Dollhouse: Epitaph One – Giving the whole thing away

The DVD set is still a few days away, but with Comic-Con 2009 comes the reveal of the mysterious 13th episode, “Epitaph One.” Obviously, this post will contain spoilers, so if you are hiding from those until Fed-Ex drops off your very own set, you might want to just put a pin in this post and come back next week. It’s cool, we’ll wait for you. Also … if you are a hard core spoilerphobe, you really might want to just skip this episode altogether. Without giving anything away, I’ll just tell you that the entire episode serves as a huge collection of spoilers for season two. For anything more than that, you’ll have to join me on the other side of the handy link.

The 13th episode already had quite a history behind it, even before anyone got a look at it. From the scrapped pilot, to the will-they-or-won’t-they back and forth over whether it would ever air … an unaired episode garnered more press than a show that only manages three million viewers could ever expect. Now that it’s here, though, the interesting bit is how it came to be and what it means for the show going forward.

Taking that first bit, my best guess is that nobody was very confident about the show’s prospects when they sat down to put this episode together. By then, the scheduling shenanigans had happened and that Friday night death slot was looming large. Add to that the fact that, despite public pronouncements of wanting to build a Friday night, the network was clearly not as hot on the show as they once were. It leads me to believe that “Epitaph One” was the insurance policy. Yes, it would suck if the show was canceled after one season, but at least this way it wouldn’t go out as another grand mystery with no resolution. The answers are right here.

Now that the show has been picked up for the second season, that presents something of a problem. Essentially, the lion’s share of the story is now spoiled. We know what’s going to happen, and who is behind it all. Any mystery about Rossum has been shattered, and we even know the ultimate fates of  some of the players. Sure, there are still a lot of stories to tell, and the episode did drop some rather mysterious references, like, “You don’t want to end up like November.”

But really, there is a season’s worth of great scenes, that could all be the OMG moment for their own episode, tucked away in this one unaired gem. Ambrose/Victor telling DeWitt that, “We at Rossum now provide select clients with complete anatomy upgrades.” Topher’s breakdown. Dominic’s return and his smug satisfaction as he asks, “How’s it feel to end the world Ms. DeWitt?” Echo and Paul forming a partnership. The technology leaking. Alpha and Safehaven. It’s just stuffed full of great bits, any of which could carry the mail for their own 44 minutes. While it does present a problem, just the fact that all of that stuff is in there makes it a great episode. And makes it all the more curious that FOX didn’t want to pony up to show it.

The other part of how this show relates to season two, apart from the story, is the look. If you’ve been playing along with the home game you know that Joss Whedon made this episode on the cheap. And the fact that he could do that played a role in getting the series renewed. So, “Epitaph One” offers a glimpse of what that new season will look like. I have to say, it looks pretty good. There might be less locations, and we might lose a fancy gadget or two, but overall it felt very much like the Dollhouse we already know.

Getting back to the story of this episode, and ignoring the weird “spoil the series” angle, I thought the future setting worked very well. It played off of so many things that we saw, or suspected, from the first 12 episodes. The fear of technology because you can be wiped remotely, a furthering of what we saw with Echo in “Gray Hour.” The anatomy upgrades were something everyone suspected as a future possibility, especially after seeing the short run version in “Haunted.” And if you remember, Boyd referred to that as the beginning of the end. Even Topher’s breakdown gets back to the question of how can normal people work for the Dollhouse. It even answered that big lingering question, “Does anyone actually complete their contract and get out of the Dollhouse?” Clearly, no. At least, not through the actions of Rossum.

Overall, I think it was a very cool addition to the series and will probably still serve as a great series finale once the show has finished its run. I’m not sure what is going to be done to bring some surprise back to some of those mysteries that have now been solved, but even with that issue, it has left me more excited for season two than I was before. And that’s a win right there. Finally, I’m also awarding one gold star for excellence in vocabulary thanks to Topher’s line after meeting Dominic. “Whence the clown?” Folks just don’t use whence like they used to.

Clacked by Brett Love
on Jul 24, 2009 @ 14:00 EST5EDT