Just this spud’s opinion: Best ep yet, by a wide margin. Probably Dushku’s best acting as well. Some interesting twistiness in what could have been a pretty routine loony-cult plot. “God has brought a message for you, and that message is, MOVE YOUR ASS!” Priceless.
“Lookin’ for Victor’s woody” subplot was cute
One thing: except for Boyd, and maybe the FBI agent, males in general come off in a pretty harsh light on this show, don’t they?
Feel free to shoot me down if need be.
My local Fox station is doing basketball for some reason, so I don’t know. Ugh.
I still wish this show was funnier. Comedy elevates the drama and would be effective.
I like the man-reaction storyline.
Cult Leader: Are you good at sight reading?
Echo: It’s been a long time. I was 9. But I’ll do my best.
picks up Bible
“Then, Nebuchadnezzar…”
Me: slow clap
Second or third week I stopped taping it. Love Joss; wish I’d been consulted 
before he made this POS. It had SO MUCH potential…
I agree with the OP- this was the best episode of the series, and by a wide margin. I really enjoyed this episode overall.
I believe next week is the anticipated “6th episode” which Eliza said in an interview is where Joss is finally allowed to fully take over the show from a creative standpoint- and marks a turning point int he show in general. We shall see.
This is the exact same reaction I had… I even paused it (and I rarely do this- because for the most part, I am a turn my brain off and just enjoy the show already kind of guy. ) to ask my wife… “So, she should still be able to read at a 9 year old level, right?”
My wife had two theories…
A> Echo maintained some semblence of reading ability greater than her imprint- similar to how she seems to maintain an echo, if you will, of the imprint she just had erased.
B> The imprinted persona- probably had large portions of the bible memorized. She was able to recognize the passage and partly read/partly recite the verse. While this seems likely, I admit, she could have at least balked a little at Nebachanezzer.
She had not sight read since she was nine. And as she seemed like a reasonably well educated person one would assume she has been to school and reads in braille, so all she needed to do was remember what the visual alphabet looked and sounded like. Not saying that this would be easy, but more plausible.
Anyhow, I’m not wowed by the show, but am sticking around because I am a Whedon fan, and he is great at the big mystery/conspiracy slow reveal. More comedy is definitely needed, and better acting to boot.
Does anyone else hate the opening? I’m guessing the slow music and soft focus-y images are supposed to evoke the dreamy doll state, but it just reminds me of bad Chinese soap operas.
I don’t have a with that problem - she would be familiar with the name from the religious knowledge of her imprint. She didn’t have to sound it out the way a child reading a hard word might - she would’ve realized what the name was for lack of anything else it could be.
Another idea is that certain basic skills are contained in a part of the brain not affected by imprints. In the real world, some cases of amnesia still result in the victim knowing how to read, speak, tie their shoes, ride a bike, etc.
This episode was clearly unrealistic - the ATF doesn’t let people escape from fiery deaths 
Edit: Oh, and what was the head of security guy doing? He shot the guy who was going to shoot Echo, but then knocked her out and left her there. Was he trying to kill her? If so, why not just leave her for the cult leader to kill?
I agree that this was the best episode yet. The bits of humor that came through were great. Extra points are hereby granted for the use of the word “tumescence.” I’m also glad we are getting to see more of Amy Acker. She has been really underused so far.
The preview for next week gave some interesting hints about how the series will develop.
For those who couldn’t catch it last night, you can watch it on Fox’s full episode player
http://www.fox.com/fod/play.php?sh=dollhouse
Yeah, upon reflection that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. The main reason for him shooting the cult leader seemed to be nothing more than to provide a ironic riposte to cult leader’s line about God commanding the destruction of evil, or whatever it was.
As for Mr. Dominick (the security guy) being there in the first place, it strikes me as pretty clear there’s more going on there than him supposedly trying to protect the Dollhouse from Echo’s ‘glitches’. The last scene of the episode, aside from being the most blatant indication yet that Echo is retaining memories after wiping, seems to imply some serious ass-kicking is going to be coming his way, and soon.
Actually, I think the ATF acted pretty stupidly throughout, not even counting the planting of evidence. They didn’t seem to expect alarms, and when they tripped the wire, they had no idea what to do. They just milled about awaiting orders. In reality, they would have immediately switched to Plan B (even without the trip wire, there’s a chance they might be spotted, so they would have planned for that). The logical thing to do when the alert went out would be to attack before the cultists knew exactly what was happening, not stand around scratching their heads.
It was a good enough episode. As usual, the overarching plot threads were more interesting than the actual adventure going on.
To realize that Mr. Dominick is going to die a gruesome death, all you have to do is remember how the most misogynistic characters on BTVS died.
As for him not letting the cult leader shoot Echo, I think he was just protecting himself. After seeing the swat guy the cult leader would have probably shot at him instead of Echo. Mr. Dominick probably did not know what he was going to find in the barn once he got there, but once he saw the guy with the gun he knew he had to shoot him or risk getting shot himself.
I think Laurence Dominic was trying to leave Echo in place where she could die a natural death from smoke inhalation. Hopefully, this would be the death that would arouse the least amount of suspicion possible.
besides the corpse of a cult leader riddled with bullets?
Yes. She’d be just another college dropout cult follower. It would be a reasonable fiction on why Caroline had dropped out of society (assuming they ID’d the body). <Excuse me while I use my mad mind reading skillz, you might hear a slight buzzing> Dominic was not worried about the ATF guys examining Echo’s corpse; he was worried about Boyd asking questions and going public. As far as we know, Dominic got in and out without Boyd seeing him, and believed Echo would be wiped so he only had to make it look like Echo was knocked out when the cult members ran out, or she was hit by the leader or the blond guy who spat at her.
but who shot the leader? who knocked out the follower? why would anyone enter a burning building surrounded by ATF and media to kill the cult leader and co? too many questions either way. simpler to let the cult leader kill Echo or just wait for a better chance.
as it is Boyd should already be suspicious about the cult leader’s death, though i doubt they’ll ever bring him up again. and what position in the company is Dominic again? the action seems a bit drastic for his stated motive. is his long term plan to kill any and all actives that display aberrant behaviour?
He’s Head of Security. A part of his duties is to keep the Dollhouse under the radar and out of trouble, aside from the obvious being in charge of their assault team. I think it was clearly implied that a lot of his hatred for Echo stems from the Alpha debacle. He’s not the kind of guy who likes anything to be unpredictable, he’s a control freak, plus he sees Echo’s off-program behavior as an echo (ha!) of Alpha’s, right before he started hacking and slashing.
Dominick’s an ass, but he’s not totally out of line in worrying about it. People got killed last time, and there’s nothing saying it couldn’t happen again. (Especially since that’s kind of the point of the meta-story… at least to the extent that Echo is becoming more independent person and less Doll, whether or not violent tendencies are included in that package.)
Or, you know, shoot her too.
Fanwank: when he gets emotional, his judgment suffers. He was angry and frustrated from his conversation with DeWitt, so he jumps on a company plane (which she would of course find out about – way to be sneaky, dude), and thinks to “take care of it” himself – without fully thinking it through.
He’s pretty good at strategy when he’s not emotionally invested in the outcome. Not so much when he is. (This actually describes a lot of people I’ve known.)
WWVMD: Vic Mackey popped a cap in his face after knowing him for an hour.