"Dollhouse": "The Target" Trivia Quiz

Answer: 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 ...

Answer: 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."

Answer: 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!

Answer: 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?

Answer: 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.

Answer: 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.

Answer: Jenny has hallucinations of her past personalities.

Jenny is Echo's latest personality; her old memories and personalities have been erased by Topher before her re-imprinting as Jenny. So she shouldn't remember her past personalities at all -- yet here they are, walking through the wilderness with her.

There's Caroline, the original personality, the one who signed a contract with the Dollhouse in the first episode. There's poor mind-wiped Echo, just turning to see Alpha after his "composite event" and subsequent rampage. There are others, too, not as easy to recognize, saying lines that they've said before. Jenny reels.

Answer: "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."

Answer: 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.

Answer: 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 non-poisoned 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 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!