Every week, our Drive-in Drive-by Columnist, John P. Higgins will turn his inexorable eye to the Dollhouse. Why? Because as much as many a fanboi (or gurl) may love Joss Whedon, he’s delved deep into the realm of schlock on this one, and hell-sometimes we need a guide. As usual, these will be full-on humorific synopsis-given in a fairly stream-of-consciousness style, so consider yourself spoiler-warned.-The Management

Synopsis

Last week the powers-that-be made Helo (Tahmoh Penikett) Echo’s (Eliza Dushku) handler, and-as with any new and stressful job, he’s having trouble sleeping.  Instead, he’s wandering around the Dollhouse Puzzle Palace Headquarters until he finds himself in the imprint/memory wipe room.

Topher (Fran Kranz) shows up and asks him if he wants a treatment. Helo declines and they talk about Dushku, and how Topher is a genius (by his own admission)-because he wrote some code for the brain that changes the physical body. Which should sound impressive, but we all know by this point that half of what Topher says is educated guess work, and the other half is shit he heard during a college lecture on neuroscience that he audited while drunk and/or high.

He apparently made changes on the glandular level, so he could “program the brain to fight cancer” or some such.

Topher’s quote of the show comes during this exchange:

TOPHER: The human mind is like Van Halen, if you just pull out once piece and keep replacing it just degenerates.

HELO: I don’t understand.

TOPHER: But it’s so cute that you are trying!

I really want a job in which I’d be completely comfortable talking down to 6 ft. 2 inch Canadian Mui Tai artists.

• TOPHER: Say Hi to Echo for me, tell her we’re all very proud.

Meanwhile, Echo is in bed with some dude in a room strewn with clothing. She gets her night gown on and pads down the hall to another room decorated with cartoon character wall paper. She leans over a crib and says “I thought I heard you.” And the baby coos back. She breast feeds the wee one and sings Hush Little Baby.

So that’s what Topher meant.

You know what? If you give even a moment’s thought to almost anything that happens in this show, it is deeply saddening.

Opening credits!

Next we see a baby monitor and here the wee one crying, only this time Dushku is alone in the bed. Jump to the next morning, and as usual it’s a huge house somewhere in some area that normal folk can’t afford to even look at on Google maps with a kitchen easily the size of my apartment, where Dushku makes coffee. The husband figure appears in his office, stoney faced at Dushku. . . probably because he’s paying her to . . . breast feed?

He’s all distant and weird with Dushku and, if Topher did his job well, he’s going to come off as hiding something or cheating. This won’t end well.

In addition: dude appears to be scared to pick up his own kid or something. I’m just going to put my foot down and say that if you can’t/don’t/won’t hold your own kid, you have failed as a man and need to report to the nearest suicide booth.

I digress.