The episode opens with a blast from the past, as a pre-Echo Caroline (Eliza Dushku), seducing a well dressed idiot.

I’m sensing a pattern.

The well dressed idiot falls for the aggressively-strip-you-then-hand-cuff-you-to-a-sconce lamp-trick and Echo starts rifling through a desk in what’s apparently Olivia Williams’ office.

The Idiot is scared to death, and Echo says she’s not a thief, she’s a terrorist. Oh, good, well that’s alright then. Echo gets an idea of Barret (Summer Glau) and we jump back to the present, where the Scooby-gang is planning to somehow save the world from Remote Imprinting.

They decide the best way to do this is to upload Caroline back into Echo and see what happens. Sure, why not? Only Caroline’s imprint is missing. Dun-dun-DUUUUUN!

Back in the past, Bennet is wandering around the campus of Tucson Institute of Technology (T.I.T.- Very subtle).  She tries to find a seat, asks a pair of Jersey Shore rejects to clear out as they’re done eating and makes it clear she is abrasive and socially inept, because all smart people are like that.

Caroline pretends like she’s going to vomit on the Jersey Shore Girls, and they flee in terror. Then, she asks Bennet to sit down.

It appears as though Echo pre-Dollhouse life was also devoted to bringing down the Dollhouse. It makes her actually being a doll very tragic, and her imprinting potentially turning her into the ultimate tool of Dollhouse’s destruction kind of neat.

Thinking about it, her playing the vapid idiot on all those home movies may have just been building a cover. Williams tells Echo, as they both watch one of those home movies, that Caroline was an idealist, the sort that leaves a trail of unhappiness and dead bodies. So. . . a terrorist.

Meanwhile Topher has a totally sweet plan for once. Remote imprint who ever is in the chair at the D.C. Dollhouse, they pin Bennet to wall, and then allow Helo and Ciccoli/Victor into the building. Nice. They get her back to L.A. Dollhouse, where Bennet proves she’s a terrible person by saying L.A. keeps their dolls like free range chickens, while D.C. keeps theirs like veal. Wow.

• BENNET: You used the company jet to abduct the programmer of a rival House?
• WILLIAMS: I’m certain I’ll be kicking myself come holiday bonus time.
• BENNET: I’m sure you’ll be dead by then.

They come to Topher’s office, and he manages to calm Bennet down enough (she being a bit livid about him clocking her last time they met) to get her help rebuilding the hard drive containing Caroline. Then he goes on and tries to flirt with her, and it’s rather like watching a hard-core World of Warcraft player holla at da club.

Bennet derails it all by directly asking who is on the disk. Of course Echo chooses exactly that moment to look into the lab pensively. Bennet, schooled in dramatic script contrivances, figures out that it’s for her hated enemy, and as she glares at Echo, we get another flashback.

Caroline is dying Bennet’s hair in preparation for her new job, which sounds like it’s going to be the whole pre-doctorate rat-brain cutting gig that so many neuroscience majors do before they move onto human brains. They chit-chat in a way that seems a little like flirting, and then we jump back to the present. Specifically, Harry J. Lennix’s swank place.

Where he’s been shacking up with Doc Whiskey this whole time. Harry J., you sly dog!

In the Doc’s office, Topher is looking for something to staunch the bleeding of his upper lip.

TOPHER: Actually, if anyone asks, don’t say I got beat up by a one-armed girl.

Echo pops in and gets him to admit what we’ve suspected since they imprinted Helo, that he wiped out their love connection in Helo’s brain. So now he’s far less easy to manipulate, I guess.

Doc Whiskey shows up, throws on her mandarin collared lab coat pretty-as-you-please like nothing happened and tells Topher to sit. Williams rolls by just makes like it’s all normal anyway.

Then we flash back to Mr. Dominic telling Williams that he tortured The Idiot until he confessed, and they know that Caroline is rooming with Bennet.  In Arizona, Bennet asks Caroline why she has her file from Rossum. Bennet is actually more hurt that Caroline didn’t ask her to come in on her little terrorist plot than angry about being used.

Back in the present, Lennix and Echo have a heart to heart on par with that of a father and daughter. It’s really quite touching, and it’s the first time they’ve interacted this season, really. Lennix says he’s got to put the place on lockdown, so Echo dashes out to give Ciccoli/Victor and Sierra/Priya some time for a Pre-War Horizontal Mambo. Hey, about to go to war? Get laid. Solid thinking. She’ll make a hell of an officer one day.

Just then, Mr. Dominic stumbles down the stairs in the customary attic latex fetish-wear, and warns Echo that Rossum is on to her.

TOPHER: Am I the only one thinking we’re getting maybe a little too much of our intel from The Matrix or possibly Tron given the outfits?

Williams gives the order to evacuate, and says they’re going to Tucson, Az: Rossum Headquarters.

Cut back to the past, where Bennet and Caroline have infiltrated Rossum and are ready mess things up. The plan goes to hell because Caroline doesn’t do what she’s supposed to do, which is stick to the plan. She finds people in there, hooked up to machines in a terrifying nightmare room like the Nazi’s might have had. The screen goes white, and we assume Bennet ends up pinned under concrete.

Present time: Mr. Dominic is in a bad way. He needs medical attention, which they don’t have the staff for. Williams says put him back in the attic, as it’s his best hope for survival.

• DOMINIC: You bitch. I’d rather die.
• WILLIAMS: Well, I’d rather you didn’t.

Williams then finds some Grand High Pooba of Rossum in her office. They talk a little before Lennix kills him and his hired goons, while taking a bullet himself. Williams decides she will tell the guy, who was probably in several different bodies anyway, that one of him is dead. She tells Lennix to roll out to draw their fire, but Doc Whiskey is staying.

I must say it’s refreshing to hear all this war terminology in reference to a true warlike situation.

Echo tells Bennet to fix the Caroline imprint and promises to let Bennet do whatever she wants to Caroline once they have what they need from her. That convinces her well enough, and she’s on the case with Topher.

Lennix is about to run, but before he does he shares a tender moment with Whiskey that would not have been broadcast in the 50’s. For those paying attention, this scene was one of the flashbacks in Epitaph One . Meanwhile, Topher and Bennet are getting distracted from their project by each others lips.

TOPHER: You know I always had a crush on you, even when I thought you were a dude.

While Topher is grabbing something off screen, Doc Whiskey shows up and tells Bennet she’s amazing, that she must something special because Topher loves her and she didn’t think that Topher could love anything. They exchange a tender moment, then Doc shoots Bennet in the head.

SWEETJESUSBATS**TMONKEYBULLETS! SHE JUST SHOT BENNET!

End act II.

Topher’s in shock, and Williams gets to get back on reassembling Caroline. Ivy, Topher’s assistant, shows up and tries to help. Topher tells her to run away from the Dollhouse and never look back. He tells her not to become him. It’s also rather touching, even if it’s born out of self loathing.

Moments later, some mooks rope in from up stairs. You know their serious because they have green laser pointers. Apparently the old red ones are for amateurs.

• TOPHER: You should go, server rooms. Service tunnels.
• WILLIAMS: Don’t be ridiculous.
• TOPHER: You’re our general. We can’t loose you!

Williams rolls, and just as Topher loads Dushku into the chair, one of the Rossum Rent-A-Mercs comes in, which leads to the following.

TOPHER: I’ve imprinted myself with many useful skills, you don’t even want to know ::BUTTSTOCKED:: ::THUD::

Then Lennix appears and breaks the merc’s neck just as he’s about to pump two into Echo, because that’s his daughter in that chair!

The big reveal of this episode is Clyde was never betrayed, technically. He multiplied himself and one of the copies betrayed the original. However, Clyde’s partner? Harry J. Goddamned-Lennix, that’s who! He is clearly the one who got to Whiskey. Apparently, recovering Caroline is not part of his plan, so he killed Bennet?

What’s going onnnnnnn?!

Roll credits!

SUMMARY:

• Anyone else notice how much Whedon raises the stakes on his girls-who-beat-up boys characters? First it’s a high school student, then it’s a schizophrenic, then it was Echo, and now it’s a one-armed girl.
• While Rossum may be completely crazily evil, I feel no sympathy for Caroline any longer once she decided to blow up a building. How many members of that staff were just trying feed their families? I mean, sure there were white collar types who probably knew s**t was wrong, but what about the paper-workers down accounting? The janitorial staff? Seriously, f**k you Caroline Farrell. Great characterization, though.
• Dude. It’s like Oz or something now. We don’t know who’s going to die next.
• I want to say this show is tightly plotted, but. . . something’s missing.
• I’m not real clear on how the other Dollhouses work. How are they actually rivals if all the money goes to the same place?