Dollhouse, 1x11, “Briar Rose”

Episode Title: Briar Rose
Writer: Jane Espenson

Director: Dwight Little

Originally Aired: 05/01/2009
Grade: B+

I liked this episode well enough the first time around, but after repeat viewings, I felt there were way too many holes.

For whatever reason, I found the Briar Rose story frame bothersome. It’s a very stylized technique, and this is a very stylized show, so it should have worked—it’s not like Espenson was using an obvious fairy tale metaphor on a realistic show like Friday Night Lights or whatever—but something about it just didn’t sit right for me.

I thought the Susan story was both a hit and a miss. I liked it because it attributed something nice to Topher, whom I adore, and because I thought Dushku did well with the “adult Susan” imprint and had good chemistry with the actress who played young Susan. However, the foundation of the plotline fell apart for me when I began to wonder how the Dollhouse had access to Susan’s brain scan in the first place. The previous episode established that the brain scans necessary to copy someone’s persona are a drawn-out, painful process, so how did the Dollhouse manage to scan Susan, especially since no one at the orphanage seemed clued in to the fact that a Dollhouse engagement was taking place? And how did Topher even find this little girl?

The episode’s biggest flaw, however, is that Alpha’s entire plan doesn’t make any sense! First of all, the fact that Adelle fell for Alpha’s flashdrive fakeout is ridiculous—she should know enough to realize that Alpha would have no legitimate reason to send anything to Laurence Dominic, thus whatever was on that drive was intended to manipulate the Dollhouse. But no, she fell for it. And to make matters worse, there’s no reason why Alpha needed to go to the trouble of luring Sierra to AZ in the first place. Sierra accomplished nothing of significance there other than feeding some information back to Boyd and Adelle, who in turn had absolutely no clue Alpha was coming, so in terms of Alpha’s plan, the distraction was completely superfluous. Furthermore, why exactly did he need to pose as a closed-systems engineer to enlist Ballard’s help getting into the place? Alpha already knew where the Dollhouse was. He knew how to get into it. We’ve been led to believe again and again that he’s a genius and a super ninja assassin. What exactly did he need Ballard for?

The highlight of the episode was, unsurprisingly, Enver Gjokaj completely nailing Laurence-in-Victor. He mimicked the voice, the accent, the mannerisms, all perfectly. If I were making a television show, I would have this guy in to read for every single even remotely age-appropriate role. Is there anything he can’t do? I really hope the writers expand Victor’s screen time and delve into an engaging character arc for him next season, because the only thing keeping him from being my favorite character is the fact that the writers haven’t fleshed him out enough yet.