For some reason we get to see Echo birthing a baby in a cabin on top of a mountain. Real sensible use of money to hire a fake midwife with no memory to deliver your baby. Then, post-wipe, we get to see Echo eating lunch (which consists of lettuce) as she, Victor and Sierra all sit and have mindless chatter about nothing (since they have no memories of anything, including why they are sitting near each other). Then they discuss working out and munch on more lettuce, while Topher freaks out because they are just like bison.
Finally we get to the action, when Echo gets hired out as Taffy, a hot chick who is working a bachelor party. She has a tendency to say "blue skies" a lot, in the same exact way that Dushku used to say "five by five," and it drives me kind of bananas, but it's somewhat relevant later, so I'm griping about it now. Then we see Taffy running through the halls looking like she's been roughed up by the groom-to-be, and the head of security comes and whisks her away to his office, which is in the shady basement of the fancy hotel. He offers her 10 grand to keep her mouth shut and not sue, at which point she knees him in the face and knocks him out. Turns out Echo isn't programmed to be a whore (for a change) but instead she's a thief-for-hire. At this point, it is the kickass Dushku that doesn't drive me crazy, until she wiggles her fingers and says "blue skies" again. Then there's some gratuitous shots of her in a bra talking about how fabulous her rack is. Which, it is pretty nice, but, come ON. Anyway, she and the bachelor party boys are down in the basement to take advantage of the "gray hour" happening in the building next door, which is basically some sort of code for the time when the security systems get updated. After a little explosion, they end up in a vault filled with stolen art. The "old stuff expert" is all kinds of giddy when he finds out that they are stealing part of the Parthenon, specifically the Elgin Marbles. Then Old Stuff Guy tries to make off with the stolen goods, and locks Taffy in the vault with two more robbers. Echo/Taffy calls Boyd for back-up, hears a weird static noise and then snaps out of Taffy mode and back into vacant Echo mode. Cute thief boy Vitas tries to slap her out of it. It doesn't work. Back at HQ, Topher's freaking out, because he determines that Echo has been wiped remotely, even though he insists that was totally impossible. But sure enough, she's babbling like a baby and staring at the paintings like she's never seen a Picasso before. And then, just to restate the freaking obvious, she longingly gazes at a landscape of a mountain with big, open, blue skies. Seriously? Do we need this hammered home so heavy-handedly?
So while Topher tries to figure out the problem, they activate Sierra, but she's Taffy, too, or Taffy 2, I guess. She even says "blue skies," because Topher specifically engineered this thief to have the most annoying catchphrase of all time. Taffy 2 tries to talk Echo through cracking the lock on the door, but that goes awry and the cops come blasting in. Vitas tries to shoot his way out, and threatens Echo, until she attacks him. The other nameless, tech-y thief, who was injured at some point along the way, tries to help Echo escape unscathed, and she carries him out. Because even though Echo is clueless, she's still a good person. Or at least that's what it seems like.
Back at HQ, they wipe Echo's mind, which seems strange, since it's really Echo's mind and they're not just taking Taffy away, but she seems to be back to "normal." Topher's like, "I'm so awesome. I fixed her." But then he goes to see Adele, and he quickly puts together that Alpha was responsible for the remote wipe... and he could do it again. Then Topher literally says he's scared like a little girl, which is the most ridiculous piece of dialogue on this show so far, with the worst delivery ever. And Adele gives Topher higher-level clearance so they can put their heads together to stop Alpha from striking again.
In a totally random storyline that's happening on a different show, Adele wants to mess with Ballard, and she does this by dispatching Victor to his house. Victor wants some sort of witness protection for giving Ballard top-secret intel. Ballard disappears for like most of the show, then comes back and tells Victor that he should lay low and that he's basically become America's Most Wanted. Which is Ballard's way of getting back at the Dollhouse, apparently.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!
After an establishing shot of a mountainside cottage, we cut to Echo...being a midwife in a home birth? Not sure why a Doll would be needed for this, unless part of the job was climbing up the cliff like a sherpa. Maybe they're trying to tie in a birth theme to Echo's story, but they really need to be careful about making sure the engagements make sense or the show will be unwatchable. Also, they do the cheap setup where we hear the moaning and get a closeup of the woman writhing before it becomes clear what's going on, and now I feel like taking a shower to wash the Fox off of me. The mother-to-imminently-be is in plenty of pain, so Echo tries to distract her by asking her and her significant other how they met, but it doesn't work for long, most likely because the relevant details are dreadfully banal. Echo then breaks the news that the baby is a little big for the birth canal, and after an unfunny comment about lesbians from the admitted former frat boy, Echo gets the woman to push. She babbles about not wanting to forget the experience, which ensures that her baby will be familiar with on-the-nose dialogue from the very beginning of her life...
...and then we see the familiar stream of jumbled memories that signals a mindwipe before the chair rises and Echo and Topher have the appropriate verbal exchange...
...and then later, in the atrium, Echo's sitting with some food when Sierra appears and looks around uncertainly. When Echo offers a greeting, though, she happily joins her, and the two of them talk about their day in simplistic terms. When Sierra repeats dialogue we've heard from Echo before when she says she tries to be her best, though, Echo asks, "Are you?" This is a bit of a script change, and Sierra honestly admits she doesn't know how to figure out the answer to that question. Echo says she thinks it's best if you always try, and when she turns to her left for agreement with that sentiment, we see that Victor has joined them. He dimly says that every day is a chance to be better, which is interesting, because it suggests that even in this childlike state, there's a desire for them to be more than they are. Or perhaps I'm reading into the bubblegum wisdom a little too much.
Upstairs, Topher observes that the three of them have been spending a lot of time together. Boyd asks if that means they remember each other, but Topher thinks that's impossible, because the mindwipes are clean. "This goes deeper than memory, into instinctual survival patterns." Just as well they don't have any young around to eat. He goes on about herd mentality, prompting Boyd to opine that they're not bison. Topher: "They're a little bit bison!" Boyd points out they weren't always, and Topher answers that they signed up for the gig. Boyd: "So we're told." Well, honestly.
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