I am only doing this because I wrote about Dollhouse earlier.
This episode has several good things going for it. Here are a few.
1) Patton Oswalt. He really took it up a notch in terms of acting. He brought his A game and it shows.
2) The twists. I counted three great twists in the storyline. Two of them I saw coming, but they still took me by surprise when they happened.
3) The dialogue. Really seemed better here than previous episodes. "Good hand." "No, it was a bad hand well played."
4) The structure. Mixing in the newscaster story with the man on the street interviews was a great way to present the story and concept. Because I can easily imagine a lot of people ignoring the first five episodes and just starting with this one. This structure provides a nice introduction to the series and the series concept.
5) The debate. This is what really sold the show for me. It wasn't the action or the set pieces or the twists or what have you; it was the conversation between Patton Oswalt and Tahmoh Penikett about the nature of the Dollhouse. Oswalt made a convincing argument, clouding the whole "the Dollhouse is nothing but evil" morality of the first five episodes. This made the series seem a little bit more intelligent.
6) The mythology. I will say one of the things I did not like about the first five episodes is that the concept of the show seems limited. This episode hints at a bigger mythology behind the show.
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What twist didn't you anticipate?
*spoiler in the comments*
I didn't anticipate that Echo would stop fighting and deliver a message. I thought she would lose the imprint or go temporarily crazy or something like that in the middle of the battle because something like that HAPPENS EVERY EPISODE. I was not expecting her to stop, deliver a message, and continue. While I am pleased because this does feed into my "Topher is an imprint," theory, I didn't see it coming.
I knew Ivan was not the nastyguy, and it was probably someone in the organization overstepping his bounds. I also knew that the lasagnagirl neighbor was an imprint, because no one cooks lasagna for their neighbors, especially not in Los Angeles, where good neighborly politeness means I don't flip you off IMMEDIATELY - I wait five seconds.
I did like how her reveal happened, though - that was a pleasant surprise.
I agree, that episode was awesome. I really loved the dialogue of the folks on the street--it seemed very real. And the twists in plot and perspective were awesome too. Yay Dollhouse!
Also, I would totally cook lasagna for my neighbor if FBI guy was my neighbor. If I weren't engaged to be married. Does that make me a sleeper agent?
If you lived in Los Angeles, apparently didn't have a job, had such a nice apartment, and were that friendly, then yes, you would be a sleeper agent.
Hmmm...I called neighbor girl as an imprint too--the lasagna wasn't the clue for me it was that it was a whole freakin' casserole dish--that's too big for a church dinner much less Helo/Paul.
I'm interested in Topher's role. I'm not sure he's an imprint or just amoral. It would be neat if they were all imprints except Amy Acker and the Dewitt lady (including Boyd).
Sigh. This last ep had superior verbage though.
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