Writers: Jane Espenson, Maurissa Tancharoen, and Jed Whedon
Grade: B+
As usual, the more interesting aspects of this episode did not involve Caroline. The engagement storyline was boring and nonsensical, aside from the pseudo-immortality aspect that Boyd pointed out (and which I had already considered, since I thought Victor’s “Roger” imprint might have been based on a real person). The good stuff here revolved primarily around Paul Ballard and Topher.
We saw that November’s original personality may have been a criminal, but I’m guessing most, if not all, of those arrests were Dollhouse-related. (Which seems a little sloppy on their part, but I’ve already seen the season finale and they didn’t even try to make the original November personality dark or complex, so yeah, I’m going with “Relatively nice girl who lost her daughter.”)
There was a lot of post-episode talk about Ballard raping November, and I certainly think he felt that’s what he did. I’m not going to hold it against him because he was in a very dangerous, no-win situation, but there was definitely a moral ick factor to the rough sex.
And Topher, wow, where do I start? First of all, as bizarre and amoral as Topher can be, I think we were supposed to realize that subconsciously, he really does think using the Dolls for sex is squicky, simply because he could do it, but he doesn't. He could be the stereotypical asexual science nerd, but I get the impression that he's more just nervous and inexperienced when it comes to sex rather than completely uninterested. The episode with the "man reaction" seemed to heavily imply that he's got a thing for Claire Saunders, but it's also pretty clear that he wouldn't have the slightest clue how to go about expressing that to her, and any attempt to do so would likely end in complete disaster.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Topher didn’t specify a gender when he asked Boyd for a Doll—Boyd told him Sierra was free, but it seems he would have been just as happy with a male Doll, especially since the imprint was pretty gender-neutral.
I thought it was also very interesting that in addition to not programming Sierra for sex/romance, he didn't even program her to be emotionally supportive. He's obviously a very lonely and insecure person, and yet at no point did Sierra really even say anything nice to him. She's wasn't there to give him pep talks to make him feel better about himself, she was just there to hang out like a typical "guy friend." I don't think she was even programmed to have any particular attachment to him, but rather to just enjoy the same things that he does. Which indicates another little "mental line" for him, I think--he can live the dream of having someone to just hang out and have fun with, but he'd never be able to buy into a programmed emotional connection with a Doll, because he's the programmer. He knows all too well how false it would be.
