Saturday, May 9, 2009

Super-Powered TV: Dollhouse 1.12: Omega


Topher begins to act suspiciously in the aftermath of the fight.

Alpha flashes between multiple personalities as he and his Southern trash girlfriend Echo are apparently on a crime spree.

We flashback to a few years before, to the previous imprints of slightly crazy folks (I assume the imprint that Echo has now). They were the ultimate fantasy of some guy named Lars, but the female active wasn’t Echo at all... it was the good doctor Claire Saunders. We look at the perverse torture they put the customer through, before they are taken out, and Alpha and Whiskey are brought home.

Back in the present, they explain that Ballard brought Alpha back in to the facility. Ballard makes a deal with the Dollhouse to get a terrorist threat that Alpha called in canceled. Ballard tries to use his connection with the FBI agent to get a full scale raid, but his old rival Graham instead just empties the outside are of all agents.

Alpha has built his own chair in his own home and he took Echo’s previous imprints to go along with it.

We flashback to the previous Dr. Saunders as he treats Whiskey. He acts with an uncanny similarity to the current Dr. Saunders. They watch as Caroline is shown the grand tour of the facility and given the five year spiel again.

The woman Echo and Alpha kidnapped is strapped to Alpha’s chair. They make out as Alpha imprints his victim with another memory.

The flashbacks continue as we watch Alpha’s obsession with Echo grow deeper.

And in the present, Alpha imprints his victim with the mind of the original Caroline. Alpha proceeds to mentally torture the new Caroline and Echo’s current imprint.

In flashback mode, Alpha cuts down Whiskey because he hears her handler say she’s the number one doll. They take him in to the treatment room. He attacks his handler who damages the device. He kills his handler by driving thumbs in to the man’s brains, and murders the original Doctor Saunders as his first victim.

Alpha composites Echo as Caroline is forced to watch. The new Echo, who Alpha calls Omega, gets up and instead of killing Caroline takes out Alpha with a pipe.

Carl William Craft was Alpha’s original identity. He was a criminal: a kidnapper, an attempted murderer, a potential sociopath.

Alpha talks to the new Echo. He declares them gods, or at least supermen. As Echo talks to Caroline, Alpha attacks again and the two fight it out.

Ballard and Boyd visit Craft’s previous victim... a victim he slashed just as Alpha does. Echo and Caroline decide to put her mind back in Echo’s mind. But Echo kills the new Caroline and threatens to destroy the wedge.

He forces Echo in to the chair. He promises to imprint her with her own memory, kill her, and then imprints other Carolines and kill them too. But Echo calls his mindgame and chances him out of the industrial pit (the same one he was at with Whiskey) and goes skyward.

Ballard and Boyd arrive in time to get shot at by Alpha, even as Echo is still following him. He throws her imprint away and she climbs out on a bar to go get it. It falls, but Ballard retrieves it. Alpha uses the time to escape.

Claire Saunders realizes that she is in fact Whiskey. She has a brief, vindictive meeting with Topher about it, even going so far as to ask him why he made her hate him so much. Interesting little play between the two.

Ballard makes a deal with DeWitt in exchange for November’s (or rather Madeline Costley’s) freedom from the company. Topher resets Echo back to her blank slate, while Claire stops Victor to give him one of the original Dr. Saunders’ candies.

We end with Echo going to bed and she whispers the name “Caroline”.

A check at IMDB shows this isn’t actually our finale though, as come mid-summer (my birthday of July 28 to be exact) we have at least one more episode of the show: “Epitaph One”. These reviews will be back this summer to cover it. In the mean time, we can all sit and see if Joss’ new vision returns for next season.

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