Forty fairly boring minutes are somewhat redeemed by twenty good ones. In the beginning, Adelle tasks Boyd with finding Echo, who's wandering the streets of Medina, TX eating trash out of dumpsters and trying to remember what money is and getting impoverished Mexican women arrested and beating the crap out of the local law. Abruptly, we cut to three months later, and Adelle is serving tea while Keith Carradine has taken over the L.A. Dollhouse, and Adelle's none too happy about either of these things, especially since she's now inferior to Topher. Meanwhile, Echo is working in some hospital, and when a work-related errand takes her to the local jail, she discovers that same Mexican woman, who's been abused therein. When Echo speaks Spanish to the woman, we learn that she remembers their initial encounter even though she's acting like she doesn't, and it turns out this isn't the only secret she's been keeping -- Ballard found her at some point, and they've been working through Echo's memories of Caroline and her burgeoning feelings for Ballard brought on by his welcome inability to wear a shirt to get her skills under enough control to go back and take on the Dollhouse. Ballard has a conspirator in Boyd, and he tells him that he thinks Echo is getting worse physically as she keeps remembering and getting smarter. His analysis is borne out when Echo fakes the girl's death to try to get her out of the jail, but after the drug she uses to slow her heartbeat wears off at an inopportune moment, Echo gets hit with a massive migraine. When it wears off, though, she's better than ever, and she breaks the two of them out.

Back at the Dollhouse, Keith Carradine is running the place like a boys' club, while Topher, who's now in charge of Research and Development, unveils a new invention that obviates the imprint chair -- his disruptor, which will now remotely wipe any imprinted Doll from a distance of fifty yards. Turns out Topher has been sandbagging, though, and he pulls Adelle aside to tell her that he thinks Keith Carradine is hoping to build a device that could literally turn anyone into a Doll, and what's more, he's figured out how to do it. Adelle tells him his plans must never fall into Keith Carradine's hands -- but then steals them and passes them on to him. Keith Carradine is happy to reward this rather horrific betrayal by restoring Adelle's status, and Adelle in turn demotes Topher back to programming from R&D, giving him a healthy slap in the face to punctuate the new development and saying that no one will ever challenge her rule over the house. But at the end, Echo returns, and an untrusting Adelle puts her into isolation. Considering how things went at the jail, I'm not guessing that's going to hold her for long.