REVIEW: High-octane Dollhouse on ‘Target’
NOTE: This review is meant for those Dollhouse fans who watched Episode 2, “The Target,” last night on Fox. If you have not seen the second episode, read at your own spoiler risk.
The second episode of Dollhouse was a twist-a-minute thrill ride from start to finish, one that reveals enough about the characters to keep you interested, but not too much to overload the brain. At the end, you’re still left wishing for more as the credits roll. Even with the shorter commercials — or perhaps because of them — “The Target” seems like it ends almost as suddenly as it begins it’s that entertaining.
The episode dives right into a flashback, the bloody scene Alpha left as he escaped from the Dollhouse…
So let’s first discuss these flashback. They tell us more about Alpha, but we also quickly find out this attack by Alpha kills Echo’s first handler and it’s why Boyd Langton (Harry Lennix) is hired. He gets answers to some questions we were dying to know after the first episode — just how did Dr. Saunders (Amy Acker) get those scars? — while other questions like the identity of Alpha remain a mystery.
The character of Alpha still intrigues me the most at this point — see exhibit A, exhibit B and exhibit C on that for proof. The fact that he kills people with a small knife, hitting major tendons and extremities in lightning fast speed sets him up as one cool bad guy. There’s also more of the trademark Joss Whedon humor in this episode, like when head-of-security Laurence Dominic (Reed Diamond) tells Langton that Alpha was imprinted with the skills to kill people like this:
Langton: “You telling me you programmed one of your dolls to be Jack the Ripper?”
Dominic: “Not my department.”
I love it. There are also a couple images burned in my brain from this episode — namely Dr. Saunders’ face when Langton meets her for the first time and her facial wounds are still fresh, as well as Topher (Fran Kranz) wandering aimlessly around the Dollhouse with blood on his shirt. “You’re not going to give me a gun??”
As I chatted with Dollhouse fans on the site and via Twitter while watching the episode, I know you guys thought the flashbacks were the coolest part, but the main part of the show kept me enthralled, as well, so let’s move on to that.
Avid outdoorsman Richard O’Connell (guest star Matt Keeslar) hires Echo for what we believe is a date.  I was kind of pissed off to be honest at this part of the show because I thought she was going to be the same crotch-rocket riding fantasy lay I talked about in the first episode, which again would have been both unrealistic and unnerving. This time though, Mr. Whedon had a few tricks up his sleeve.
“Shoulder to the wheel. Do your work; earn your way.”
Richard slaps his fist to his shoulder in a rudimentary salute and tells that to Echo again. He says his dad always repeated that to him when he was younger and learned to hunt. He says the bow and arrow is the true test of a hunter because it’s you versus nature, you versus the animal. Only if the animal escapes does it truly deserve to live.
That premise is turned on its head in the very next scene when Richard tells Echo she has five minutes to run… then he’s hunting her. Consider it the Dollhouse version of Deliverance or Terminator. The chase is on.
Richard chases Echo through the woods, down a rock wall and over a river, clipping her once in the leg with an arrow as she runs aimlessly trying to get away. That’s when Echo stumbles upon a house in the woods.
I’ll stop this to tell you the two things I did not like about this episode — First, I did not feel like it was in Richard’s character to use binoculars. It would have been much more realistic had he looked at Echo’s footprints and tracked the trail she left behind. Also, once Echo find the house, she drinks water from the canteen there only to find out the water is laced with some kind of drug. That led to this Twitter message at the time from a Dollhouse fan:
@masteradept: how did you not know the canteen was bad
I had to agree that part was a bit hokey, but the real problem I found with it was it again went against what I thought Richard would really do. It just seemed out of character for Richard to drug the person he was hunting. It’s not really you versus someone else if you impair that person. But I just forced those minor issued I had to the side so I could continue to enjoy the episode. And trust me, those are very minor issues.
It turns out Richard knew that Boyd Langton and others would be nearby, so that’s when you get the next plot twist. A park ranger shows up and asks Langton and another Dollhouse gunman for identification — only you find out he’s no park ranger once he kills Langton’s partner. Usually I’m pretty good at guessing plot twists like this, but I failed to in this instance and that’s probably what I liked most about it.
Langton manages to turn the tables on his attacker though, shoots him in both thighs and leaves him tied up and unconscious. Then he sets out to find Echo, whom he knows is in danger. Lennix and Dushku have great chemistry together even though it has to be weird for Dushku as an actress, trying to portray an emotional connection even though she has no memory of Langton. I think both shined during these scenes, and they were perhaps the best of the show.
I think Joss wants to put the viewer in the shoes of Boyd Langton; he wants us to feel some sort of emotional connection to Echo. Just like Langton, as viewers we are not totally comfortable with what the Dollhouse is doing, and we see Echo and know Echo even though who Echo really is changes from week to week. I think Boyd will be shown perhaps more in this show than even Agent Paul Ballard because before this show aired for the first time last week, critics asked “Why? Why should be care about a person whose personality changes from week to week?” The reason I am finding out is because we see ourselves in Boyd Langton’s shoes. He cares, so we do as well.
The hunt sequence ends with a showdown between Echo and Richard. As Richard tries to choke the life out of Echo, she reaches for an arrow and stabs him in the neck. She made good on her promise when she told Richard she was going to kill him. She made good on her promise, as well, when she told Boyd to trust her and she would save him.
There is nice symmetry at the end when Echo’s mind is again erased. This time Langton is there.
“Did I fall asleep,” she asks.
“For a little while,” he responds, echoing Topher’s same words but with deeper meaning.
Then — the cliffhanger. It turns out Alpha was around that entire time. He killed the man Langton shot in the thighs. It doesn’t look like Alpha will appear much in the next episode, but we can still hope can’t we?
The Good: Boyd Langton. He’s one cool MFer, and his scenes with Echo are great Dollhouse moments.
The Bad: The scene where Echo drinks water that “happens” to be laced with a drug
The Ugly: In a fight for survival, Echo jabs an arrow into Richard’s neck.
ActiveDollhouse Grade: A
Sidenote: I will admit that the preview of Episode 3 didn’t exactly make me overly excited about next week… sometimes the world could use one less pop singer (Shit, I hope Chris Brown doesn’t read this blog) … but after Episode 2, I trust Joss Whedon. This episode will hook a lot of people on the show.
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I have to say my favorite parts were when Boyd said ‘its going to be okay’ and echo responded ‘no its not’ and he was like what? and also the part where they reverse roles and echo asks ‘do you trust me’ and he replies ‘with my life’ Great episode
Nice review. I’d like to point out some things that I realized after watching the entire second episode though. I thoroughly enjoyed this episode more than I did the first, and I do agree that this one had more of the Joss Whedon humor that we’re all more familiar with. However, I found that to be a bit surprising though, since Joss didn’t write this episode; it was written by someone else. Joss wrote the first episode, but that one barely had a smidge of the trademark Joss Whedon humor we’re used to seeing and loving. I’m not complaining though, it was just the first episode afterall.
Now moving onto what I noticed from watching the second episode. Langton said at the end of the episode that someone must have hired Richard to hunt Echo, making me suspect that it was in order to see if Echo truly “deserves to live”. We already know that it was Alpha who killed the fake park ranger, so I’m thinking it’s Alpha who hired Richard to find out if what Alpha did (in sparing Echo’s life) by allowing her to live was the right decision he had made. Richard said it himself when he said something along these lines: “he was right.. you are special”. In other words, I feel that Alpha was the man behind all of this. He was the one who made up Richard’s fabricated background, the one who hired the park ranger, and the one who poisoned the water that was in the canteen.
Which brings me to my next point… I have a strong feeling that Alpha put that particular drug (whatever kind of drug it’s called) in the canteen so that it’d allow for Echo to tap into her previous memories that were supposed to already be erased. I think it was part of Alpha’s intentions to make Echo remember. It just seems likely, because what are the chances that a guy like Richard would drug Echo so that she’d start recalling who she was in the past? Thus, it all leads me to think everything was Alpha testing Echo’s abilities. Although I didn’t think drinking out of a stranger’s canteen was a smart idea, but considering her circumstances where she was running for her life, tired and weak, and everything depended on survival of the fittest, I could overlook that messy issue.
One more thing, another reason why I think the water didn’t just “happen” to be poisoned was because of what happened at the river. Remember when Echo became dizzy after drinking the water and she fell into the river, then afterwards she blacked out for a while, and Richard was standing not too far from her (but he was obviously close enough to shoot her with his arrows, yet he didn’t). Richard called out to her to “wake up” a few times, and allowed her to live and run instead, when he could have already killed her right there on the spot when she was still unconscious. But he didn’t kill her. So this definitely leads me to think that Richard knew it was Alpha’s intention to drug Echo so that she’d start recalling previous memories, but Richard wasn’t supposed to kill her while the drug took its effects on her and while she was down on the ground. He was supposed to kill her while she’s standing on her own two feet, and I think Alpha knew that the drug wouldn’t impair her too much to the extent where she can’t aim straight, even though she did start off dizzy from drinking it. I’m sure that valid arguments can be made about the hunt/game not being fair since Echo did get drugged, but I think it should be noted that it *was* Echo’s choice to drink that water afterall, so whether it was fair or not, she just had to bear with it and give it her best, which she did and that’s why she survived. She proved she was more than just an “Echo”.
I loved the part at the end where Dominic (I think that’s his name?) mouthed off to Echo about how her head is empty of memories, and then when he walked away she slaps her palm to her shoulder. That was neat. By the way, I also wanted to point out that when Echo killed Richard, she didn’t just plainly kill him. She stabbed him, which was what she had told him in the walkie talkie after she dranked out of the canteen. She unknowingly predicted how she would kill him, so I thought that was cool. I’m also loving the relationship between Echo and Langton, and I think Langton is becoming sort of this father-figure for Echo. Okay, I think I’ve written a long enough comment. I probe and analyze too much. I just wanted to share my piece.
I thought it was way better than the first one. Exciting, suspenseful, sexy and humerous in some parts. Simply perfect !
I think it will be revealed that Alpha’s entire purpose is make Echo self-aware. I think the adrenaline rush from the hunt reacting with the drugged water to produce the flashes of her life.
[...] REVIEW: High-octane Dollhouse on ‘Target’ [...]
ILoveJossWhedon — you are 100 percent correct on the end. I went back and wrote down the exact quote about the shoulder thing precisely because of the ending but then I forgot to put that in there at the end.
That was definitely a cool ending to the episode and I’m mad now I forgot it. At least the exact quote is up there for people who want it. I would go back and change the ending of my review, but I hate changing more than typos on reviews I’ve already published.
Good catch though!
A lot of you guys think Alpha set this whole thing up from the beginning. You could be right. I didn’t make that connection though when I was watching it, so we’ll see. If that’s the case, then I would withdraw my critique about the water and binoculars. I guess we will find out in future episodes which is which. If Alpha is tied somehow to the “Stage Fright” episode I will back what you guys are saying.
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