Dollhouse: Drinking on the Job Is Perfectly Acceptable behavior

Hey Gasmi, what you been doing with yourself for the past month? Have you been enjoying those Bones and House reruns Fox trotted out for sweeps? No? Well don’t worry because Dollhouse is back, so make the jump and see what’s the newest trend in acceptable work behavior.

Our episode starts backstage with Senator Nosey Pants and Mrs. Senator Nosey Pants spending a little quick quality time together and getting us, the audience up to speed on what’s been going on in the Dollhouse world since we last checked in with the gang. It turns out our Senator has been a busy boy. He’s gone through all those not so top secret Rossum Corporation records that the clue fairy dropped off a couple of episodes back and is ready to lay the smack down on our favorite evil corporation. But first he and the Mrs. Spend a little time saying they luvvvv each other forever and ever and how he’s her white knight and she’s his damsel. Ugh, this is the best 20 second spot for the benefits of dieing alone you’ll see on TV this year.

Anyway, it’s over pretty quick, and an aide shows up to tell him he’s on. Senator Nosey Pants and the Mrs. kiss one more time, and after he’s introduced as “Mr. Please, Please, Please, and The Hardest Working Man in Show Business (hey it’s not like James Brown is using those nicknames any more), it’s show time!

Senator Nosey Pants rolls out for his press conference to tell the press that the urban legends about people being abducted for white slavery and worse are true, and he has proof the Dollhouse is behind all of these shenanigans. All the reporters are shocked, and I can’t blame them, my money was on Willard Scott, sorry he’s always looked shifty to me.

There’s a big hub bub and when it settles down Senator introduces the world to his proof and A#1 witness, Big Face Girl. Big Face gets up and gives a quick little speech that boils down to “Dollhouse bad, poor wittle me, boo-hoo-hoo.”

Okay, maybe she’s got more to say, but Senator cuts her off, and tells the reporters that’s just a taste but if they want the complete real deal poop, then they need to show up at his Senate committee in DC where Big Face Girl will do the Full Monty.

We cut from this to Keith Caradine, who is back as DeWitt’s evil boss, and he’s, well, pretty evil pissed. He cuts off the TV and proceeds to rip DeWitt a tasteful new one for Big Face showing up on TV, and come to think of it for letting her out of her gig early in the first place. Wow, it does sound like a pooch got screwed when Keith lays it out like that. DeWitt takes her ass chewing pretty well, and asks KC if he wants her to do anything. KC tells her not to worry about, she can just spend a little quiet time thinking about being on his evil poop list and he exits stage left.

Agent Pucker Face, who is present at this meeting for a reason known only to the screenwriter, asks DeWitt why KC is so low key about somebody putting all of Rossum’s evil laundry in the street. DeWitt explains that obviously somebody in the company is out to destroy her. Incidentally, this is also the mindset of every assistant manager at Wendy’s. DeWitt says somebody inside Rossum is using Senator Nosey Pants, and they need to find out who and how.

We cut to a shot of Boyd, Agent Pucker Face and Topher in a room watching clips of Senator Nosey Pants. Everyone is trying to figure out the deal with this guy, but all they have found out so far is that the guy is perfect. He comes from a big deal political family and he seems hell bent on tearing Rossum a new one.

This is when Echo wanders into the scene and immediately announces there is something wrong with Mrs. Nosey Pants. This is right when we see a TV clip where Nosey Pants is telling some TV interviewer how he meet the ball and chain, little woman, the love of his life three years ago, and she is just so gosh darn perfect somebody must have made her for him. Everyone in the room has their light bulbs go off for this crack, because they just so happen to make perfect people and know how you end up with one.

The next thing we see is Agent Pucker Face in with DeWitt telling her all the inconsistencies in Mrs. Nosey Pant’s permanent record (for starters, she didn’t come in third on season 5 of Dancing With the Stars). DeWitt and APF decide she must be one of those sleeper assassin agents like Big Face Girl was last season, and if Senator Nosey Pants keeps making with the Nosey Pants she will probably off him or more likely, Big Face Girl, in some spectacularly violent way that the guys in Fox’s Standards and Practices won’t have a problem with. DeWitt and Pucker Face then decide they have to rescue Big Face Girl, which is a good plan if for on other reason, then to give us a plot for tonight’s episode.

This leads us to seeing Boyd brief Agent Pucker Face on the safe house he’ll have to break into to rescue Big Face Girl. Of course this gets interrupted because DeWitt wants to make sure APF knows exactly what he’s getting into if he has to go up against Mrs. Nosey Pants. This allows DeWitt to show a clip from last season, where when she heard the code word, Big Face Girl, turned into a heartless killing machine on that D-bag handler who raped Sierra. Agent Pucker Face gets totally uncomfortable watching this, mainly because Big Face Girl was programmed to be his neighbor and the ultimate doormat, codependent girl friend (okay, and get in some quality spying on Agent Pucker Face back when he was an actual agent), and the whole time he was bonking her, Agent PF was nursing a serious stiffy for Echo. The main thing DeWitt wants APF to take away from this is if he isn’t ready to lay the smack down on Mrs. Nosey Pants, then he could get killed.

That’s cheery news, and we cut over to Big Face Girl, who just happens to be looking at pictures of her laying the big hurt on the aforementioned D-bag rapist. Big Face Girl is getting all boo-hooey over this, but luckily Mrs. Nosey Pants just happens to be hanging out with her and is ready to cheer her up. Mrs. Nosey Pants tells Big Face Girl it isn’t her fault because she didn’t kill that guy, the Rossum Corporation did. Oh really? Well in that case, someone should tell the Rossum Corporation that the outift they were wearing when they killed that guy made their ass look huuuuuuge.

She kind of cheers Big Face Girl up, which is a good thing because she gets a phone call from Senator Nosey Pants who wants to let her know he needs to do some important senator work in his hotel room. Right, well the one positive thing I will say about that, is senators do seem to get more important work done in hotel rooms then in men’s rooms stalls down at the airport.

We cut back to Agent Pucker Face and Dewitt and we get good news. Thanks to Topher, Agent Pucker Face won’t have to worry about getting Chris Brown on Mrs. Nosey Pants. It turns out Toper has made a gizmo that will give any doll a bloody nose and make them pass out. He calls it a disruptor, but it looks like a lot like a flashlight to me. This is good news, but Topher and DeWitt both look super guilty when they admit it will work on Big Face Girl too, even though they supposedly took out all of their gadgets from her brain when they let her go.

Agent Pucker Face legs it out to rescue Big Face, and Boyd finds Echo and asks her if she wants a treatment. Echo is up for that until she remembers that if she gets her treatment she won’t be able to help Big Face Girl. Boyd is very polite and tells her if she gets her treatment, she’ll still be able to help Big Face Girl, and probably be able to do a better job it. This makes sense, because unless Big Face Girl needs somebody to hold a yoga pose for three minutes, Dollhouse Echo doesn’t exactly set the world on fire.

Meanwhile, over at the hotel suite of hard work, Senator Nosey Pants is pouring himself a Big Gulp of scotch while talking with his assistant on the phone. Drinking and work at the same time Nosey Pants? Well why not, it’s multitasking, right? My boss is always on me about that. (Note to self, bring vodka to work tomorrow. Additional note to self, pick out what we are going to wear to the unemployment office the day after tomorrow.)
Nosey Pants has a nice chug a lug and tells his assistant that he’s a little sleepy, and he’s going to call it a night. Well he’s not setting the world on fire productivity-wise, but as we all know, it’s hard to get in trouble when you’re passed out.

Whoops, looks like I spoke too soon. When we come back from commercial, Nosey Pants wakes up in bed with Echo. Oh it gets better, well for us, for Nosey Pants, not so much. He’s down to his tighty whities and Echo is in her undies too, and just to capture that Kodak moment, she’s videotaping them. Oh just one thing, Echo isn’t Echo here, she’s Brie the hookeriest hooker you’ll meet in the 9:00 time slot.

Nosey Pants is having the same poop himself reaction that all politicians have when they are in bed with a hooker while being videotaped when they didn’t pay extra for it up front. He gets over his blind panic and figures out the score as soon as Hooker Echo tells him her bosses have a message for him, “back off.” As soon as Nosey Pants hears this, he knows Echo is a Doll, and tells her they need to go see his wife. Hmmm? He just did it with a floozy and he wants to take her home to meet the wife? Here’s where you get to insert your own cheap Tiger Woods joke into the post. See, isn’t reading more fun when we talk about hookers? Errr, I mean when it’s interactive?

Agent Pucker Face is over at the safe house where they are keeping Big Face Girl. He’s talking with Boyd over the radio, and we watch Boyd use their computer to take down all the safe house security cameras. Once this digital coolness is done, Pucker Face moves in to get his Mission Impossible on.

Hooker Echo and Senator Nosey Pants are driving across town to hook up with Nosey Pants’ wife, and he is telling Hooker Echo what she is, a doll, who other people imprint personalities into and use like a puppet. Hooker Echo is polite but you can tell she thinks Nosey Pants is nuttier then a fruitcake baked by Tom Cruise, and you know the plot of the show does sound a little silly when Nosey Pants explains it. Note to Hollywood producers, using Nosey Pants as the narrator to your documentary is a bad, bad, bad idea.

Pucker Face finds the Big Face Girl inside, and she poops a kitten as soon as she sees this guy who works for the Dollhouse and saw her naked to boot. Pucker Face is trying to convince her that she should come with him, but she’s not buying. This is a little strange, because most women will go anywhere with a man who breaks into their room. Oh wait, they don’t. Never mind, scratch that.

Just when it becomes pretty obvious that if Agent Pucker Face wants Big Face Girl to come with him he’s going to have to pick her up, Mrs. Nosey Pants wanders into the scene. Luckily for Pucker Face he has Topher’s Flashlight of Doom and tells the Mrs. to back off. Mrs. Nosey Pants looks at Pucker Face like he just admitted he medaled seven times at the last Special Olympics, so Pucker Face has to start making the electro-magnetic smack down.

It works like a charm. Hooker Echo and Senator Nosey Pants have just shown up, so it not only drops Big Face Girl to her knees, but Hooker Echo too. Wait, did I say it works like a charm? Maybe not so much, because Mrs. Nosey Pants is still looking at Pucker Face like he’s a blue ribbon moron.

Pucker Face finally figures out what is going on, Mrs. Nosey Pants isn’t a Doll, too bad for Pucker Face, as soon as he figures this out, he gets gang tackled by a couple of goons.

We then see Big Face Girl on her knees with a nose bleed and looking totally wiped out. The camera cuts to Hooker Echo who is on her knees too and has the same nose bleed. Then the camera cuts over to Senator Nosey Pants, and he’s got a nose bleed too. Oh shitskis! He’s a Doll! (To be I honest I didn’t see that plot twist coming, and loved it like that pony Santa should be leaving in my apartment in 19 days.)

I’ll say it again, I did not see this one coming.

We go back to LA where Toper has called for DeWitt and Boyd to come into his office. He tells them that Echo just got zapped with his disruptor, and they figure out that Echo is at the safe house now too. They flip on the building’s security cameras and see that Echo and Nosey Pants both have nose bleeds. Everyone has read the script so they know this means Nosey Pants is a doll and that makes Mrs. Nosey Pants his handler. DeWitt gets us up to speed, telling us that somebody at Rossum is either using the senator to go after their specific Dollhouse, or the company is pulling off a super duper evil conspiracy. This leads us in to Topher saying one of my favorite lines of the night as Echo drives off with Nosey Pants; “Um guys, Echo just kidnapped the conspiracy.”

Echo is in the car and she is remembering a lot of stuff, mainly that the Dollhouse routinely crams personalities into her that aren’t her own. Still, they all share an affection for hooker boots, go figure.

Nosey Pants still can’t admit he’s a doll and just wants to talk to his wife. Ugh, sack up sissy boy. Luckily for the plot and my sense of manliness, Echo ignores his whining and keeps speeding like a maniac all over town.

It’s the next morning and Mrs. Nosey Pants tells one of her goons to load up Big Face, because they are taking their act on the road and then goes in to have a little chat with Pucker Face. Well it’s not much of a chat, Pucker Face has figured out she’s Nosey Pants handler, and she is kind of impressed with the Little Flashlight of Doom, curious about why the LA Dollhouse is interfering with what they are doing but not enough to keep Pucker Face alive. She tells the goon in this room she wants Pucker Face dead in the LA River. Wow, that last part was cold. I mean my bosses hate the HR Department but we haven’t taking to offing them yet. Man the Rossum company Christmas Party is either horrible, or completely awesome.

We cut back to Echo and Nosey Pants who are still driving all over town. Nosey Pants is trying to get Echo to head back and talk with his wife, when it hits him. His whole life is balloon juice. We see a super fast montage of scenes from his life, and he tells Echo to stop the car. He’s freaking big time and asks Echo who he is and Echo tells him she thinks he’s a doll like her.

Back at the Dollhouse Toper enters DeWitt’s office stage left, and has the complete skinny on Nosey Pants. For starters Nosey Pants isn’t a Doll programmed to take Nosey Pants place. He’s Nosey Pants, but someone has turned him into a Doll version of himself. Topher tells DeWitt that Nosey Pants’ family was very politically connected, but he was a screw up well into his 30′s when Mrs. Nosey Pants came into his life, and then he turned into wonder politician. DeWitt is chewing on this information when she gets a phone call.

We immediately cut back to Pucker Face who is about to get his brains blown out. Too bad for the goon Pucker Face unleashes a hellacious kung fu ass whipping, oh and did I mention Pucker Face’s hands are cuffed? He takes out the goon pretty quick, which is a good thing, because that other goon comes in the room as soon as he’s done, but our boy Pucker takes him down too.

You know I have to say, this show has the best fight scenes on TV. They are hard, tigh,t and I know this word makes no sense if you haven’t seen them, but they’re crunchy too. Anyway, good job cast and crew of Dollhouse, you guys make violence awesome. Well violence on TV and in movies is already awesome, so I guess awesomer? What? More awesome? That seems a little wordy. What? Yes I got a D in high school English, what’s your point? Anyway, Pucker Face gets uncuffed, takes one of the goons’ plane tickets and exits stage right.

We go back to the Dollhouse and Boyd has called DeWitt and Toper down to his office. He’s been tracking Echo and tells them she’s stopped in one place. DeWitt asks if she’s been captured, and Boyd isn’t sure, but he knows somebody took out the retrieval team he sent out to pick up Echo. DeWitt responds to this news like somebody told her they are all going out after work to see Larry the Cable Guy. She doesn’t get to poop on camera though because just then the phone rings and it’s Echo.

DeWitt talks with Echo, and finds out Echo has no idea what is going on, but thinks a treatment would really hit the spot right now. Nosey Pants grabs the phone, he might not know who he is, but he knows treatments are bad news. DeWitt explains to him that he’s mainly Nosey Pants, but somebody got busy in his noggin and made him a productive member of society. DeWitt is then all set to clue Nosey Pants in on his wife when that particular love of his life comes driving up.

Mrs. Nosey Pants tells Nosey Pants she doesn’t care that he’s been joy riding around LA all night with a hooker while not wearing a tie; the important thing right now is for him to get in her car. Echo thinks this is a bad idea, but Nosey Pants wants to work things out with his wife [you can insert another cheap Tiger Woods joke here. Come on, you know you have more then one.] Anyway Mrs. NP gets him going on that whole white knight beautiful damsel bit. This turns out to be a notso hotso idea, because Nosey Pants flashes back to being in a Dollhouse in the chair and her reading her parts off a piece of paper.

He poops a…well I already used a brick and kitten so far this post right? Basketball? Good, he poops a basketball and wants to get the hell away from Mrs. Nosey Pants. Mrs. NP realizing that the make nice part of the talk is over pulls out a gun. Too bad for her while telling Nosey Pants to get in the damn car, she gives Echo a smack in the head. This gives the screenwriter an excuse to use that bit where when Echo gets smacked upside the head, whichever personality they need to get the show through the third act shows up. In this case it’s mainly that bad ass ninja girl who wailed on Pucker Face last season, but thanks to several handy flashbacks, we see that just about everybody who was Echo last season gets in at least one swing on Mrs. Nosey Pants.

When Echo finishes feeding Mrs. Nosey Pants her hungry man dinner of whoopass she tells Nosey Pants to come with her. Nosey Pants points out that her guys are bad guys, but Echo makes the call of the night when she points out her bad guys aren’t as bad as his bad guys and we leave them getting into their car.

Pucker Face shows up and the airport and just happens to catch Big Face Girl as she’s going inside. He tells her she’s making a mistake and she gets him to spill the beans about how she was spying on him last season and her getting let go from the Dollhouse was a condition for him to sign up with Team Bad Guy. Big Face Girl thinks he is telling the truth but she still wants to go to DC, Pucker Face tells her this is a mistake, and she makes a little speech about how if people are really free they get to make mistakes.

Pucker Face makes a face like he’s sucking on two lemons off camera instead of one, but he lets her go. Okay, can somebody help me out here? What are the benefits of being a good guy again?

Well okay, Big Face Girl is going to Washington, but Echo’s got the senator and that has to count for something, right? Ummmm no. It looks like while we were watching Pucker Face and Big Face Girl that Mrs. Nosey Pants managed to wake up from her beating and turn on the Flashlight of Doom before Echo and Nosey Pants could get away. We see their car pulled off on the side of the street and Mrs. Nosey Pants walking over as ominously as anyone who weighs 107 pounds soaking wet, in a black pantsuit can look.

Back at the Dollhouse Topher tells DeWitt that somebody completely wiped Echo’s GPS tracker and bio thingamajigs from his computer, which should be impossible. DeWitt’s day gets much more crappier, because Boyd calls her up and he’s at where Echo and the senator were at, but they are both gone. DeWitt tells Boyd to call Pucker Face and see if he’s picked up Big Face Girl yet. Oh boy, am I the only one wondering if it’s going to be three containers of Haugen Daz ice cream for DeWitt when she gets home tonight?

Pucker Face’s phone goes off and he sees it’s from Boyd. He hits the ignore button and just wanders off camera.

Boyd comes back to the Dollhouse and tells DeWitt they are now officially light one Pucker Face. Then DeWitt clues Boyd into just what has happened and why. The Rossum Corporation is letting Big Face Girl testify, because if Nosey Pants is a Doll, then they can control the investigation and only screw over the LA Dollhouse. Oh and as an added benefit Nosey Pants will be able to get whatever laws Rossum wants through Congress and nobody will be able to stop them.

Boyd asks Dewitt what they are going to do and DeWitt stops chug a lugging from her Big Gulp of scotch to tell him two words. Stop them. God Damn, she may act like a long metal rod has been inserted up her rectum and even though she’s had employees killed and their brains emptied out, DeWitt is one kick ass boss in my book.

After that little rousing pep talk we go over to the casa de bad guys, translation the Washington DC Dollhouse. It’s very light and airy, and we meet the head tech geek, Bennett, played by Summer Glau. Here’s all you need to know about Bennett, she’s super smart, dresses like a school girl, okay a school girl with super cute half glasses who has one arm in Doctor Strangelove sling, and is completely and totally out of her gourd. How crazy is she? Keep reading and you’ll see.

We meet her when her assistant, a big boned girl who wants to gossip about them picking up an LA Doll when they got their missing senator back. Bennett reminds the big boned gal that people at the Dollhouse who gossip tend to wake up without their minds.

Big boned gal gets her mind back in the game and she and Bennett talk about what they are going to do when they bring the senator in. Okay, Bennett talks and big boned gal listens, but they hash out a plan.

They meet Senator Nosey Pants and when Bennett sees Echo’s face she suddenly decides she is going to work on them alone. Alone, alone, alone! Those last three alones? Said pretty much exactly as Bennett said them. Whenever the conversation doesn’t go her way she starts talking to herself in the creepiest way possible. Man, you just know she’s got a room full of those creepy dolls that stare at you back at where ever she lives.

Before she gets started on her brain washing, she and Mrs. Nosey Pants have a little talk. Mrs. Nosey Pants gives Bennett the Flashlight of Doom, and Bennett is as excited as a kid at Christmas. She knows right away Topher made it, and says she’s always wanted to meet his tech.

Then she and Mrs. Nosey Pants go in to wakey wakey Senator Nosey Pants. Senator Nosey Pants is freaking and asking Bennett not to take away his mind. Bennett points out it hasn’t been his for a long time, and what makes this scene extra bad for Nosey Pants is it’s no obvious the Mrs. hates him, and is really rubbing it in that they are going to wipe his mind and turn him into a slave again.

Bennett decides she needs some alone time and kicks the Mrs. out of the room. Now that everyone is gone Bennett can get down to serious business. She heads into this room where Echo is at. She calls Echo Caroline, and says she always said she’d come back for Bennett. Then Bennett says “Let’s play,” and flips this switch and whatever she did it’s making Echo jump around on the table like a frog with an electrode up her wazoo. The last we see of them the room is lit by flashing light like an old Frankenstein movie, and Bennett is disconnecting the security camera. The End.

Wow, what an episode, almost worth the one frigging month wait for it. By the way, fox executives? Burn in hell!

“Oh please, she didn’t kill you.” A great line from DeWitt to Pucker Face, when she was telling him about Big Face Girl, being a sleeper agent when they were going steady last season. Even better with the eye roll DeWitt gives it when she says it.

“Isn’t she cute? I love it when a doll’s name is so on the nose. Because she weighs one kilo? It’s a unit of measurement? So alone.” This is one of my favorite Topher lines of the night. Have I mentioned how it sucked waiting a whole month for it? And have I mentioned my Christmas wish for Fox executives to burn in hell?

I’d love to get into what I think of Summer Glau’s character, but I’ll save that for my next recap. Suffice to say; right now I’m really enjoying her.

Hey, speaking of the next recap. I’ll try to get it up in the next couple of days. I don’t know how well I’m going to do with two recaps every week for this show, but I’ll do my best to keep up.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by and we’ll talk soon.