We flash back to "a few years ago" and learn that Sophie, the handler, who thanks to Caroline made an unexpected landing on her face, and a male associate of hers have lost track of their charges on a mission together. Oddly, Sophie is in charge of the female on the assignment, while the dude has the male -- I think every Doll/Handler pairing we've seen in the present has been opposite-sex, no? Anyway, the male handler, "Mr. Blevins," thinks Sophie's girl is a bad influence on his guy, which is pretty hilarious given what we're going to learn about Alpha's background, but Adelle is wholly uninterested in this kind of input from a subordinate at this juncture, and makes that sentiment known in as arch a manner as possible, which is one reason it's fun to keep her around. Blevins reports that it seems like Alpha knew they were watching him, causing Topher to babble defensively that he made it very clear that these imprints were prone to paranoia. "I flagged it in the paperwork." Heh, nice callback to Topher telling Claire that no one reads that stuff. Adelle asks, "just as a point of interest," how potentially lethal the imprints are, and Topher gives one of his hilarious faces in response...

...as we cut to a woman, her features obscured by the spotlights shining into the camera, dancing seductively. Given the circumstances, I was initially disappointed not to hear "Blue Velvet" on the soundtrack, but then I realized that what's actually playing is Roy Orbison's "In Dreams," which was used in Blue Velvet but is one degree less obvious, so sorry for doubting the episode even for a moment when it comes to the musical choices. Alpha has a dude named "Lars" naked and tied to a chair, and he's got the accent back, so we're meant to know that he's in his Bobby imprint. Now, I think this scene is ridiculous in concept even for this show, because we're meant to buy that this dude, a Dollhouse client, basically wrote himself into Natural Born Killers as a fantasy, but there's no discussion of the actual engagement, so... what were they all doing? If these two are as psychotic as they seem (which is borne out by how Echo's acting in the present), what were they all going to do together? Sit around and chat about how empowering it is to kill people while playing a rousing game of Big Bang Mini? Presumably, the Dollhouse wouldn't risk the safety of its Actives, nor would it use imprints that could potentially endanger a client without much better safeguards than they had here, and the fact that Adelle is only just now being like "So, um, these imprints are like, dangerous, or something?" is preposterous. And on top of that, once you grant the scenario, I think it's a hopeless dramatic cop-out that these two don't end up killing the client, even though I have no doubt they would eventually have gotten around to it. But now that I've voiced all that, here's what you need to know: Alpha got suspicious from, ironically enough, the presence of the van that was tailing them, so he took Lars to this hideout (we'll find out later it's an abandoned power plant), and now, he menaces him with a knife until he gives up the information that he and the girl are Dolls, and they're not on a cross-country crime spree or entangled in a doomed love -- because they're not real. Once he's heard all this, Alpha calls to "Crystal," who steps out of the light -- and she's Whiskey, not Echo, which you could see coming but is still an excellent development...