Whedon delivered on his promise last week of a compelling episode last week and I had my hopes up that the momentum would carry over this week. Unfortunately, it was a miss match of an outbreak-like plot and an attempt at filling in some backstory.

A shady company run by a shady nobel prize winner has a created a drug that has gotten loose. Because of the doll’s vegetative states, Topher believes they can infiltrate the campus to recover the drug, or something like that. It really didn’t make much sense. Echo is the only doll excluded as the campus is the same as the one we’ve seen in her flashback segments.

Former agent Ballard is confronted by his planted active/ girlfriend who wants him to quit the case after her assault last week. He refuses and she leaves in tears. Its an understandable move but it seemed unconvincing.

The super dangerous drug is proven to be passed by touch. No I’m serious, by touch. It also seems that the effects wear off after a few hours. So then why all the urgency if all they have to do is quarantine everyone?

Echo suddenly breaks off from a fantasy gig thus allowing her to wear a ridiculously sultry outfit and turns her attention to the campus. That too is never really explained properly. While she journeys back we get lots of insight into her life leading up to the mind wipe. A hippie dippy Echo, real name Caroline, along with her boyfriend was attempting to get video of the shady corporation’s evil treatment of lab animals.Caroline and her boyfriend were caught by security and the boyfriend gets shot trying to escape. In turn, Caroline is captured and forced into becoming a dollhouse zombie for a few years as payment. That’s the big surprise?

After arriving on campus, Echo meets one of the earliest victims of the drug and the two try to infiltrate the lab the same path as she had taken as Caroline. Finally making her way to the lab with her new friend in tow, he doses her with the drug. He turns out to be a the source of the entire crisis. He wanted to steal the formula and sell it to the highest bidder. After getting punched out by a sobered up Boyd, he too ends up rounded up by the Dollhouse and in the end, he looks to become another active on their roster.

It all felt anticlimactic. The drug was essentially a short term danger with only minor consequences and all we learned about Echo and the Dollhouse was that they came together through an ridiculously mundane set of circumstances. Though the doped up dialogue between Topher and the English ice queen where pretty funny, it wasn’t enough to save this one. Hopefully the teased-at active uprising in Dollhouse’s preview cashes in more of the promise of last weeks episode.