Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku are together again. On Friday nights, which means they probably won’t be together for very long. Dushku and Whedon last worked together when she played slayer turned psycho on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.
Caroline’s in a room discussing how actions have consequences. Or do they?
From there we head to a motorcycle race, which she loses. She insists Matt, the guy who beat her, must be a cheater. Then they do some dancing, and she gets a ring before she hops in a van. She thinks she’s found something real and wants to go back to the party after her treatment.
She awakens from her treatment and is greeted as Echo. If only she remembered anything that happened previously. They were given the perfect weekend together, and apparently she’s living the dream. Someone’s dream anyway.
Davina is talking on the phone about wanting to sneak to watch a TV show. Just a normal day. Before she’s grabbed and put in a bag.
The kidnappers want $5 million in ransom. Her father Gabriel Crestejo doesn’t want to contact the police. Instead, he wants a negotiator, but not Rambo.
Echo injured her knee when she wiped out on the bike, and she’s having it looked at by Dr. Claire Saunders (Amy Acker, who played Fred on Angel). She doesn’t remember what fell on her. Then she goes for a walk to see another active, Sierra, being worked on, clearly in pain.
Agent Paul Ballard’s been working on Dollhouse for years, which most are not convinced even exists. The only way to imprint a human with a new personality is to take away their own. He thinks it’s pretty bad that these people basically may as well have been murdered. He’s instructed that Dollhouse is just a fairy tale, and he needs to stay out of the way.
Echo is assigned to the Crestejo case. She will facilitate the exchange as Eleanor. Gabriel’s worried that she’ll be a distraction, but she tells him she’s been doing this and only this and is the most qualified person for the job. As part of her new character, she’s nearsighted, as the neural connections to her eyesight have been messed with. Taking it a step further, she’s running from something in her past, and she has asthma.
Echo calls Mr. Sunshine, the kidnapper. They’re going to do things her way whether they want to or not. Oh, and they don’t want $5 million. She tells him he really wants $8 million, $2 million each (4 is the median number in these cases), then she hangs up.
As instructed, Sunshine calls back when asked to. He asks for $10 million. She hangs up again. He calls back and lets Davina talk to her father for a minute. They will be meeting tomorrow at noon. Afterward, it’s revealed that she was kidnapped as a child. She has flashes of her memory being erased, but just dismisses them.
Paul pulls a gun on a guy in the restroom asking him to say Dollhouse. He wants Victor to find out who’s connected to the Dollhouse.
Echo and Gabriel arrive at the rendezvous point with the money. She realizes something’s wrong and begins to have an asthma attack, informing Gabriel the kidnapper won’t give her back. So Gabriel goes toward the boat and is shot in the process. Echo’s handler is there to shoot Sunshine, but the boat gets away. It turns out the guy on the boat is the one who kidnapped Eleanor. She believes he will turn on the others and take the money for himself. If she’s able to find the man with the mask, she can find the ghost.
They head back to the dollhouse for another treatment. What happened at the dock happened to Eleanor… or the people she was made out of.
Her handler insists that Echo is the only one who can find the ghost, and that she should not have her mind wiped yet because she’s the only way they can find Davina. Adelle agrees to do as he asks, so that they can actually do some good.
Although Echo’s going, they don’t want her handler near the action again. Back at the dollhouse, Topher has done some research. The woman who was abused killed herself last year, never able to get away from her past. Echo is now suffering from that same fear. She warns the others that they’re going to be turned on, telling them they aren’t killers and should flee the country with the cash while they still can. She also tells them exactly where Davina is being held, in the fridge, because that’s where they’re always held. When these two guys begin to shoot each other over a disagreement how to deal with Eleanor, she goes into the other room to free Davina. The guy who believes her wins the gunfight and lets them go. Having heard shots, Sierra’s not quite so good with the talking, and she barges in to handle things her own way, shooting the guy who’s still left standing. The dolls grab the cash and the girl and leave.
In her college video yearbook, Echo said she wanted to do everything, and she’s gotten her wish.
Stay tuned to dingoRUE for another recap of Dollhouse Season 1 Episode 2 The Target, which airs Friday at 9/8c on Fox.