Episode 2 - Instinct
28 March 2012
Synopsis: Echo is programmed to be the mother to the child of a man called Nate Jordan. Topher actually triggers lactation and a strong mothering instinct in her. She becomes suspicious of Nate’s behaviour and the strange men in the van outside. She ends up in a police station reporting Nate for trying to kill her. Ballard comes to take her back to the Dollhouse and Topher wipes her. But although the memories are gone, the instinct remains and Echo returns to protect her baby. Meanwhile Adelle calls on Madeline (November) for a diagnostic and Senator Perrin finds more information on Rossum.
The Good: The Echo storyline has a lot more depth and emotion in it than some of her season one escapades. Nate plays his role well, distant and secretive but not unkind or unreasonable. The intriguing part of her story is the logical part. She has been programmed to be an actual wife and mother. So when her husband locks her out of his room and never comes home she assumes he is up to no good. When things become even more serious she goes to the police.
It’s good logical storytelling and explored how an active would behave when faced with such strange behaviour. Her interaction with the female police officer was particularly good. The officer was kind, supportive and firm, seeing the situation for the marital abuse that she must encounter daily. Meanwhile Echo, the stranger who has been parachuted into this grieving family describes Nate as having been “replaced by a stranger” because of the way he is treating her. It’s a rich and well written irony. Echo’s conveys her heart felt distress at losing her baby really well as she is dragged back to the Dollhouse.
Once there we see the important story arc being played out. Topher is excited to have programmed Echo’s body to believe it was a mother, pointing out that he could one day fight cancer with his genius. But the imprint on her body is too strong for his standard wipe and Echo wakes up, devoid of memory but with her instinct intact. It’s the type of science which we know will one day come back to haunt Topher (113) and his indifference to it is pretty chilling. Ballard points out that his thoughtlessness has caused very real pain for Echo to which Topher shrugs and says “live and learn.”
In the end Echo accepts that the feelings aren’t real and agrees to continue in her partnership with Ballard because feeling something is better than being asleep. In terms of moving the overall plot toward the world we glimpsed in Epitaph One (113) this was solid stuff. We can see the motivations of Echo, Ballard and Topher and where that might lead them.
Meanwhile we get to know Senator Perrin a little more. It would seem he was the one in contact with Laurence Dominic and now has a new informant on what Rossum is up to (see The Unknown). Madeline (November) returns for a diagnostic and essentially puts forward the other side of the Dollhouse argument to Ballard. She claims she is happy now, that she traded in her life to get through her grief and now she isn’t sad anymore. It adds to the balance of arguments in favour of what the actives are up to. Along with the help which Echo provided Nate and Topher’s cancer idea, it’s easy to see the seduction which the Dollhouse’s technology offers.
The Bad: Unfortunately the bulk of the episode is spent on Echo and the “client of the week” story which by now most viewers have realised aren’t anything special. This is because we know that Nate and his baby won’t be around next week and so it is difficult to care too much about his story.
It doesn’t help when details become a little hard to believe in. Echo has presumably been given most of Nate’s ex-wife’s memories to make their relationship seem real to her. She even remembers their honeymoon and so when she finds pictures of him with another woman it ought to have destroyed her sense of trust in him completely. How could his explanation make any sense? He claimed that those pictures were from a previous relationship but even glancing at his likely age in them would have made her believe he had been living a double life for years.
It was a nice touch to have Sierra play a friend who would believe she was real. But that does open the can of worms about why she only had one friend, whether she had to use credit cards and whose name they would be in and indeed how long exactly this engagement was going to last. It’s not clear at all how Echo, once wiped, had any memory of where to go to find “her” son. She seemed clueless about how to drive a car, yet was able to cut the power to Nate’s house upon arrival. That scene was absolutely cliché ridden as lightning flashed outside in true cheap horror movie style.
Should Topher really be allowed to offer “upgrades” to normal people? It seems like a ridiculous break from protocol which could get him and the Dollhouse into trouble. A case of comic relief encroaching on logic.
The Unknown: Who is passing files to Senator Perrin. It could be Paul Ballard but he seemed pretty busy here. Could it be the same person who reprogrammed Echo to have a conversation with Ballard (106) last season?
Best Moment: The scene between Echo and the female police officer.
Epilogue: This episode actually does a pretty decent job of developing themes which will take us from the world we know now toward a more dangerous future. But for those who have seen Epitaph One, I suspect this will irritate more than it enlightens. Echo’s one-off stories just don’t have the significance to be truly interesting at the moment.
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