TV REVIEW: Dollhouse: "Echoes"

This week on Dollhouse, the Fox series pulls a "Naked Time" and infects the Actives and employees of the top-secret Dollhouse facility with a plague that releases long-held inhibitions (by breaking down natural barriers in the hippocampus...).

In Star Trek's classic (and oft-imitated) "The Naked Time," a similar disease (which acted like alcohol intoxication) allowed us to learn of Christine Chapel's secret love for Mr. Spock, Kirk's loneliness and isolation as Captain, Sulu's inner swashbuckler, and Spock's deep regret at never being able to tell his human mother he loves her. These emotions and revelations excavated new and believable aspects of the characters.

On Dollhouse...all the characters just act...silly. Topher walks around his lab in his underwear. De Witt gets a bad case of the munchies. And the Actives experience brief flashbacks of traumatic experiences (in Iraq, and memories of a rape, respectively). The same type of outbreak occurs on a local college campus, making all of the student body transform into "wacky time bombs."

Frankly, I can't imagine why a writer would do a story such as this (and I've used it myself; see The House Between's "Mirrored") if he/she didn't have something more imaginative and revelatory to say about the series' dramatis personae.

I'll be honest: the aspects of "Echoes" that are supposed to be funny and revealing...are flat-out awful. The humor doesn't work in the slightest, perhaps because the actors don't really know who these characters are yet, and the material they're given doesn't provide the slightest bit of real illumination or insight. A useful writer's tool to expose characters' inner selves (a disease showing hidden traits...) is instead used for cheap jokes. What a bust...

But...(and this is a big but, so to speak...), "Echoes" is by no means a total disaster. "Echoes" does provide us some important information about Echo's history with a malevolent corporation (and Dollhouse sponsor) called "Rossum," and it shows us (both in flashback and present circumstances) how, precisely, De Witt recruits "Actives." Apparently, people like Caroline and this week's guest character Sam, are offered a "way out" when caught in a jam with the law. De Witt makes them "an offer" they can't refuse: five years of service, then out. This is another piece of the larger Dollhouse jigsaw we can fit together now, and it's rewarding that the series is assembling the larger puzzle.

We also can't ignore the fact that Echo spontaneously breaks out of her imprint this week and begins to experience the memories of her real personality, as Caroline. That's a huge development, and one that seems to indicate we'll soon be seeing Dushku actually playing an actual character, and not just a series of "assignments." In fact, next week's episode "Awakening" looks like it could break this whole story wide open.

I'm looking forward to "Awakening" and still crossing my fingers that Dollhouse finds some solid character ground on which to build. It has five episodes left this season...