Episode 12 - The Hollow Man
28 March 2012
Synopsis: Boyd drugs Caroline so she won’t reveal his identity and he insists they all head to Tucson. They walk in the front door and are locked up by Saunders whose body is now inhabited by Clyde Randplph. Boyd breaks them out of their cell and leads Topher to a room where they are weaponising his tech. Topher helps finish the weapon and then the truth about Boyd is revealed by Caroline. Mellie and Paul are about to damage the mainframe when Boyd activates her sleeper protocol and she kills herself to save Paul. Eventually Victor and Sierra arrive to save the day and Topher wipes Boyd. Caroline leaves him to blow himself and Rossum’s lab to pieces. But ten years later the apocalypse has still come.
The Good: Credit to the writing, Caroline’s storyline is finally clear after this episode. It was a little unclear after season one how she had been captured by Rossum and what Adelle’s involvement in that was and indeed why they didn’t just kill this irritant. Now we know that Boyd’s special interest in her came because by fighting off imprints her DNA showed the way for humanity to survive the imprinting process and avoid complete destruction.
Boyd certainly appeared as much more than the typical clichéd bad guy. He seemed like the ultimate pragmatist when he calmly explained that the technology to wipe people now existed and therefore it was better to roll with it than to try and roll it back. It’s not a sentiment that different from those who argue similar things about global warming. He wasn’t cackling hysterically about world domination, he was talking about survival. His affection for his “friends” was also an interesting twist. Rather than claim he faked his friendships with Echo, Topher and Adelle, instead he embraced them. He had genuine warm feelings about them despite manipulating them and lying to them. When he thanked Topher for confiding in him, it was easy to believe that he meant it.
Topher’s explanation of how the new wiping tech worked fitted exactly with what he babbled in the scene in Epitaph One where Adelle comforted him as the guilt had driven him into a kind of psychosis. I also liked Topher’s surprise at Boyd being able to unlock doors. That is one of those little touches which can add a lot of realism to the kind of scenes we have all seen a hundred times now.
The Bad: But overall this episode was a letdown. Once more it all felt rushed and far too easy. Inevitable issues, perhaps, with the imminent cancellation of the show. But despite Boyd avoiding the clichés in some ways, he couldn’t in others.
The biggest problem is a basic one. Where are the security guards? If Boyd really wants to protect his technology then those guards should have been waiting behind every door. It made no sense for him or Clyde to resort to fist fights with their enemies. They both should have pushed a button and rushed in dozens of guards to do their dirty work. When Paul and Victor can knock guards out and wander around the HQ of this company it makes them seem incompetent. Incompetent to the point where viewers know the writers are to blame and not Boyd.
Then there was Mellie breaking her programming to kill herself. It sounds like a noble death but it’s more stupid than that. This is the umpteenth time a doll has broken from their programming this season. We now know how Echo could do it but Mellie shouldn’t be able to and her death was soured for me by again the cliché of her being able to fight back at the very last moment and save Paul.
Topher and Adelle having a comedy argument about what to name the apocalypse was not good. In a way it was the perfect example of why the humour never really landed in Dollhouse. There’s a reason people don’t make holocaust jokes and to make jokes about the impending apocalypse is just the wrong tone altogether.
The final logic hole was Paul and Caroline thinking for one moment that they had saved the world. At the start of the episode Boyd claimed there was a Rossum lab in every city in the world. And we already knew that there were Dollhouses in all the major cities. So quite how they thought their work was done I don’t know. Caroline’s run out of the building being chased by the explosions was another huge cliché and completely unnecessary. Why not just tell Boyd to count to a thousand? There was no rush.
Amy Acker (Saunders) didn’t really have a chance to do much as Clyde. Nor did Victor getting to play Topher again do much to aid the story.
The Unknown: What happens next? Presumably Boyd had his personality stowed away to be loaded into another body?
Best Moment: Boyd thanking Topher for confiding in him was an unexpected moment. It had depth to it and went against the grain of clichés which was nice.
Epilogue: I think my issue with this episode is the same issue I have with practically every show that deals with a huge conspiracy. It shouldn’t be this easy to take down the big bad guys. It should be a brutal struggle and this felt too simple. Far too simple. This didn’t feel like it had much resolution either. We didn’t learn enough about Boyd to feel like we understood his true motivations. We didn’t spend much time with Caroline to see her as a different person from Echo. I imagine Epitaph Two will give a broader sweep to events which may end up feeling a lot more satisfying but this “penultimate finale” left a lot to be desired.
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