Plot

A wealthy backer asks the Dollhouse for help when his daughter is kidnapped. They send Echo to negotiate the release. One of the memory imprints used to prepare Echo for the mission causes some complications.

Echo is one of several volunteer "Actives" working for a secretive, morally ambiguous organization known in urban legend as the Dollhouse. Cunning and enigmatic entrepreneur Adelle DeWitt, whose motives are far from transparent, heads the Los Angeles-based outfit. She enjoys the luxury of a seemingly endless budget and employs the best and the brightest in the fieds of tech and neurobiology. Programmed with a new personality for each assignment, Echo carries out various tasks according to the wishes of the Dollhouse's wealthy and enigmatic clientele. In her latest role, Echo is tasked with rescuing a client's kidnapped daughter. Aided by her handler, Boyd Langdon, and programmed by prodigious techy Topher Brink, Echo embarks upon the rescue mission. Along the way, glitches in her memory imprints cause some complications. Meanwhile, FBI Agent Paul Ballard struggles to uncover information on the Dollhouse. His growing obsession with the case has destroyed his marriage and threatens to do the same to his career. Many of Ballard's superiors and colleagues refuse to believe the Dollhouse actually exists. However, Ballard refuses to give up before he uncovers truth.—matt-282

Welcome to the Dollhouse! This show is like a cross between La Femme Nikita, Alias, and Vampires, only without the vampires...

We start in interview room viewed through a bad CCTV. It's kinda like how Blade Runner starts, except without the dark mood lighting and with two hot chicks instead of one replicant and one about-to-be-very-dead guy... Or maybe like the part in La Femme Nikita where Nikita learns she can be dead or a super-agent. Lots of LFN parallels.

Caroline (Eliza Dushku, looking frazzled, beleaguered and American) has done something Very Bad, although she claims she was "just trying to make a difference... trying to take my place in the world, like she always said..." (Who said???????, you ask? Hell if I know. We don't find out in this ep.) In exchange for a clean slate, wiping her Badness away, Adelle DeWhitt (Olivia Williams, looking sexy, cold and British, only with cute smile wrinkles) tells Caroline she must sign up for 5 years of something. WHAT????? You ask? wait. Sheesh. You are so impatient.

Cut to two motorcycles racing on city streets at night. One of the bikers is, surprise! Caroline. She takes a back-alley short-cut and low-side crashes her bike ((IMPORTANT PLOT DEVICE!), but she's a trooper so she gets back up, takes off her helmet so we can see that It's Really Eliza Dushku and Not A Stunt Person, throws away her helmet to toss us her mane of luxurious hair, and then she takes off again.

She loses by inches as they both race into a Chinese night club, where Caroline hops off the bike and accuses Matt (Brett Claywell) of cheating. He's all "no I wasn't" and Caroline is all up in his face, but they clearly have good feelings for eachother. Eliza is acting like Faith (from Buffy) now, and you can hear her (real) Boston accent.

She says "that was a wicked pissa!". Okay, she doesn't ACTUALLY say that, but she's from Boston, so she's saying it *on the inside*.

This is Matt's birthday party. Matt seems popular. Now it's time to dance. Caroline, wearing a tiny white metallic dress, blessed be and most attractive, can't dance very well. Or perhaps that's the character - anyway Joss uses lots of camera tricks to make it look like she can dance, but I don't think she can.

Matt and Caroline flirt and talk about there being no strings in their relationship, and Caroline refers to ropes, a clear reference to bondage, which makes them both smirk. Tee hee hee, we are into bondage. (Hooray for Joss!) Matt is all "I remember it all" and he looks kinda sad about it, and Caroline is all "you think this is a normal weekend for me?". Matt gives Caroline a heart necklace (awwwwwww!) and then says "its getting late". Caroline wants another dance, and Matt heads off for another drink.

Caroline is all happy and pretty and girlish and then walks out into the street and hops into a glossy black panel van. Boyd Langdon (Harry Lennix) says "are you ready for your treatment?" and Caroline says "I think it's time." Boyd asks "Didja have a nice time?" Caroline says "I met a guy", all coy and cute.

Matt is standing in the exit of the club. Some dude in a velvet jacket walks up. "Dude, where's your friend?". Matt says "It's time for her to go. Had to get into her carriage before it turns into a pumpkin... Stroke of midnight, end of the ball." He taps beer bottles and walks off. "Dude, its like 5!" says velvet-jacket-guy.

Cut to parking garage. A geisha gets into a different panel van. There are black panel vans EVERYWHERE, it's like a hot chick loading dock, only without too many hot chicks. Caroline says "hey, do you think you can take me back to the party after my treatment?" and Boyd says "I'll wait right here.". Yeah, right you will. LIAR! LIAR! LIAR!

Cue to shots of Caroline talking about the party and Matt, she's clearly besotted with him. She's basically all ready to get pregnant and start a family. Then she gets into this super futuristic dentist chair, and KERZAP! We see memories in flashbacks, including Caroline and Matt in bed with some rope (again with the rope!), we see them meet ("how much fun can we have in 3 days!", we see Caroline as a young girl, then see her mother bending over her in a crib... and then we see the heart necklace fall to the ground.

Caroline is now all blank faced. Geek-boy says "hello Echo, how are you feeling?". So she's now Echo, and she's all "did I fall asleep?". She's acting like she's on some very serious meds. Geek boy pulls a (literally) hot hard drive out of the chair, puts it into another computer, and Boyd is there, he says "did everything go all right with the wipe?" and geek-boy says yes. Some conflict dialog, ending with "spend our lives in jail if anyone ever found this place". This place is one of those gorgeous places like CSU (24) that only exist in TV shows. (Most of the real places these places are based on have cubes and fluorescent lighting. I know, I've been to some of them.)

More conflicted yacking. Geek-boy has no conscience. Echo, in a red tank-top now, is a) too skinny, and b) looks better a few years older than her buffy years.

Cut to a cute scene with a rich guy dad and his young daughter talking on the phone about a reality TV show she wants to watch and her won't let her. It's very sweet and smart and cute and funny. This is one of those things that Joss is very very good at. Somehow Joss really really gets girls/young women/women. I hope he has some daughters, they should do very well by him.

The daughter is kidnapped off her bed (!) even though there was a security guy up on the deck of the house. She is stuffed into a duffel bag. Uh oh. That's rarely good.

Cute to Dad. He's talking to Adelle (ok, who the hell makes up these names? please! I have never personally met a Boyd, nor an Adelle. Really!). The Bad Guys (BGs) want $5M. Dad is Mexican, he's up here to get away from all this crap. Bummer. Should have moved to Iceland, or New Zealand. Dad is a "valued client" of whatever-this-place is, He wants a negotiator, not "a rambo". Adelle refers to "actives" and says she can help. She stresses how important that it is that the active not know she's an active. Mexican Dad agrees, ok, whatever, he doesn't care he just wants Mexican daughter back.

Cut to Echo, in a room with a doctor named Claire Saunders (Amy Acker). She has knife scars on her face. She says Echo hurt her knee somehow (der, a motorcycle fell on it!). Echo doesn't remember that and seems upset that she doesn't, but she also still seems stoned. Eliza Dushku clearly does Pilates, her stomach is a washboard.

Echo wanders up to the Bad Place where they have a new chick strapped in and she's wimpering and getting zapped with acupuncture needles attached to wires. Echo sees this and says "but she's not asleep!".Geek Boy says "just keep mapping the tissue!" to the other people and shoos Echo out of the room. He talks to Echo like she's a child. Geekboy has no conscience. This new friend they are making is named "Sierra". Doctor Saunders (scarface) comes and gets her. Away they go.

Cut to another interview room. Three FBI agents. One, Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett) is getting his balls cut off (figuratively) for being naughty. Oh, and he's divorced. That damn job! Someone higher than the ball-cutter-offers want him investigating the Dollhouse, which he believes exists even if the other two suits don't.

Interspersed with this is Paul getting the crap beaten out of him in kickboxing in a ring by giant tatooed guy. Paul goes down on the mat (oooh, get your mind out of the gutter you pervert! that's mat with a little m), but then he leaps back up and does a flying knee to tattoo guys face, tattoo guy goes down. Hah! It's a metaphor, see? Paul is a FIGHTER, and he's also freakin' crazy. He talks like a crazy guy and does this funny stuff with his face.

"Are you able to back off (the something case, having to do with the Russian mafia)?" Paul says that won't be a problem, but it's clearly a lie. He's also a LIAR LIAR LIAR. The good guys in this show lie and feel conflicted about it, the bad guys either lie and don't think twice, or they just don't bother lying.

More with Adelle and her lackey, they are dressing down Boyd. He's an ex-cop, prone to feelings of Truth, Justice, and the American Way, and they don't like that. Okay, whatever, he says. LIAR LIAR LIAR, he is so into the American Way.

Echo has a new personality. She goes to The Mexican Dads house. She's wearing a very smart suit and glasses. Her hair is up, and whomever did her make up did her lips weird, like she was making out with someone right before she came in the door. Maybe that is part of her new personality, she doesn't do her own make up well?

She does speak Spanish, so HA! to you, PSD-boy (Personal Security Detail, I get the sense that PSDs will be the Red Shirts of this show), she knows what you are saying!

Mexican Dad doesn't think she can cut it, but she's all super competent acting. Short convo between geekguy and Boyd about why Echo has glasses on, it's because the personality she's been implanted with needs them. Der. Geekboy is all about how they create real personalities, and those personalities are going to be messed up in some ways. Geekboy and scarface do some eye locking.

The kidnapper calls, and Echo bullies him. Ha! She's tough, she's going to get this thing done. She offers them MORE money to get them motivated. PSD guy is all "she sucks!" and she's all "dude, you let them INTO THE HOUSE so STFU".

When they call back, the kidnapper tries to shake Echo down for even more money. She hangs up on him. Ha! When the daughter comes on, she's trying to give him coded messages (good for her, plucky little girl!) she's telling him lots of interesting details, but Echo cuts her off. If she tells Mexican Dad too much, then the kidnappers might figure it out and chop up the daughter. That would be bad.

Mexican Dad is freaking out on his house deck, drinking. In freaking out he is talking obliquely about the fact that he knows Echo is an active. She, of course, is clueless. In digging, it turns out that, oh crap, Echos current personality was kidnapped when she was 9, and she was sexually abused for 3 months. And Mexican dad is prying, not really understanding that this is totally real for her, even if he knows its fake. He keeps pushing, and then Echo sort of freaks out a little bit, she suddenly remembers seeing Sierra in the machine getting zapped. Uh oh! Mexican dad is all, oops. Sorry. My bad.

Cut to night-club scene with Russian mafioso. He's taking a pee. Uh oh, Paul is there behind him and he stuffs a Sig Sauer into the back of his head (props to the props guy, FBI carry Sigs.. however I don't think they carry in horizontal shoulder rigs, usually they carry strong-side OWB in the FBI cant). Paul asks him about Dollhouse, references the Boradines (clearly Very Bad Russians)... he's trying to track down the Dollhouse. Threatens, he leaves.

Cut to Mexican Dad and Echo, they are doing the trade. Boyd is there with a sniper rifle, what looks to be Remington R700 with a way-too-small suppressor on it, even if he's shooting 5.56. And his shooting position is TERRIBLE. This guy is no sniper, he's balanced on one elbow and a metal railing... he does have the sling wrapped around his arm though, that's old school. Maybe he used to be a Marine?

Kidnappers show up, Echo is now totally FREAKING OUT. She sees one of the kidnappers and she falls to the ground having an asthma attack. She says "he's not going to give her back". The scary nasty kidnapper dude was the one who kidnapped and sexually abused her when she was 9. Or, her personality that is, but either way it's a big Uh Oh. She knows he's going to slot the BGs later and then do the same thing to Mexican Dads daughter as he did to her when she was little.

Mexican Dad jumps up, goes after the head kidnapper, demanding his daughter. Head kidnapper panics and shoots Mexican dad, Boyd slots the head kidnapper as he goes over to pop Echo, and the kidnappers leave with Mexican Daughter and the moolah and the evil gross child molester on a boat. Echo is all "you can't fight a ghost! you can't fight a ghost!" Boyd tries to de-brief Echo, and she's kind of in a trance, she's sucking on her ashtma meds (remember, it's the implanted personality who has asthma, not the real Echo). It's all pretty much a clusterfuck.

Boyd figures it out. Oh. Echo is still freaking out, reliving the abuse now, saying that no one believed her when she told them about him. She says that Mexican Daughter is "proportionally similar to a girl", meaning it seems that while she is chronologically too old for the Really Bad BG (RBBG), she'll do in a pinch. RBBG is going to ace the other bad guys, and then talk the money and Mexican Daughter. Boyd and Echo figure out that they have some leads, and then Echo heads off for her treatment, not realizing that if she's treated, Mexican Daughter is a goner. Echo is now excited, she's going to get RBBG! Boyd gets yelled at, has to hand over his sidearm (not sure if this is SOP or if it's becuase of the shooting, but he used the rifle so why take the pistol?). Now lots of conflicted dialog, Echo gets into the chair, Boyd confronts Adelle (again with the names!). Adelle is now wearing lip gloss, puh-leez. You could catch small animals in that suff. Enough with the lip gloss! Boyd wants Echo un-wiped, Adelle is all cold and STFU. Boyd presses, seems to catch Adelles soft spot, she lets him go get Echo, who hasn't been treated after all, she thinks she has but she hasn't been.

Boyd is made to stay back at the ranch, left on The Loading Dock of Hot Brainwashed Chicks to ruminate on his, what? Not sure, where did he actually screw up? He slotted the kidnapper, if he hadn't it would be an even worse mess as the kidnapper would have slotted Echo... maybe they'd prefer she just die?

Cut to a helicopter. Adelles lack is with Echo, as is sometone with an M4, which that someone cocks. Unfortunately (due to the beauty of HD!) you can see that not only is the safety off, it's on full auto. Oops. No operative would have their M4 hot in a helicopter, on a landing pad taking off. That's just stupid. Also it's a carrier-handle M4 with no optics, also very unlikely for this kind of operation. Would probably want a flat-top with a low-power optic like a CQB or a Trijicon. Anyway.

One of the kidnappers is Mexican Daughters teacher, he has a sister with a remote house. Echo convinces them to let her go to it (still in her smart suit) for 10 minutes to talk the kidnappers to death. She's terrified according to Geekboy's brain scanner thing. Uh oh. It turns out that the woman whose personality is in Echo who was abused killed herself a year ago. "She never got away from him." Now we have hope that she will. Erm, that the personality that is in Echo that is, in part, based on the personality of a woman who killed herself because she couldn't get over the trauma of being kidnapped and raped over and over again will get closure somehow... it's kinda confusing, really. But if the RBBG gets slotted, it will be justice, we know that.

Echo gets into the house, there's the two remaining "normal" kidnappers (including Mr. Shepard, the masked school teacher) and the RBBG. She tells them that the RBBG is going to whack them as soon as the money is counted. The RBBG is nasty and says "you talk or I find something to stuff that mouth up". Echo says "I think I'm a little old for you!" and breaks away.

One of the bad guys has a full-sized desert eagle. He's indexing his finger, which means he's been to shooter school. That's nice, especially for the people who are around him and don't want to eat a 44 mag round from an ND. Echo IS talking them to death, because now they are pointing their guns at eachother while she keeps talking. She talks about "all the girls he kept... until he got bored. I even know about the one he dumped in the river, before he was sure she was dead.".

Now school teacher has shifted HIS gun to the RBBG too. He has his finger indexed but it's curved around the trigger guard. This is a bad habit, kids. Indexing should be straight and ABOVE the trigger guard, not against the trigger guard. Also seems more unlikely that the no-longer-masked schoolteacher would index, but who knows, maybe he's a gun nut.

RBBG punches Echo. She's talking too much. She doesn't flinch much, she just says "you can't fight a ghost".

Interesting, isn't it? Maybe Echo is starting to figure out that she's an active? That she is really a ghost? RBBG cocks his gun too shoot Echo (why people do this I don't know... you can just shoot her, after all). Desert Eagle dude pops a round into RBBG. He's either saving Echo and Mexican daughter from the RBBG, or he knows he's next? Or maybe both. He only wings the RBBG (with a .44 mag, that would still be unpleasant). Everyone is shooting now, there are like a half dozen shots as Echo runs into the kitchen to pull Mexican Daughter out of the fridge she's locked in. Hopefully they drilled airholes, otherwise this won't end nicely...

Phew! Mexican Daughter is alive and un-abused. Yay! Echo picks her up. Desert Eagle guy comes in, he's been shot but just in the arm. He says "go now". He seems to have gone to the light side, seeing as he must know that the cavalry are outside about to break in (Echo would hardly have hiked across the desert by herself to confront them!) and they are his only bargaining chip.

RBBG is dead in the living room. The door bursts open and in comes another Active. She pops the school teacher once square in the heart, and then she shoots the kinda nice kidnapper who just let Echo and Mexican daughter go. She shoots him through the wall 3 times with a 12 ga semi-auto shotgun, which (of course) she shoots one handed and lefty. She's clearly got the "bad ass mofo" personality implant.

Cut from Echo leaving the house, beat up but holding Mexican Daughter, to her walking away from the Dentist Chair, with that just-got-brainwashed look on her face. Cue to coed group showers (yay! group showers!). Bad-assed mofo active is taking a shower, she and Echo smile at eachother. They have no clue now what just happened.

Adelle and her lacky are happy. It almost went really bad, but instead it went really good. They are keeping Mexican Dad's money, which seems a little dishonest, but who in the Dollhouse isn't?

Adelle says they have something bad to clean up, the actives go to sleep in weird glass coffin beds while some dude with hairy legs writes on a picture of Echo with a Sharpie and watchies a home movie she's in. He is going to send the picture of Echo to Paul "Stop peeing and talk to my gun" Ballard. There are two dead people in the room with hairy-leg guy. Echo talks in the video about her dreams to travel the world. The end!