Over the past few weeks, Dollhouse season two has started reminding me of Jericho season two — both shows came back from cancellation, with a limited number of episodes. Both shows' fans cherished hopes that they'd continue past those truncated second seasons, but the people making both Jericho and Dollhouse seemed aware that they shouldn't save any trail mix for the hike back. Both shows abandoned their slow, incremental approaches and started racing forwards... almost too fast. But I'd way rather have too fast than too slow... or a setup that never pays off.

The other comparison, while we're at it, is that both Dollhouse and Jericho have pretty unique spins on the apocalypse — both involving an evil corporation and entitled assclowns who just have to control everything.

So last night, Dollhouse served up one decent episode, and one great one. In the first hour, we learned, yet again, that you never really leave the Dollhouse. Victor's contract expires, and he gets set free, wealthy but adrift, and unsure why he's in love with a woman he can't remember. He's so used to doll life, he sleeps in his bathtub because it reminds him of his coffin. And then he gets kidnapped/recruited to become a soldier in a new Rossum unit, that's basically a linked group mind. And then in the second hour, Echo, Victor and Sierra get sent to the Attic, where they encounter Mr. Dominic, and a serial killer... who turns out to be one of the founders of Rossum Corp.

The first hour was a slight disappointment, but only a slight one. After seeing so many hints about Victor's war-related PTSD, I figured we were in for an exploration of the ways in which trauma comes back even after you think you've defeated it. Even though Topher seemed so confident that they'd "cured" Victor's PTSD, I assumed we were going to learn otherwise. But after waving a bit in that direction, the episode lurched towards the "hive mind" soldiers thing — which was a really neat concept, and yet another fresh spin on the Dollhouse's tech. (The execution was pretty good, but the "chanting soldier voices" thing veered towards being cheesy once or twice.)

Mostly, instead of being an homage to Kimberly Peirce's underrated movie about PTSD and getting re-drafted against your will, the episode "Stop Loss" served to show us just one more way in which Rossum is evil. And at this point, we're pretty much primed to think Rossum is more evil than a dozen standard evil corporations put together. So it's just as well that the show is moving forward beyond showing us how evil Rossum is — towards explaining how Rossum got that way, and how our heroes are going to fight it.

You have admire how quickly the second episode, "The Attic," ran through all the standard science-fiction cliches for this sort of situation. Echo is in a virtual shared world, along the lines of the Matrix, and then she and Laurence Dominic are being chased by a shadowy serial killer through people's worst nightmares. The first half of the episode was fun, and some of the nightmare imagery was pretty jarring — especially the vision of Echo and the other dolls on tables, with wires going into their brains and tubes going down their throats, as liquid slowly flows into their trays.

There's nothing wrong with a "chasing a serial killer through people's nightmares" episode — we all like a good mindscape serial killer. But it's probably just as well that the episode took a sharp lurch halfway through, when the good guys finally catch up to the evil mass-murderer Arcane — and he's revealed to be a British nerd.

The Attic turns out to be more than just the random hell all of the broken dolls and disloyal employees are sent to — it's a giant computer, made out of hundreds of human brains, all supercharged by experiencing trauma over and over again. It's another neat spin on the show's central "brain hacking" conceit, and then it leads to us discovering the origins of Rossum. Arcane, the serial killer, is actually Clyde, the co-founder of Rossum, who developed "encephalic coding and communication," only to be betrayed by his partner after he imprints someone with a more docile version of his own mind.

And ever since Clyde got sent to the Attic — in 1993 — he's been running statistical analysis and scenarios for the future of the ECC technology. And in all but 3 percent of these scenarios, the ability to read and write brains leads to the collapse of civilization. Presumably, Rossum has access to Clyde's data-crunching, and knows about this — but doesn't care.

Conveniently, Clyde's memory of the name of his partner in founding Rossum, as well as the person who was imprinted with the obedient "Clyde 2.0" persona, has been removed. But it turns out Echo's original personality, Caroline Farrell, discovered who they were before she was wiped and turned into a doll. (We know a lot of time passed between Caroline breaking into the Rossum lab on that college campus and her becoming a doll — so presumably she discovered more about Rossum during that time.) So after Echo and the others break out of the Attic, they know enough to start taking the fight to Rossum.

Once again, the star of last night's episode was really Olivia Williams as Adelle — her arc moved awfully quickly, but it was still pretty amazing to watch. In the first hour, she has one last fling with "Roger," her perfect lover who's installed into Victor's body — only to have Roger confess that he's in love with someone else... Sierra. Even a pre-programmed lover won't love Adelle. "Roger" only rubs salt in the wounds by scoffing at the idea that Adelle would be pathetic enough to hire a programmed doll to love her. This rejection, and evidence that Adelle has lost her grip on the Dollhouse by not preventing Victor and Sierra from "grouping," sends her into a tailspin, and she spends pretty much the rest of the episode drunk, while everyone around her schemes. Echo bursts in to tell Adelle that they're not equals, and Boyd tells Adelle that she needs to find the old Adelle quickly, or he'll help take her down.

And then Adelle takes a shower with the Actives, and when she comes out, she's apparently sobered up a bit — and chosen her side in the fight between Rossum and the human race. We think at first that Adelle has finally discarded the last little piece of her soul and become "Darth DeWitt" in full — but then it turns out she sent Echo to the Attic on purpose, to discover Rossum's secrets.

If these episodes had aired on a weekly basis, this progression would have felt a lot slower, probably — Adelle losing control of the Dollhouse to Harding, selling out to get it back, turning into a bitter shell of her former self, and then finally making her choice. But even getting all six of these episodes over a three-week span, it still feels like a pretty intense journey, with Olivia Williams fully investing you in Adelle's downward spiral.

Once again, I also really liked Echo — especially the bit where she went shopping in the Dollhouse's imprints and turned them into an all-you-can-eat skillset buffet. After so long of Echo being helpless and glitchy and confused and headachy, it was just beautiful to see her turning her previous source of weakness into an amazing strength. And yay for Echo taking on an army single-handed and winning, by hacking their brains with her super-brain. If we didn't already know the good guys were going to lose, I'd say maybe Rossum had created the engine of their own destruction.

And I wonder if Victor and Sierra are gone for good — are they just Tony and Priya now? Their love has overcoming brainwashing and programming, and now it's overcome a military hive mind as well. I wonder if we'll get to see what it is that drives them apart in the future?

Speaking of which, it seems like we're leaping over the flashforwards in "Epitaph One" at amazing speed now. I'm having a hard time figuring out where those segments fit into all this. I'm guessing we've already passed by the sequence where Echo is programmed to be a Russian girl and complains to Ballard about her headaches — when did that happen? Right before Alpha's visit? It doesn't seem like the sequence of events allows for that. (Or did that scene purely happen in Echo's nightmares inside The Attic?) And then the scene where the Rossum scumbag Mr. Ambrose takes over Victor's body and announces that the Dollhouse is now renting out its Actives to become spare bodies for rich people — did that happen during the three months Echo was away, but before Mr. Harding took over the Dollhouse? I'm a bit confused at this point.

In general, though, Dollhouse is delivering unforgettable characters and a mind-blowing spin on its basic premise, and it's really fully become the show it's hinted at from the beginning. It's going to be a long three weeks' wait to see our heroes posse up to take on Rossum, and I'm hopeful based on the past few weeks' incredibly strong track record that the revelations about Caroline's past aren't going to be disappointing. (It helps to know that the next episode is written by Tim Minear, the man who can do no wrong.) Even if you were hoping the show would plunge us into the post-apocalyptic Felicia-Day-on-the-run future right at the start of the season, you can't deny that getting to see the building blocks of that future sliding into place has been amazing. This show may be on its way to cancellation, but we're going to be seeing people building on it for years to come.

Also, I hate to be a broken record, but the more we see of season two, the sadder I am that the show didn't put its best foot forward. The season's first two episodes were just so lackluster, compared to everything that's come after, that it's depressing to look back on them. I get very sad when I think of the fact that Fox sent out DVD screeners of "Vows," the I-married-a-boring-arms-dealer episode, to every TV journalist in the country, thus generating bad or no buzz. What if Fox had mailed out the Sierra/Nolan episode instead? Or any of the episodes since then?

Anyway, there are just three episodes of Dollhouse left, including two present-day ones and then a return to the post-apocalyptic future. Now that the show has already proved it's not holding any plot (or character) developments back for a later that'll never come, those last three episodes are going to be the most anticipated television of January, as far as I'm concerned.

It's hard to believe this is still the same show that used to serve up timid "engagement of the week episodes" that only hinted at the questions that lurked in its premise. By my reckoning, this makes six outstanding Dollhouse episodes in a row. And what's more, the show is starting to race forward, at breakneck speed, as if to make up for its slow pace earlier.

Was it just me, or did your heart stop too when you read the words "Three months later"? Sure, BSG and DC Comics, among others, have pulled similar stunts before — but in the middle of a random episode?
It was gutsy. And yet, it turned out to be a brilliant move. As usual with the "jumping ahead in time" stunt, everything had changed, and part of the fun was figuring out how. (For a moment, I thought Echo really had just taken a nurse job using one of her imprints, and was just living quietly.)

But more than that, part of the coolness after the three-month jump was seeing how much closer we were to the glimpses of the future we saw in the post-apocalyptic episode "Epitaph One."

So after the jump, suddenly Echo is playing house with Paul Ballard (which feels logical, considering how much they were already conspiring together) and they're in cahoots with Boyd back at the Dollhouse. Meanwhile, Topher has gotten a promotion, and Adelle has gotten a demotion. Most of all, Echo is now fully in control over her multiple personalities and their talents, instead of having them triggered randomly. She's now much more like a superhero (who's occasionally glitchy) than a puppet who occasionally turns into a superhero, and really, thank goodness. I'm imagining the new Echo is like Chuck with the "Intersect 2.0" installed.

Last night's first episode, "Meet Jane Doe," subverted so many expectations, it's hard to know where to begin. For starters, we expected a story about Echo in her childlike "doll" state wandering around for an hour, while the Dollhouse tried to find her — instead, we got five minutes of that, then something totally different. And then, at the end, you expected Adelle to do something cunning and brilliant to regain her mastery of her Dollhouse — and instead, she kissed up to the evil scumbag, Harding. In the second hour, you think Alpha is just trying to take down the men that Echo has had romantic engagements with — but his real target turns out to be Ballard, because Alpha was spying and realized that Ballard and Echo are in love.

Even with everything else that happened last night, it's hard to avoid fixating on Adelle. Her transformation was incredibly painful to watch — first, from steely-but-sensitive mistress of her domain to subservient, resentful underling to Mr. Harding. And then, from underling back to boss — but this time, she's willing to do whatever it takes to please her masters and save her own skin. Olivia Williams was incredible last night — most of all in the scene where she is willing to give Alpha whatever he wants, because that's what she's become. She's lost her self-respect, and whatever shreds of idealism she may have had left, and become a monster. And it's fascinating to watch.

The other big star last night was... Eliza Dushku. A lot of people have doubted her ability to carry this series — including me, on a few occasions. But now that she's playing a more self-aware version of Echo, she's able to bring a lot more real acting to the table. Her scenes with Paul Ballard, where she's in love with him and he's unable to reciprocate because of his whole "Galahad" complex, were brilliant and rich, and she seemed to snap between different personas pretty easily. Dushku's talent has never been mimickry or creating different mannerisms — she's not an Enver Gjokaj — but she's a lot better at handling nuances of emotion. She's always Eliza Dushku, no matter who she's playing, but she's capable of bringing a lot of expressiveness and subtlety. And last night, we saw more of what she can do when she's in her comfort zone.

Meanwhile, once again Topher was ethical-dilemmas guy — turns out the remote wipe device he's been working on is just one piece of a larger puzzle, one that will lead to everyone in the world becoming mind-controlled slaves. Topher cracks the problem of how to program anyone, anywhere remotely — but it's Adelle who hands it over to the evil corporate overlord. No wonder those two are basket cases after the apocalypse.

As Adelle says towards the end of last night's first episode, with the kind of power Rossum has, you don't want to be on the opposing team. Apparently Rossum doesn't just control a sitting U.S. Senator (who's got an excellent chance of becoming President), they also have 22 Dollhouses, with a 23rd on the way — and that means thousands of current and former clients who will safeguard Rossum's interests. And now, they have the means to reprogram whoever they want. Shiny.

It was interesting to see Harding running the Dollhouse, in contrast to Adelle. Her fancy performance was always aimed at creating the impression of a humane, caring service that was therapeutic and philanthropic — much like Inara's "Companion" poise in Firefly. Inara and Adelle even both use tea to symbolize the fact that they're fancy and full of happy empowerment. Harding keeps the tea, but drops the empowerment schtick — he's happy to be a pimp, and his dolls are property. As Boyd points out, the only real difference is that Harding doesn't lie to himself.

So the first episode was, once again, all about how the wealthy get what they want, and the rest of us are just their soon-to-be-broken toys, what with the evil boys' club of rich assholes congratulating themselves in Adelle's office. And then in the second half, we discovered that the wealthy don't always fare that well with the Dollhouse — we meet a guy who blew his entire fortune on engagements with Echo, and get to see a bunch of her other clients killed horribly as well.

Patton Oswalt returns as the tech whiz who needs Echo to impersonate his dead wife, and he's somewhat unsettled to learn that even though he's never planning on hiring the Dollhouse to recreate Rebecca again, she still exists. You can't really delete a program — once a program's created, it has a life of its own.

Did anybody else think Alan Tudyk was channeling Heath Ledger's Joker, just a bit, in his performance as Alpha last night? Maybe I'm on crack. In any case, Alpha was nattily dressed, and was (thank god) doing less of the "crazy talking to myself and snapping between personas" thing, and more of the "super-genius psycopath" thing. I was "meh" about Alpha last season, but he went a lot further towards winning me over last night. Especially after having just gotten such a powerful glimpse of the real evil of the Rossum Corp., Alpha is looking more and more like the lesser of two evils.

I don't have much else to say about the second hour — Alpha's still obsessed with Echo, and wants her to love him. It's a bit underwhelming as a villain motivation, but I think it's partly supposed to be that Alpha is obsessed with Echo because he sees himself in her, and he wants to be able to understand the difference between programmed and "real" emotions. And he knows that Echo's feelings for Paul Ballard are "real," so he wants to be able to see where they come from. Maybe now that Alpha has imprinted himself with Ballard's personality, we'll get something new and different out of it, like an Alpha who struggles with doing the right thing occasionally. We know, from "Epitaph One," that Alpha does turn out to be something of a force for good.

I liked the Actives being turned into killer zombies, which was a nice twist. And the Monty Python references. And Boyd, Echo and Ballard choosing to trust Topher with Echo's secret — wonder how badly that'll backfire? And co-writer Maurissa Tancharoen doing her sassy "I ain't got time for no neurocondensing" act. And Ballard's "My ass does feel very pampered."

Bottom line: This show is now much more clearly about an evil corporation that wants to own your brain. This has been true from the beginning, but it was harder to tell in those early episodes. Now it's pretty clear and straightforward, and the storytelling that can come as a result (with alll of those broken, complicated people, squirming under Rossum's thumb) is going to be magnificent. For as long as it lasts.

The difference between Sierra and the other Dolls turns out to be that Sierra never consented to be a Doll. But none of the other Dolls could really give informed consent or know the kinds of engagements they signed up for. We're pretty clear that Sierra was being raped, but what about Echo and Victor?

All who consent to becoming a Doll are informed about what that entails... perhaps not in the greatest detail, but they are aware that they're giving up their minds and bodies for a number of years. But in Sierra's case, she was clearly violated. Echo's case is unique as well. As we established in Season One, she had no choice but to "volunteer".

Now that we've seen Sierra drawing the black smudges everywhere, it looks less and less like Topher's mindwiping can really remove the trauma of an engagement from the Active's mind. So are all the Actives being damaged by their experiences, or is Sierra a special case because Nolan was a repeat client and her original abuser?

All the Actives may experience trauma in one way or another, but Sierra's case is different. Repeat engagements with her original kidnapper/abuser? That's damage that runs deep.

Where was Ballard in this episode? (My theory is, you wrote this for season one and it got held over. Am I right?)

I like your juicy theory but Paul was absent for a much less interesting reason. We did have an exchange between Boyd and Topher that explained Paul's absence (Echo was on idle therefore Paul was given some downtime) but we had to cut that out for running time. We also had to cut a shirtless Topher bit from the end montage. DVD extras perhaps?

So Boyd is turning a blind eye to Echo's self-awareness, and Victor and Sierra are walking around holding hands and sharing a bed-coffin. Has the Dollhouse just gone completely soft all of a sudden?

Soft? Aren't we all softies? Don't we all want Sierra and Victor to hold hands and snuggle in a pod? Especially after Sierra's been through hell? We're giving you what you want America! Or the very small portion of America who watches us. And Boyd isn't necessarily turning a blind eye. He leaves an all access key card for Echo in her book. Which we may or may not deal with later. Tune in many weeks from now to find out what happens!

And finally, this episode felt, in general, like it had stronger ties to "Epitaph One" than any season two episode so far. And Sierra's violation feels like the leading edge of the apocalypse — what happened to her will happen, sort of, to everyone else. Is it just her bad luck to be the first casualty? Or are you making a statement about rape leading to dehumanization and depersonalization for everyone, not just the actual victim?

Wow. You must think we're smart or something. Yes? To what you said. In the question part. I'll go with yes.

Oh, and this is your spoiler warning: I'm going to assume you saw last night's episode already. If you haven't, go and watch it. Twice.

Dollhouse must have been testing our faith on purpose. I went into season two convinced this was one of the all-time great TV shows, exploring thorny issues of gender, power and identity in a way that few other shows ever manage to hint at. And then the season's first two episodes left me wondering if I'd just been hallucinating. Last week's serial killer/Chaucer mash-up was a huge leap in the right direction — but last night's episode, "Belonging," was the real thing. I totally apologize for saying Glee is better than Dollhouse.

So yes, this was definitely a prequel to the unaired "mindwiped Mad Max" episode, "Epitaph One," which is on the Dollhouse DVD set, and which must be watched multiple times to appreciate its awesomeness. Watch "Belonging" and "Epitaph One" back to back, and you'll see many of the same strands uniting them both, including Topher's remorse, Adelle's despair, and Rossum Corp.'s determination to treat all the Dolls like property. This is a major step forward on the road that leads to everyone on Earth being stripped of his or her identity at the whims of a few wealthy psychos.

But last night's episode didn't just give us a bit more insight into how our merry band of mind-erasers turned into basket cases in a world of shit. "Belonging" also answered one of the big questions lingering on from season one: Just how complicit were Adelle, Topher and the rest in the unspeakable violation of Sierra? Last year, we saw that the psycho-freak Nolan Kinnard had propositioned Sierra, and she'd repeatedly turned him down. So Kinnard had the Dollhouse erase her brain and program her to be in love with him — and now he (and anyone else with money) can have her whenever he wants. It was one of the creepiest episodes of this supremely creepy show, and it made us wonder just what monsters these Dollhouse people are. And now we know.

It turns out that Adelle and her crew didn't know about Kinnard's scheme to get the ultimate revenge on the woman who rejected him. Instead, Kinnard fooled them into thinking that she was a crazy lady who'd be better off as a Doll — he'd pumped her full of drugs to make her appear psychotic. (Because, I guess, mind-wiping actually changes your brain chemistry and can erase chemical problems in the brain?) And they just thought Kinnard was an especially avid client.

But last night, everyone learned the truth — and it's because Sierra's mind-wiping couldn't erase how she really feels about Kinnard. After every one of her lovey-dovey engagements with the man who enslaved and destroyed her, she paints black horrible shapes. Echo, who's rapidly gaining awareness, notices this and brings it to Topher, who starts poking around. And then we get the scene above, where the Rossum Corp. scumbag played by Keith Carradine basically tells Adelle that they're already slave-merchants, and she should get over herself. You can see how this leads directly to the notion that Carradine's character, or someone similar, should live in Victor's body full-time, which gets raised in "Epitaph One." (When I demanded a Sue Sylvester-like villain on Dollhouse the other day, I had in the back of my mind that Carradine was joining the show as a Rossum scumbag, but couldn't remember the details. He's pretty much just what I was hoping for though.)

So, there you have it: Dollhouse is pretty much admitting it's a show about rape. Sierra never consented to any of this, and whatever bleach Topher is pouring into her synapses isn't strong enough to erase her true feelings on the matter. And the repeated, systematic violation of Sierra is one of the early-arriving horse-people of the apocalypse. This kind of shit is what's going to bring the whole world down.

And just like Joss Whedon promised, we're starting to see the people in charge make defining choices. This time around, Adelle makes the wrong choice, and Topher kinda, sorta makes the right one — although, what exactly did he think would happen if he sent Sierra with her original personality, Priya Tsetsang, to confront Nolan Kinnard? How exactly was that going to turn out well? The slow emergence of Topher's conscience is one of the great marvels of the show, especially since we know how it's going to turn out. Last week, it was "Topher has ethical problems! Topher!" and this week, Topher finds out his great mitzvah, helping the crazy woman, was all wrong. Whiskey started the ball rolling, of course, and I'm actually perversely glad we get to see Topher stew over this without Whiskey/Claire there to torment him actively. It would be so much more clear-cut if Whiskey could stand over him and tell him how bad he is.

And of course, Dichen Lachman absolutely rocked out as Sierra/Priya — after Enver Gjokaj's standout episode last week, this was Lachman's turn to prove her mettle and she totally rocked. Both Fran Kranz and Lachman were amazing. Check out this scene from the end of the episode, the little pauses and gestures. You can see that Sierra really wants Topher to mind-wipe her, and Topher really doesn't want to do it. The way she sits back, like she's ready for her treatment. The way he closes his eyes. Great stuff.

And yes, Jonathan "Riker" Frakes did a great job directing this — it half makes me forgive him for the abomination that was Clockstoppers. The weird bit where we're seeing Topher's eye through a funny lens was flashy and neat, but a lot of the rest of the episode was understated and awesome.

And Eliza Dushku was great as Echo this time around, with the story of Echo's awakening taking some huge leaps forward. And her speech to Boyd about the coming storm was some nifty foreshadowing of the apocalyptic chaos we've already glimpsed. And Dushku had one of the most important speeches in the episode, about the nature of power, towards the beginning. It's easy to miss, but her beautifully delivered speech sets up a lot of the episode's themes:

No, sweetie. It's about the power. There's a ton of money in this room, but that's not power. Nolan's a medical genius, shortlisted for the Nobel — That's power. Art is power, because they (meaning the wealthy idiots) can't make it. So what if you make Nolan all cute and nervous? Why not ride that a little? Make them think they have the power. Our time will come.

There are so many ideas in there, it's hard to know where to start — Echo has been programmed by the Dollhouse to convince Priya that sleeping with Nolan is a good idea, and she does this by trying to convince Priya that she's the powerful one in this situation. She's powerful because she's the only one who can create her art, which is a limited commodity. And she's powerful because she's beautiful and can use her wiles to get Nolan to help her career. (It's a very "Wife Of Bath" notion.) Money isn't power, says the mindless plaything who's been programmed — at great expense — to say that.

Because, of course, money is power, or at least one of the manifestations of power. And the moment Priya tries to assert her actual power — simply by leaving the room — she gets cockblocked, and shortly afterwards, she no longer even exists as a person. And the whole rest of the episode proves, more or less, that people like Nolan really do have all the power. Unless you stab them repeatedly in the chest, and are lucky enough to know someone with amazing "cleaner" skills, like Boyd.

I think all along, I've championed Dollhouse not just because of its many moments of greatness, but also because of its potential — which is much greater than almost any other television show possesses. Dollhouse's concept, and its dark, complex characters, open up so many possibilities for storytelling about the stuff that we're all dealing with in our lives — the people who want to turn us into what they want us to be, the compromises we all make to get along — that if this show lives up to even a fraction of its potential, it will be legendary. So when an episode actually delivers on the show's wealth of possibility, I get frightfully excited.

My one quibble about this episode is, once again, the Dollhouse being awfully slack. Boyd spends a lot of time piecing together the signs that Echo is becoming way too sentient... and then does nothing about it. Meanwhile, Victor and Sierra are practically humping each other in the main spa concourse, and people just think it's cute. Weren't the dolls supposed to be... I dunno... kind of empty-headed when they're in their mindwiped state? A mere erection on Victor's part was cause for a red alert a year ago, and now it's "everything goes."

Random thought: I am willing to bet this episode was written for season one and held over — because Paul Ballard wasn't in it, and I have a feeling writers Maurisa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon wrote it for a Ballard-less Dollhouse, then couldn't revise it to make Ballard fit in.