Dollhouse, Season 2

Echo:
I remember everything. Sometimes I'm someone else and then I come back, but I still feel them. All of them. I've been many people. I can hear them, sometimes suddenly. I'm all of them, but none of them is me. Do you know who's real?

Ballard:
Caroline

Echo:
I want to find her. I want to find all of them. Real them. They can be found. We are lost, but we are not gone.

Klar:
Well, it's Paul Ballard. Special agent in charge of bugger-all.

Whiskey:
What if she went over your head?

Langton:
I'm very tall.

Topher:
Perhaps triggering lactation was a bridge too far.

Echo:
All of these things that happen to me, I feel them.

Ballard:
I know, Echo. I know you remember everything.

Echo:
Not remember - feel. I was married. I felt love, and pain, fear. It's not pretend for me. They made me love my little boy and then they took him away. They make it so real. Every time, they make it so real. Why do they do that?

...

Ballard:
If you want, I'll tell Topher what's going on with you and he can fix it. He'll come up with a way to wipe you and you won't remember a thing. You won't have to feel sad anymore.

Echo:
Feeling nothing would be worse. It would be like before - asleep. I'm awake now. I don't want to go back to sleep.

Adele:
Good news on the coma front?

Topher:
Uuuhhhhhhh... yeah. Good news is that he's in a coma.

Adele:
I beg your pardon?

Boyd:
Just show her what you showed me.

Topher:
[Shows Adelle a brain scan] This is a brain. A healthy brain. Frankly an... overly smart brain... it's my brain. And this is Terry Karrens' brain. [Shows Adelle another brain scan] See these dark areas? How they extend all the way out to here? You know why that looks like that? That's because Terry Karrens doesn't use that part of his brain. And that'd be where you find stored such things as empathy, compassion... an aversion to disemboweling puppies. Basically, this is what some of your more famous serial killers' brains look like.

Adele:
You're quite certain of this?

Topher:
Certain enough that I have serious ethical problems trying to wake him up.

Boyd:
Topher has ethical problems. Topher.

Topher:
Heh. Way to land it.

Franklin:
[points at Ballard] You're new. [looks at Echo and smiles] And, of course, you're always new.

[Echo looks confused]

Franklin:
[to Ballard] And who are we today?

Ballard:
...She's Kiki.

Franklin:
Of course she is.

Echo:
[as Kiki] Who's gonna pay for this?

Franklin:
[chuckles] Isn't that cute. On la casa.

Echo:
[as Kiki] Free?!?

Franklin:
Oui, oui.

Echo:
[as Kiki] Did I win a prize?

Franklin:
You are a prize.

[Echo squeals girlishly and follows the attendant to get her new wardrobe

[Ballard is told to go sit and wait for Echo to get her new outfit. He sits next to another Dollhouse agent who is reading a magazine]

Dollhouse Agent:
I won't even do this for my wife.

Ballard:
I was trained at Quantico.

Boyd:
I'll cover your engagement, you're staying here.

Ballard:
Why?

Boyd:
Turns out we have a sudden need for an FBI profiler. I suggested you.

Ballard:
For what?

Boyd:
To interrogate a possible serial killer.

Ballard:
Serial killer. [looks at Echo, who has come out in a short skirt, knee socks, a bright pink tank top, and pigtails] ...Thank God. [rushes out]

Echo:
[as Kiki] Okay, so I probably never should have taken this course to begin with, but I figured it was mid-evil lit, not advanced-evil - how hard could it be? So, I skipped 'Intro to Evil' or whatever. But how is it I get an 'F' when this guy that we're reading, Chauncy, can't even spell?

Topher:
Victor's loose, doesn't have GPS and apparently he's a serial killer.

Topher:
Do you know where you are?

Priya:
I'm in hell.

Topher:
You're in Los Angeles. I can understand the mixup.

Priya:
That's him. What's his name?

Topher:
Victor.

Priya:
I love him. Is that real?

Topher:
Yes. Yes, it's real. He loves you back.

Topher:
[to Adelle] Aren't we supposed to care for these people? Doctor Saunders would never have allowed-!

Adelle:
[While drunk] Which Doctor Saunders would that be? The avuncular physician so brutally cut down not five feet from where you were standing? Or the last woman to whom you gave a permanent imprint - the other wounded flower you restored by offering her a new life - who apparently found you so unbearable she had to flee the city. Is it that one?

Adelle:
[to Topher] The cold reality is that everyone here was chosen because their morals have been compromised in some way. Everyone, except you. You, Topher, were chosen because you had no morals. You have always thought of people as playthings. This is not a judgment. You've always taken very good care of your toys, but you're simply going to have to let this one go.

Adelle:
I would no sooner allow you near one of our other Actives as I would a mad dog near a child, given that you're a raping scumbag one tick shy of a murderer. I can't recall do you take sugar?

Echo:
You just woke up a lot of people. And they all think you're a bitch.

Senator Daniel Perrin:
Stop I love her!

Echo:
I know. [Punches Perrin] Luckily I don't have that problem.

Senator Daniel Perrin:
At those hearings, you will hear a most innocent word. A word that will take on a new and grim meaning. A word that will become synomous with human trafficking, prostitution and unconscionable abuse of Neural Technology. Directly traceable back to the Rossum Corporation. That word is "Dollhouse."

DeWitt:
Once a Sleeper Active's protocol has been triggered, the thing you're facing will neither be reasoned with, or stopped.

Bennett:
Keep you mind on your work, please. The moment you start wondering about the people upstairs, they'll start wondering about you. That is nothing you want.

Bennett:
What's interesting to me is that - you don't call out to God. It isn't a question of faith, it's just the venacular. Anyone in this much pain prays, or at least curses. But we take God from you too. You really are a shell.

Bennett:
No, no, you're very pale. White. Pinkish-white. I mean, your skin. Your skin is like a pig.

Topher:
Okay, so we have had an active, Whiskey. She was rendered unengageable. So we - *I* made her into a doctor. Uh - and you - so I thought maybe - similar - Bennet - the real Bennett would use an active to...

Bennett:
You thought... That's idiotic. Actives are beautiful.

Topher:
Yeah.

Echo:
We haven't escaped. They're coming. They always come. Because of this [Touches the back of Perrin's Neck]

Senator Daniel Perrin:
What is that?

Echo:
It's how they find us.

Senator Daniel Perrin:
GPS tag?

Echo:
We have to cut.

DeWitt:
It feels like ages ago that we actually weighed a request against an active's chance at survival. Let alone well being.

Langton:
We've always put them at risk. We just don't lie to ourselves about it now.

DeWitt:
You sound like Harding.

Topher:
Well I punched her in the kisser - not what I was intending to do there, by the way - and knocked her out cold, which she might have been impressed by if she hadn't been out cold.

Topher:
I think they're trying to build a portable device that would be able to imprint anyone without any active architecture in place. Any innocent on the street with a new personality.

DeWitt:
That's unnerving.

Topher:
What's unnerving is - I figured out how to do it.

Topher:
You are the coldest bitch on the planet!

DeWitt:
That is the last time you will ever speak to me like that, or at all unless spoken to. You're off R&D and back on programming. You will imprint these dolls with dedication and precision. And you will follow every single one of my commands as if they were your hearts deepest desire.

Topher:
And what happens if I don't?

DeWitt:
I would hope that, as some who does care for you, that you will never find that out. I rule this house! I won't let *anyone* challenge that, ever again!

DeWitt:
One wonders how she managed. Out there. Alone. The odds of an active in an infantile state surviving outside the Dollhouse unprotected. I suppose we must take into account the fact that Echo is special.

Ballard:
You're punishing her for surviving. It's complete lunacy!

Topher:
I am obsolete. This must be what old people feel like, and Blockbuster.

Langton:
Alpha do not do this. There's a part of you that knows this is wrong.

Alpha:
There are many parts of me that know this is wrong. None of them care. And six... they just find it funny.

Alpha:
You're in for a ride. You're not going to get loose. One of my imprints was an Eagle Scout, another one was a sailor. There's a dirty joke in there somewhere.

Alpha:
For months you shared the same room. You never slept with her. You could have, but you didn't. If that's not love - Are you gay?

Ballard:
No.

Alpha:
Then it's love. DeWitt thought so too.

Echo:
Everything's slipping away from me. Before it was memories. But I figured out how to hold on to them. And now that I have something real - people I care about - they're slipping away from me too.

Topher:
What did I just tell you?

Victor:
5 years would seem like... 5 seconds.

Topher:
Welcome to the future, where cars fly, robots serve our every whim, and genetically engineered dinosaurs rule the Earth.

Ivy:
It's pretty much the same as when you left.

Victor:
The war - is it...?

Topher:
Still going.

DeWitt:
Do you think anything goes on in my house wihout my knowledge?

Echo:
I don't know. It seems like a lot went down without you knowing.

DeWitt:
Yes. While I'm not surprised that Paul... and Boyd managed to keep your secret. But *Topher*? He can barely keep his belch to himself.

Langton:
What do we know about the attic?

Topher:
No one comes back, Boyd.

Langton:
But why? What do they do to them in there?

Topher:
I don't know: experimenting, torture. They're testing the limits of the human mind. The brain is kept in a fear induced adrenaline fueled overdrive state like a problem you can't solve. Either the nightmare lasts forever or...

Langton:
Or it doesn't last at all.

Nolan:
You know, this is a scenario I've never tried. Rigor mortis - the new Viagra.

Topher:
I've done nothing wrong. Apart from the things that got you your job back.

DeWitt:
You gave us extraordinary technology which will be used soon. The question is whether you have anything more to offer. Whether you can accept radical change, or buckle under pressure.

Topher:
I don't buckle. Occassionally, I swashbuckle.

DeWitt:
Yes, you're quite the pirate hero. Swinging in and dismembering Nolan Kinnard. If you try and keep secrets from the corporation, you may have every expectation of being chopped into pieces yourself. How do you imagine that would feel?

DeWitt:
You didn't come to the Dollhouse because of Echo. You came because you work for Rossum. That means your option tend to slim to three: carry out Rossum's work without question, the attic or death. The moment you stepped into this house, you, in effect. gave us your life. And you must decide if that is to be put to good use, or laid to waste. I have seen the future, Mr. Langton. And it is not for the weak.

Echo:
She could kill you with her brain.

Adelle DeWitt:
Caroline Farrel left quite a trail of unhappiness in her wake, and not a few bodies.

Echo:
Are you saying she's evil?

DeWitt:
Worse. An idealist. I shouldn't be at all suprised if it turned out her wedge had got up and walked out on its own.

Topher:
Then maybe we could work on the one memory I'd like to erase. Bennett... I'm so sorry I hit you. I didn't want to. God, how I didn't want to.

Bennett:
Well, I was trying to kill your Active at the time.

Topher:
Eh. You had your reasons. Still... that face. Slugging it. Not my first instinct.

Bennett:
Oh, I didn't think it was.

Topher:
Some form of contact, but not...

Bennett:
[They go in closer to almost kiss but then] Who's on that wedge?

Topher:
Huh?

Bennett:
Who are you trying to resurrect?

Topher:
Uh... This person.[Chuckles] It's stupid. Does it... Does it matter?

Bennett:
It might.

Topher:
It's not like it's Stalin or somebody.

Bennett:
I didn't suppose that it would be a historical figure. Who is it?

Topher:
Ivy's right, we actually don't know what dumping Caroline into Echo's brain will do. Your original self comes home to find the house party that's going on inside your head. She might fight back.

Echo:
She'd lose.

DeWitt:
All right, pull Caroline from the Vault. Put Echo in the chair.

Topher:
I did all of this. I'm the one who brings about the thought-pocalypse.

DeWitt:
Thought-pocalypse?

Topher:
Is brain-pocalypse better? I figure, if I'm responsible for the end of the world, I get to name it.

DeWitt:
I gave the plans to Harding, I'm just as culpable.

Topher:
Thanks Adelle. You handed someone a piece of paper. I invented it. Which means I have to destroy it.

Langton:
We like to keep the medical records of everyone who crosses our path, especially the interesting ones. Caroline you are *definitely* interesting, at least on a microscopic level.

Langton:
The wedge must have been damaged.

Topher:
No! Bennett fixed the wedge. She *died* fixing it!

DeWitt:
Then maybe Echo and Caroline aren't getting along.

Langton:
Topher think!

Topher:
That's what got us here in the first place. I'm going for mindless destruction now!

Topher:
I'm the Tin Man, she's the Lion, and you're the head of the Lollipop Guild who's a traitor.

Alpha:
Because we're not freak shows. Well, okay, maybe I am, and Echo. Topher's a little off, but Adelle, she's a class act all the way.

Topher Brink:
I'm so close, so close to solving both problems. They would have no idea.

Echo:
Close to what? Wiping everyong?

Topher Brink:
The opposite. A reflection like an echo. Put everything back the way they were. Minds back the way they were... I can bring back the world.

Paul Ballard:
The point is Topher thinks he can flip it. Create a pulse to restore all the wiped minds.

Zone:
Yeah? He also thinks he's a little teapot short and stout.

Adelle DeWitt:
[Rising] Topher Brinks is a genius! And you will keep a civil tongue in this house or we'll put your tongue in a stew.

Caroline Farrell:
Good to see you've mellowed.

Echo:
[Realizing there are Actives in the Dollhouse] Aw Hell!

Alpha:
Nope. You have to keep digging if that's where you want to end up.

DeWitt:
Explosion?

Topher:
It does the work for you.

DeWitt:
You said it could only be activated manually... You're not coming back.

Topher:
Small price to pay... I didn't want to cause any more pain.