Coming home to "Belonging" - Dollhouse

For most TV shows, an episode teased as an "origin story" means one character gets 85% of the screen time and everybody else spends theirs greasing said character's narrative wheel. Dollhouse has taken a B character's origin story and used it to develop everybody else on screen. No one really takes a back seat. Obviously Sierra is front and center, but her tumultuous backstory serves to unveil fascinating insight to every character involved. This is the epitome of an ensemble show at its best.

Sierra, born Priya, is the golden girl of Belonging. She’s stunning, a shining example of emotional range and honesty. Priya is not particularly lucky in life, but why would she worry? She’s so busy being a carefree and unaffected artist, she hardly notices when Dr. Nolan Kinnard, AKA Admiral Crazy D-Bag, fixates his psychopathic gaze on her. He commissions her paintings, throws her lavish, Rossum-fabricated parties, but Priya remains unimpressed. And being a man whose PhD program apparently did not cover How to Take No for an Answer 101, his next move is to kidnap, drug, and eventually force Priya into the Dollhouse.

After a little prompting from Echo, Topher digs around and uncovers the truth behind Priya’s circumstances. Topher had met her a year earlier; she was institutionalized, a hopeless paranoid schizophrenic- no family, no future. And a perfect candidate to be the next Sierra. But a closer look at her original scans proves she was a healthy girl being poisoned, and go figure, her acting physician was Dr. Nolan Kinnard.

So here we go- how do all of our key players react to this information? How will they act and react?

Adelle DeWitt “flips her biscuits”, though it’s pretty much what we’ve come to expect from her strangely unwavering moral compass. She comes to Sierra’s aid, mad as hell that the situation has come up at all. She confronts Nolan, deliciously fuming beneath her tactful air. But Adelle is no match for the higher ups at Rossum. Nolan is a valuable asset, and Adelle is ordered to imprint Sierra and send her to Nolan permanently. Hands tied, Adelle spends the rest of the episode embittered, either lashing out at Topher or drinking alone in her office.

We learn here that the folks at Rossum have some serious dirt on Adelle. Not only do they know about her tryst with Victor, but they don’t even care, as everyone “likes to take something home from the office once in awhile.” But Mr. Harding cites more serious indiscretions, whatever they may be, and they are enough to blackmail her into selling Sierra off. Sure, she’s not happy about it, but as we learn later Topher and Boyd weren’t either and they took care of business. Most of us hope that Adelle would go to the mat for her dolls (as demonstrated in Epitaph One), but this episode proves that she would actually sit back and take it. Adelle gives in, and by the end of the episode she’s helpless as ever, sitting alone in the dark with an empty glass. This seems like it might inform some pivotal decisions in Epitaph One, hmm…

For me, Topher is the star of this episode. Topher has no morals. People talk about it all the time, quips, punch lines, hey, he’s an easy target. But these little jabs didn’t seem to register for twenty-something years, not until this episode, and you can practically see Topher’s ears prick up for the first time: “You were chosen because you have no morals.”

When Topher met Sierra, he was the hero, genuinely under the impression he was helping a very sick girl lead a better life. And Topher is a genius, how could he possibly be wrong? The idea that he could be so easily fooled is a complete anomaly, and it festers. Topher sets Priya free to confront her attacker, but it’s almost a compulsion on his part. And when the confrontation comes to its inevitable conclusion, Topher has to face the consequences.

Fortunately, the head of security is a total badass. Boyd absolutely has to be a former mafia cleaner or super-dirty cop or something, because he comes into Nolan’s house with a body saw and plenty of sulfuric acid. Cool, collected, so steely he could play for Pittsburg, Boyd takes care of business, but he’s certainly not tossing any free rides. Topher spends the evening dissecting a body and dissolving the remains. So it seems intelligence does not automatically guarantee an upper hand in matters of conscience. Morality is a completely different game with a different deck of cards and the rules are written in Cyrillic or something. Who knew?

The most endearing scenes of the episode involve Victor – his history concerns battlefield trauma, and he’s still flashing back to his time as a Sergeant, though his poor, empty doll-brain just doesn’t know what to make of it. But he loves Sierra, and he’ll do anything for her, whether it’s clearing the paint sets of a shade she doesn’t like or simply waiting for her by the foot of stairs, patient and unwavering. It’s some of the sweetest, romantic material on television.

And finally, Echo. Personally, not my favorite character, but she was used very well in what’s a fraction of her typical screen time. The idea that she is learning and remembering and learning how to remember, well that just goes down much smoother when we see little clues here and there and it’s not Echo outright stating "I remember everything."
The episode wraps up with a good deal of wallowing. Boyd has sent Nolan’s identity off on a permanent vacation to the island of Vague where no one asks questions, and Adelle takes this news without a flinch. “How convenient,” she says with a glimmer of recognition and relief at the news that Sierra is back in the house, but I’d expect Adelle knows absolutely no thanks are due to her. Ouch.

Topher spends his last scene face-to-face with the woman he’s complicit in victimizing, not Sierra, but Priya in all her damaged glory. It’s pretty gut wrenching. She asks him if the dolls are happy and he can’t even begin to answer. This is where we all start to wonder why he doesn’t simply let her go right then and there, or why Boyd didn’t say Sierra was with Nolan and then give her a bus ticket and a pat on the back. But the unaffected artist we met in the teaser has been completely broken, and now welcomes the chance to electro-shock those memories away.

“Belonging” sheds some light in the darker corners of the Dollhouse, and establishes the fundamental principles of the Rossum Co.: trauma and misdeeds are a prerequisite. You’re damaged goods? Great, welcome home, can you take your sister to band practice? And if you’re heading to the market, we’re running low on milk. We get background on everybody except Topher and Echo, whose stories are in turn furthered by the plot, along with Sierra’s. It’s an unsettling, beautiful episode, and it’s absolutely fascinating on a frame-by-frame basis. In the mood for some Friday night heartbreak? This one will take you for a ride.