyd and Hearn), and seems not to want to let it show that they have a deeper friendship than the Dollhouse expects. (After all, it's been telegraphed that -- as Jordan -- Echo abandoned her Dollhouse mission in order to save Sierra, as Audra.) Sierra appears to understand, and moves away without making a scene.
This may not seem like much, but it's a much, much deeper interaction than we've ever seen between two mind-wiped Dolls. In the Dollhouse, they're limited to shallow, scripted exchanges about being their best and about friends helping each other. Any interaction with layers of meaning bodes well for a deepening mystery in the next episodes!
The NATO phonetic alphabet. Originating in military use, the phonetic alphabet assigns words to letters so that critical messages can be pronounced and understood by those who transmit and receive voice messages by radio or telephone regardless of their native language, especially when the safety of navigation or persons is essential.
Interestingly, when Alpha tries to create his own version of Echo, he names her "Omega," which is NOT in the phonetic alphabet. What a renegade.
| The Active known as Alpha suffered a "composite event" where he was accidentally imprinted with every past imprint at once. Which of his simultaneous personalities is the original person who became Alpha? | "Dollhouse" Season 1: The Dolls
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The serial killer. It is revealed in the episode "Omega" that the Dollhouse first created Dolls out of criminals in prison, including the serial killer with a cutting fetish who became Alpha.
The schizophrenic is one of Alpha's imprinted personalities, further entrapping his psyche in the maze in his head.
Stephen Kepler, the architect, is not actually imprinted on Alpha, but is rather one of Alpha's victims. Alpha pretends to be Kepler in order to gain Agent Ballard's trusts and co-operation in accessing the Dollhouse.
Let's just hope that Alpha was never assigned to be a kindergarten teacher!
They take acting classes to prepare for their missions.. While Dolls do take classes (in, for example, yoga and bonsai), they don't need to learn to act since their new personalities are imprinted on them by Topher's process.
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