Episode Report Card Couch Baron: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Wash And Go
By Couch Baron | Season 1 | Episode 11 | Aired on 05.01.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The title refers to an assignment involving Echo, a troubled girl, and the Grimms' original Sleeping Beauty, but that subplot is just a framing device and is dropped completely twenty minutes in, so it's not worth discussing further here, particularly when so much awesome stuff happened, to wit:
Ballard apparently thought better of telling Mellie the truth, and he instead informs her he's leaving. She heartbreakingly tries to get him to stay, but he stands firm and bails, driving her to contemplate jumping off an overpass before her handler intervenes. By following her, Ballard finds the entrance to the Dollhouse, which just so happens to be on a street called Flower (somewhat ham-handedly tying in to the Briar Rose theme), which he reports back to Aisha Hinds. He deduces that there's a building under the one he saw, and some further deduction about self-contained environmental systems they're using leads him to Alan Tudyk, which is totally awesome. Alan Tudyk, as it turns out, is an agoraphobic pothead -- and also, apparently, designed the Dollhouse. Ballard yanks Alan Tudyk out of his apartment in order to try to save Caroline, and the two of them successfully invade the Dollhouse. After Ballard tasers Topher, he gets Alan Tudyk to a computer so he can safely let Caroline out of her pod. Ballard goes upstairs and, after leaving Mellie in her bed, finds Echo -- but Boyd catches him, and the two of them have a knock-down drag-out as Alan Tudyk keeps working away on the computer. With a timely assist from Echo, Boyd captures Ballard and takes him to Adelle, who suggests they put him in the chair, but her attention is soon occupied by other business.
An encrypted flash drive mysteriously shows up for Laurence, so in order to retrieve the data, Boyd and Adelle imprint Victor with Laurence's personality, and he freaks out upon realizing his body is in the Attic, so they sedate him. Once the drugs have made him more tractable, Laurence-in-Victor (and Enver Gjokaj does a superb Laurence Dominic) tells him the drive isn't from the NSA, but from Alpha, and once they figure out the password to get it open, they find a picture of a statue of Paul Bunyan in Tucson -- the location of Alpha's latest killing. Also, it looks like Claire's a Doll, from the way Laurence calls her "Whiskey" out of nowhere. Adelle orders Sierra, as an FBI-trained forensic specialist, sent to investigate, but nothing happens on that front -- at least not before at the Dollhouse, Alpha reveals himself -- as Alan Tudyk. I guessed that only about ten minutes before it happened, and still wasn't completely sure, so for me it wasn't at all disappointing. Alpha slashes Victor's pretty face up and seems like he's going to reopen Claire's old wounds, but instead, he has Claire call Echo in there. He then puts Echo in the chair and imprints her, and when she comes out of it, they full-on make out like Bonnie and Clyde and get the heck out of there. And I don't think anyone was expecting that.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!A guy in an alley looks around in a dumpster for some reason, and when he moves some trash, he uncovers a hand. He looks more closely, but soon learns two things about said hand: One, it is attached to a rather muscular arm, and two, it's going to choke the life out of him. Now, I assumed on first viewing that this dude was a homeless guy looking for dinner, and were that the case, you could argue that the hand was simply acting in self defense. However, we learn later that the man is not in fact some random homeless guy who happened to be in the wrong dumpster at the wrong time, but was the specific target of the well-muscled owner of the well-muscled hand, so let me ask you this: How did the well-muscled owner of the well-muscled hand know this particular person would be rooting around in this particular dumpster on or about this particular hour? But anyway...
...Echo is reading the Grimms' Fairy Tale Briar Rose to a bunch of kids, all of whom seem to appreciate the story, save one girl who pipes up that the story is "crap," and goes on to point out that Briar Rose was a total moron for wandering through the castle touching random spindles despite having heard that one such spindle would poison her, "especially when I think she might have actually had a vague idea of what the hell a spindle is!" Girl's on track to be a recapper kind of early, but what the hell, there's nothing wrong with being career-oriented. Echo mildly suggests that Briar Rose's parents didn't tell her about the Curse Of The Poisoned Spindle, but the girl (her name's Susan, as is this particular personality of Echo's, which is no coincidence, as we'll learn) flips out, saying maybe if they had told her, she could have protected herself. After she grabs the book away from Echo and rips out some pages, she's forcibly extracted from the room, and then the female administrator of the place (an orphanage or child-services home, it seems) dismisses the other kids before opining that something in the story must have reminded Susan of what she's been through. I've been watching Golden Girls reruns practically nonstop since Bea Arthur's sad passing, so you won't be surprised when I give the administrator here the Rose Nylund Deductive Reasoning Award for her conclusion. Echo, however, tells Rose Nylund she thought the story might have that effect, as it always set her off when she was younger, and she was told there was a girl in this place she could help. "I was gonna ask you to point her out -- guess I didn't have to." Considering her reaction to the story made rabies victims seem untroubled by comparison, I'd agree.