Recap

We begin with two men talking outside a trailer home. We only see the face of one, who is talking about Echo, how much he loves her, and how he spent all his money on engagements with her. After a moment, we see the face of the other man: Alpha. Alpha takes out a knife and kills him.

At the Dollhouse, Echo is locked in a cell with a straitjacket and is still having migraines. Victor is interrogating her to find out what she did during her time away. She says she doesn’t know. Ballard is obviously upset by DeWitt’s allowing Echo to writhe in pain. When DeWitt leaves, Langton explains that DeWitt is doing it as much to interrogate Echo as she is to see Ballard’s response. He tells Ballard that, for Echo’s sake, he needs to be more stoic.

Topher, looking at Echo’s brain scan, can tell something is wrong. Langton and Ballard tell him that she has all the imprints Alpha uploaded into her brain and can control who she is at her will. They explain that the mindwipes do not actually “wipe” the imprints from her mind (or, presumably, any active’s mind). Rather, they suppress them.

DeWitt gives in to Echo’s reluctance to talk but, still suspicious of her, sends her immediately on an engagement. The man she is going to see is a regular. When she arrives at his house, in persona, he is sitting at a table long-dead. Alpha killed him, too, and is evidently on a spree, murdering all of Echo’s past lovers. It is discovered that two more of her previous client's are dead as well.

Sierra comes back from an engagement and says her client's name was “Alpha.” He left a message for the Dollhouse that his next victim “ages well.” It’s the Dollhouse client from the first episode, Matt Cargill, who rents Echo yearly on his birthday. Ballard, Langton, and a security team find him on a rooftop with Cargill tied up with explosives. They are unable to stop Alpha from killing him.

Langton discovers that there is only one of Echo’s previous lovers left: Joel Minor, the Patton Oswalt character. They use Echo to track him down and protect him, and they bring her along to convince him to take refuge in the Dollhouse for a short time. They do so. Alpha easily breaks in to the Dollhouse, however. Ballard spots Alpha with DeWitt on a security camera. Langton and goes to help her, and Ballard goes to protect Minor. Alpha activates a device that must be a precursor to the “Epitaph One” doomsday technology, and every active in the house turns into a mindless killer. Alpha makes it to Minor in the treatment room. When Ballard confronts him, Victor comes from behind and tranquilizes him.

Alpha is as evil as ever.

Ballard awakens hooked up to electrodes in the treatment chair. Alpha reveals that he was watching him and Echo the whole time she was gone from the Dollhouse, and knows that the two are in love. He then activates the electrodes, causing Ballard to go brain-dead. Topher, who is holed up with DeWitt, Echo, and Langton, remembers that his remote-wiping prototype is still in the manufacturing room. He and Langton retrieve it.

Echo finds Alpha in the treatment room with Ballard brain-dead on the floor. Alpha has imprinted himself with Ballard’s conscience to learn why Echo loves him. They fight. Just before Echo is going to kill him, Ballard’s conscience comes through Alpha and asks her to kill him. Echo is stunned and cannot finish him off. Alpha wakes up and leaves. Topher and Langton set the Dollhouse back in order with the remote wiping device.

In the end, Minor says goodbye to Echo/Rebecca. Minor tells her that his new wife was not meant to replace her. Echo says she knows and that Rebecca wouldn’t want him to be alone. Minor says he didn’t think he could get past it, and Echo responds, “You don’t get past it. It just becomes a part of who you are.” Minor says, “You live on for me. And I’m so glad of that.” As he walks away, Echo approaches Ballard’s body on life support and says, “You live on for me,” perhaps implying her desire to imprint his conscience into someone’s body in the future.

Review

This is one of Dollhouse’s better recent episodes. Alan Tudyk is once again magnetic as Alpha, even coming off as Joker-esque at times, punning his way through murders while wearing expensive clothes. Writer Joss Whedon continues to demonstrate his courage to take the darkest turns with the show, both allowing Alpha to blow up an innocent victim and also allowing him to essentially kill a main character. However, it is likely that Ballard’s conscience will live on in another body, and it is possible that Topher may come up with some special imprinting technique to re-inject awareness back into Ballard’s own body.

This episode also delves a little further into the idea that there is no way to truly wipe imprints from actives’ minds. On a larger scale, this is a form of the “you are your past selves” theme, exemplified most prominently in Echo’s final words to Minor. As “A Love Supreme, Part 2” demonstrates, one’s incorporation of past selves can be bad or good: Alpha and Echo now represent the two sides of that coin. The remaining episodes should be interesting, as it currently seems that the premise of the Dollhouse – the ability to imprint individuals with consciences and later wipe them clean – is falling apart.