Read my latest story, "The All-Nighter", at 52|250.

The structure of Spy in the House of Love emphasizes the ensemble nature of the Dollhouse series, following each of four actives as they are implanted with new personalities and instructions. Overall, the episode itself is not particularly interesting thematically. There is some play with the idea of trust: before the main action, Echo-as-dominatrix gives a standard speech to Boyd about how BDSM is about trust, though the way she suggests inverting the active-handler relationship does make it mildly interesting. Then, in the end, she hesitates to say that she trusts her new handler with her life. [ETA: Maia at Alas explores this theme in greater depth.] More important than this are the character work and foreshadowing the episode performs.

Paul Ballard has descended at least into the appearance of paranoia with his string-web linking clues and maps. Given Mr. Dominic‘s claim that, if it weren’t for him, the former agent would have already found the dollhouse, one has to wonder if he has been false leads; the message, sent through Mellie, that he needs to search for the dollhouse’s goals may be another red herring. Or it may be a sign that it is this purpose that he sees as needing to be reined in. Then again, perhaps there is another spy. Whatever the case, I wish that more time had been given to showing Ballard’s feelings of guilt and regret after learning that Mellie is a “doll”.

The revelation of Dominic’s being an NSA spy raises questions about his efforts to kill Echo. Were these genuinely an effort to protect the dollhouse as he claims? Or is Echo more intimately caught up with the ultimate aims of the organization? Certainly this would explain DeWitt‘s reluctance to commit her to the attic and why she values Echo’s protecting the dollhouse just one episode after claiming the house is out of order because of the development of the actives.

We see a little bit more of DeWitt during this episode. Her dalliance with Victor surprised me but is ultimately somewhat stereotypical: a woman with tightly controlled emotions escaping into a fantasy romance which she herself labels as pathetic then gives up. More significant is that Dominic’s characterization of her seems to confirm my earlier observation that she is a True Believer in the aims of the dollhouse’s parent company.

Echo too continues to develop more in her tabula rasa state. If Dr. Saunders‘ closure exercise didn’t fulfill her needs, one has to suspect that the same is true for the other actives. Indeed, her conversation with Sierra forms a frame for the show. When we see the wiping of Dominic from the perspective of Sierra and Echo, at the beginning of the episode though near end of its action, we hear Echo say that “she made a mistake”. Is that mistake Adelle DeWitt’s and is it only in trusting Dominick? The promise is that we will find out.

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