Epitaph 2: The Return (213)

[GateWorld]

DOLLHOUSE SEASON TWO EPITAPH 2: RETURN EPISODE NUMBER - 213 Echo and crew try to return order to the world and prevent humanity's extinction. (TV Guide) VISIT THE EPISODE GUIDE >

This thread will be opened when the episode airs on Friday, January 29.

[Amalthea]

That was fantastic! It makes me so angry that we didn't see the series Joss had in mind. To think of all the excitement and mystery we've missed out on... ugh, it pains me.

Anyway, poor Ballard. So sudden, so harsh. Classic Joss, though. I'm glad they showed Echo having a reaction to it, though. Makes it more complete.

I wish, oh how I wish we could have seen Alpha's evolution! Ugh! Hugs?! How do we get from "I'm gonna kill you!" to hugs?! Spinoff for Alan maybe?

And Topher- poor, suffering Topher. I'm glad he got some retribution, though.

Overall, I'm glad Joss got to show us the end of his story, I suppose we can extrapolate the rest from what we did see. Lots of little leaps into chaos, I love it!

[sparklegem]

Totally agree with you Amalthea.

I had a little bit of a hard time believing that Topher, the genius of geniuses, can reset the world but can't engineer a remote detonator. I guess one could argue that he wanted to commit suicide, but if that were the case Adelle never would have let him.

I have to say, I was hoping, once Ballard was shot, that the newly tranquil Alpha would let Ballard's personality come to the front and we'd have an Echo/Alpha+Ballard ending. The way it was done was better, though. One thing I lament about season 2 being so packed with seasons of story is that the Echo/Ballard relationship didn't have enough time to develop so that I actually really cared about it. My biggest emotional attachment was definitely to Topher and Tony/Priya.

[AnnieS]

Watched the finale with my BSG and Firefly groups.

Spoiler:

The whole group freaked when Paul was shot!!!

And

Spoiler:

Topher *BOO*

!!!

[huntress]

THAT was perfect! A very satisfying ending and while I am angry that we were robbed of so many amazing stories that coud have been told, I am still happy that we actually got a good ending to the story. While I wasn't happy about Topher, I totally understood it. Thanks Joss. Thank you for this ride. I wouldn't have missed it in the world

[Lightbane]

The only thing that took me by surprise was

Spoiler:

when Paul got suddenly and quite randomly I believe shot..

Overall I loved the episode and the ending

Spoiler:

actually put me in tears. Looks like they had a perfect ending there, he's always going to be with her now no matter what.

This just adds more fuel for my hate of FOX, the beginning of the episode just confused me. It was like several episodes had just disappeared. And we had a super fast recap of things that we never saw happen.

But with regards to previous comments, the episode was written and designed well enough to extrapolate what happened between the end of Rossum and 2020.

[Amalthea]

The only thing that took me by surprise was

Spoiler:

when Paul got suddenly and quite randomly I believe shot..

Overall I loved the episode and the ending

Spoiler:

actually put me in tears. Looks like they had a perfect ending there, he's always going to be with her now no matter what.

This just adds more fuel for my hate of FOX, the beginning of the episode just confused me. It was like several episodes had just disappeared. And we had a super fast recap of things that we never saw happen.

But with regards to previous comments, the episode was written and designed well enough to extrapolate what happened between the end of Rossum and 2020.

Did you see Epitaph One? I've looked at other Dollhouse boards and it appears that there is a certain segment of the viewing population who have said exactly that and they missed Epitaph One. It explains a lot. It raised a million questions at the time, of course, but now some make sense.

[ShadowMaat]

I was underwhelmed, actually. I guess I'd let my expectations build up and with the overshadowing paranoia of "this is JOSS we're talking about" I expected a much higher body count with much more emotional trauma. ...Although I suppose we were supposed to love Paul and Paul/Echo all along so maybe that was supposed to fill the quota. Sadly I took his death in stride and spent the rest of the ep on tenterhooks, wondering if it was Victor or Sierra who was gonna get ganked.

The ending was almost... cheery. Pretty much everyone lived happily ever after (or as happy as one could be in a world that far gone) and the world was- as far as we can tell- saved. Priya and Tony were making amends, little T had a father figure to look up to, Alpha was all sane and helpful and even Echo managed to find some solace... in one of the most skeevy, creeptastic and utterly WRONG ways imaginable. *shudder*

There were a LOT of gaps that would have been nice to see filled (particularly the stuff with Alpha) and while I did see Epitaph 1 I still had a hard time understanding the time jumps. I also know of a few people who didn't watch Epitaph 2 because they were rightly pissed at FOX about for expecting fans to PAY MONEY in order to see what's essentially part 1 of a two part episode. It's kind of a ****ty thing to do to the audience regardless of how "cheap" it is on itunes.

Anyway, TBH I'm glad it's all over. It wasn't the ending I was expecting, but at least it's all wrapped up in a pretty package and now we can move on to something new. And hopefully something more coherent.

[Replicator Todd]

Very good episode! Considering this is the only season 2 episode I have seen so far! ( I only got the Season 1 DVD last week) An excellent ending, poor poor Topher. Sad for Paul too i'm not sure if I liked the whole Echo/Paul in one head thing.

[DigiFluid]

I liked it, even though it was obviously a rushed conclusion. Topher was....fantastic, I totally believed him all the way to the very end. Loved Adelle, too. Somewhat annoyed that E2 was so heavily focused on the regular characters, at the expense of the E1 characters. Rolled my eyes more than a little at Paul's death--Joss, you're becoming a one-trick pony with your 'shocking' character deaths.

What really irks me though, is that there's no explanation behind Rossum's motivations at all. What could they possibly gain by turning the world into 28 Days Later meets Mad Max?

[MattSilver 3k]

I thought it was awesome of Joss Whedon to put my favourite Whedonverse couple together and keep them as such by the finale's last moments - sure, Tony and Priya had ten years of angst about their child and his addiction to the tech, but they got together in the end, which was a nice change. Sort of a happy ending, despite all the hell that came before. Props to Topher for staying my favourite character, and doing the right thing in the end. Equal props to Eliza Duskhu, whom I thought was fantastic in this season, and her breakdown scene was awesomesauce.

Overall, the finale was pretty cool. Rushed, sure, but I'm over that the entire season is rushed. It was still emotionally reverberating, so hell, extra episodes woulda made losing some of those cool characters harder!

And DigiFluid, I doubt it was Rossum's idea to have the tech do this specifically. I believe they wanted to use the tech in some odd way we don't know of, but the tech leaking out and causing the apocalypse? I doubt that that was their ultimate plan. Sure, using meatsuits and living forever as hard drives was probably part of the plan, and I think taking the imprinting cure from Echo was so that they couldn't be driven out of the bodies they were inhabiting... I don't know - again, I'm kinda over it.

[rosey_angel]

What really irks me though, is that there's no explanation behind Rossum's motivations at all. What could they possibly gain by turning the world into 28 Days Later meets Mad Max?

like MattSilver 3k said, i don't think it was their plan for it to get out that bad. seems to me that maybe they had a few good years using the tech their own way and then it backfired on them, prolly coz they didn't have topher to help them. maybe they were doing what topher suggested and were using it to instantly train an army but it didn't work out that way, obviously

I was underwhelmed, actually. I guess I'd let my expectations build up and with the overshadowing paranoia of "this is JOSS we're talking about" I expected a much higher body count with much more emotional trauma. ...Although I suppose we were supposed to love Paul and Paul/Echo all along so maybe that was supposed to fill the quota. Sadly I took his death in stride and spent the rest of the ep on tenterhooks, wondering if it was Victor or Sierra who was gonna get ganked.

The ending was almost... cheery. Pretty much everyone lived happily ever after (or as happy as one could be in a world that far gone) and the world was- as far as we can tell- saved. Priya and Tony were making amends, little T had a father figure to look up to, Alpha was all sane and helpful and even Echo managed to find some solace... in one of the most skeevy, creeptastic and utterly WRONG ways imaginable. *shudder*

There were a LOT of gaps that would have been nice to see filled (particularly the stuff with Alpha) and while I did see Epitaph 1 I still had a hard time understanding the time jumps. I also know of a few people who didn't watch Epitaph 2 because they were rightly pissed at FOX about for expecting fans to PAY MONEY in order to see what's essentially part 1 of a two part episode. It's kind of a ****ty thing to do to the audience regardless of how "cheap" it is on itunes.

Anyway, TBH I'm glad it's all over. It wasn't the ending I was expecting, but at least it's all wrapped up in a pretty package and now we can move on to something new. And hopefully something more coherent.

i guess this is the thing about tv, mellie was my fave female character, and he dying in the previous ep broke my heart </3 v/s was my great pairing and i was so worried that they were gonna be killed off, but we lost so many other characters. alpha is essectially gone, topher and ballard are dead. bennett, boyd, dominic, wiskey. i'm sure there are others, but we did lose a lot of ppl this season :'(

Did you see Epitaph One? I've looked at other Dollhouse boards and it appears that there is a certain segment of the viewing population who have said exactly that and they missed Epitaph One. It explains a lot. It raised a million questions at the time, of course, but now some make sense.

yeah, i head that fox didn't air E1. i'm glad that fox 8 down here did. man that was a shocker seeing the ad for that!

my opinion, great ep. all actors performed at their best. Fran was amazing, and Olivia was breaking my heart. she had so much pain and guilt, and i'm glad she sees a way to really give ppl what they need. i would love to see how she got involved with rossum in the first place.

i'm really sad dollhouse is over. yeah it was a good ending, but i like others feel there was so much more that could be told, stories that they seemed to rush through to get to the end.

[sparklegem]

What really irks me though, is that there's no explanation behind Rossum's motivations at all. What could they possibly gain by turning the world into 28 Days Later meets Mad Max?

I think the argument was that, since this technology was possible, someone sometime along the way was inevitably going to come up with it and use it to the world's detriment, so the only self-interested choice was to be the ones that got there first and so be on the right side of the damage done by the tech instead of the wrong side.

[Angela V]

Okay I'm just going to say it.

I wish Dollhouse got the Firefly treatment instead. A short AWESOME only season and a movie to wrap up. Fox meddled too much with season 1. Too much crap for the general public at the start. The show as much better with many characters being in the spotlight and it's their stories that gave the interesting sci-fi/fantasy humanity stuff that Joss does all so well.

It was a great epic ending. But without all the slow build up felt a bit odd at the end.

I hope Joss has learned his lesson with Fox this time. Run. Run Away As Fast As You Can. They did not give a Frak what his vision was for the show or they wouldn't have had him redo the pilot and make the first 5 or so episodes like the Pretender (which I love but isn't a Joss kind of show)

[Gamma626]

I watched it today on Fox.com. I felt that it was as good of a finale that they could do with what they had available.

But when is the season 2 blu-ray/dvd coming out? I need commentary!

[Sp!der]

Perfect ending and they knew in the end what the show was all about because I think that season one seemed kinda lost sOmetimes. I wish we could have seen the four seasons but nevermind at least we got a decent ending. Looking at sg:u

[Osiristi]

at least we got a decent ending. Looking at sg:u

Unlike Dollhouse, SGU was only cancelled after all the episodes were filmed. Dollhouse was cancelled when they were still filming, I think around episode 207. Caprica, which also got a "decent" ending, was also completely filmed when cancelled but it's ending was in fact originally a trailer of Season Two.