D/D Celebration Week(s!) - Meta/Discussion - A Spy in the House of Love
‘A SPY IN THE HOUSE OF LOVE’ IS PRETTY MUCH CODE FOR ‘ADELLE AND DOMINIC ARE IN LOVE, ACTUALLY, CANONICALLY, FOR REAL’:
A Literary Analysis.
Except Slightly More TV-Shaped.
First and foremost, a disclaimer: this is all nuts. If the majority of this - or, well, okay, any of this - was actually intended by the writers, director, etc., I think I will promptly perish of shock. But by God, I’ve been English majoring for four years now, and the most valuable thing I have gotten out of that (besides an unholy talent for Putting Off My Reading ‘Til The Last Possible Second - which I may or may not be doing at this exact moment!) is the stance that if you’ve got evidence, and you can argue your point, then bam! Your point is valid! It may not have been intended by the author, but guess what? Too bad, author! And since this is our ultimate shippy powerhouse, I figured, by God, why not just go all crazy? So I did. A lot. There are nuances here so psychotically miniscule that you’ll probably want to stick me in a madhouse by the time you’re done reading. Please, if you possibly can, refrain.
Anyway. I remember that my first reaction to this episode, after “AAAAAAUGH!” and a great deal of overwhelming despair, was, ‘Okay, Roger was somehow all about Dominic. I don’t get how, I cannot actually sort it out in my brain, but I KNOW HE WAS!’ This is me, finally endeavoring to sort it all out in my brain. Welcome along to this crazy ride, kiddies.
BEGINNING NOTE: A Spy in the House of Love is a novel by Anais Nin. It is also a rather hilarious song by this guy, but that one’s title is “Spy In The House of Love,” minus the “A,” so we’re gonna choose to believe that our title’s referencing Anais Nin. Not that that song’s not dandy.
Anyway! The novel is about a young woman, Sabina, who is married to a nice guy named Alan, but has lots and lots (and lots and lots?) of love affairs. I haven’t read it, and all my knowledge has thus been gleaned from Amazon and Wikipedia. However, I very much like that in selecting this title, there’s the instant invocation of themes of betrayal - specifically as related to love.
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Our first D/D reference in the episode (though of course, at first we don’t know that’s what it is yet) is the following-
SIERRA
What’s happening?
ECHO
She made a mistake. Now she’s sad.
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Then we jump back twelve hours, and we get this. Eliza Dushku is dressed up like a dominatrix, so I can see how it would be easy to disregard any of the actual stuff she’s saying. But the actual stuff she’s saying - oh, guys, it is so very, very relevant to our interests.
DOMINATRIX!ECHO
Everyone thinks it’s about the pain. It’s not about the pain, it’s about trust. Handing yourself over fully and completely to another human being. There’s nothing more beautiful than letting go like that.
BOYD
In my experience, that kind of trust always leads to pain.
(Er, totally off-topic sidenote in the light of the end of this season: ouch.)
This establishes a theme that gets driven home in such a thorough way throughout the rest of the episode: Dominatrix!Echo, in addition to making Fox very happy because they get to show ads with Eliza dressed as a dominatrix, presents the concept of romantic/sexual desire, trust, and pain all entangled with one another.
The theme of trust is verbally & implicitly referred to time and time again afterwards in this episode. Verbally, here are the other occasions-
(In bed with Roger)
ADELLE
We just can’t have that. You have to trust me.
ROGER
I do. I trust you. Completely.
(To Boyd, during the employee interrogation)
ECHO
I don’t know why, but I trust you.
(First lines of the confrontation scene)
ADELLE
I trusted you with a gift, Mr. Dominic.
DOMINIC
The Dollhouse is not a gift.
(Last lines of the episode; Echo getting her new handler)
TRAVIS
Do you trust me?
ECHO (to Boyd)
With my life.
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Having Echo speak those very definitive lines about the episode’s theme puts her at the center of it in terms of her awareness, and we see a lot of what goes down subsequently through her eyes. Of course, the two parts that I’m interested in are the D/D scenes. (I am a lady of limited & very specific interests.)
The way the first scene between them, in particular, is shot is compelling. In terms of content, it’s pretty run-of-the-mill, standard DeWitt/Dominic stuff. They talk about work and are a little snarky, she’s the boss, he’s her trusted right hand, the end. But the way it’s filmed is very striking. There’s a slowness and a physicality to it that is pretty atypical.
When Dominic first sees Adelle, the way it’s shot makes it a Big Moment. He’s striding along, he sees her, he pauses. The camera cuts to her walking up, and lingers there long enough that it seems like a pretty significant Ooh, It’s Adelle moment. We get a quick shot of Dominic walking over to her, and even though it’s easy to miss, he smiles. We stay with Echo a little bit after he’s walked out of the shot, and therefore there’s the sense that, in the following faraway shots of them, we’re seeing them through Echo’s eyes.
When he walks up to her (and oh, this is the kind of observation that only spending way too much time fanvidding could have afforded me with), he - interestingly - reaches out to her with his left hand, but by the time he reaches her, he’s back in default Arms Crossed stance. There’s that brief moment wherein the body language threatens to get a shade more uncharacteristically intimate.
Then we see Echo going down the stairs, framed by their bodies on either side of her and thus symbolically suggesting, via the way the shot’s constructed, that Echo is aware of the physicality between them.
And as our handy dandy visual aid here proves, we get this again later when she sentences him to Atticdom - this is about as close as they’ve ever been, dark parody of a prelude to a kiss, and Echo’s right there between them again. Aware of the connection there. She made a mistake. Now she’s sad. / Everybody thinks it’s about the pain. It’s not about the pain, it’s about trust.
HIDING YOUR SINS
And now, to enter the Girrrrrl, You Extra Crazy portion of our program!
Firstly, I’d like to introduce the concept of marriage. Not, er, to the world, or anything. Civilization kinda already beat me to that one. But in terms of this episode! It is, of course, implicit in the title, because the Nin novel A Spy in the House of Love is about an adulterous woman and her marriage.
Adelle and Dominic are kinda … work-married. (A subject that I recently breached very sillily in a very silly fanfiction.) They are Mr. and Mrs. Dollhouse. The previous episode, “Needs,” is bookended with scenes of the meeting in Adelle’s office, and therefore with shots of them standing together at the head of the room, matching postures, matching crossed arms. There’s a sense of equality there, not the sense established from some of the prior episodes that Dominic’s subservient to her. So in the previous episode to “A Spy in the House of Love,” we’ve been subconsciously presented with that image of them being an equal partnership. (Interestingly, the episode before that one, “Echoes,” introduces the elements of betrayal that will fracture their relationship for either character: Adelle’s seeming throwaway line to Topher about Victor - “Ooh, I have a good story about him!” - and Dominic’s indignation when he discovers that Topher programmed Victor to be an NSA agent. Fittingly, Victor figures prominently into both of these little foreshadowing moments. Also fittingly, this episode has the scene that is perhaps the most prominent indicator of some kind of romantic feeling between them - the Inexplicably Hella Awkward post-drugged scene in her office at the episode’s end.)
So, basically, we have a sense of that partnership going into this episode. Adelle leaves; Dominic is in charge. We even get what is pretty much the ultimate visual evidence of this, him sitting in her chair-
As oltha_heri once flawlessly put it: “Also, one thing I noticed in a rewatch of Spy In The House Of Love is how chilled out Dominic is lounging in Adelle's throne. I have this feeling every other employee would like use touching the thing as the worst possible dare after they were all three sheets to the wind and Dominic's like, I've totally had sex in this chair so I can totally hang and mock your silliness from here.”
Just sayin’.
There is, too, the fact that Adelle makes an overt reference to marriage during her conversation with Roger in bed.
ADELLE
Everyone has their first date, and the object is to hide your flaws, and then you’re in a relationship, and it’s all about hiding your disappointment, and then once you’re married, it’s about hiding your sins.
ROGER
Katherine: mistress of the dark observation.
ADELLE
But with you, there’s no reason to hide anything real.
And of course, Adelle and Dominic each have a sin to hide here: Adelle, her engagement with Victor; Dominic, his NSA spydom.
And this right here is, I promise, the craziest we’ll get. There’s no way this ain’t anything besides me being nuts, and if they paid this much attention in the making of this episode then they are as crazy as I am (and no one, no one’s as crazy as I am) but gosh darnit, I noticed it, so I’m sharing it! Symbolismmmm! Ridiculously intricate symbolism that probably doesn’t even exist! I can’t resist it.
Something that I’ll mention later got me particularly interested in tracking hands and arms and left versus right in this episode (seriously, you guys, I am crazy), and then of course, I started wondering whether any significance could be attributed to the left in terms of Adelle and of Dominic - left hand, wedding ring, married.
At the beginning of the episode, as he walks toward her, Dominic reaches out his left arm to Adelle. At the end, when he shoots her, it’s in her left side. A reaching-way-too-far observation, I know, but I think there’s a resonant symmetry to it all the same: the fact that it bookends, the beginning and the end, and that Adelle’s surroundings at the end look just like the surroundings during the scene at the beginning with Dominic. (They aren’t standing in the exact same place, technically, but the shots are so similar that it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to consider it deliberate.)
Wedding rings are so trite, anyway. With these guys, it’s all about the atypically open gesturing and gunshot wounds!
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PATHETIC, SELF-DELUDING SOULS
“Roger is Adelle’s substitute Dominic!” I have cried in endless fics, vids, etc. pretty much since this episode aired. But if you asked me to actually concretely defend that position, well, I wouldn’t really know where to start. Really, it’s just a vibe that I got, and a vibe that I like, and therefore a vibe that I’ve stood by for a very long time. But here is me, at long last, trying to scrounge up some actual evidence.
This, needless to say, is gon’ get crazy, you guys.
If, by any weird and random chance, anyone who has actually worked on Dollhouse in any way ever encounters this - er, I’m sorry. And … hearteningly enthusiastic about your TV show, at least?
Right.
Let’s do this.
Repression has a strong presence in this episode, especially in terms of Adelle and what she’s doing.
Right after the first DeWitt/Dominic scene, we follow Echo to her doctor’s appointment in Saunders’ office. Here, we get this conversation between her and Boyd-
BOYD (re: the engagements)
You really think it has to do with need?
CLAIRE
Sometimes, yes. Having a desire you’re afraid or ashamed of expressing can be terribly debilitating.
To jump all the way forward to the end, we find ourselves back in Saunders’ office. That’s where we get this exchange:
CLAIRE
I know you were close to Mr. Dominic.
ADELLE
He was an employee with whom I worked closely. There’s a difference.
CLAIRE
It’s okay to feel something.
ADELLE
That would imply I’d lost something.
CLAIRE
Didn’t you?
ADELLE (looking at Victor)
Nothing I can’t live without.
This exchange becomes even more resonant & D/D friendly with the shadow of that earlier scene - ”Having a desire you’re afraid or ashamed of expressing” -- hanging over it. Here is Adelle, literally, actively not expressing her feelings, and it’s on the subject of Dominic.
NO, BUT SERIOUSLY, ROGER IS TOTALLY SUBSTITUTE DOMINIC
Let’s return, if we may (which … we may), to the first DeWitt/Dominic scene again. I can’t help it! It’s so pretty! But anyway. I watched these two scenes about 8937539 times before this occurred to me. And then it occurred to me, and I really, really liked it.
The scene where Dominic walks up to Adelle and the scene where Roger comes up to find her are quite strikingly similar in terms of how they’re composed.
They’re initially even standing in the same positions (though Roger and Adelle switch when he steals her phone), with Adelle in the same place and Dominic/Roger in the same place, and it’s shot the same way-
There’s also the fact - and this kinda made me go ‘ooh!’, I won’t lie - that they’re both standing on balconies, and in both cases the shot calls awareness to that choice. I also really like the contrast between the dark red interior of the Dollhouse, how stiflingly intimate it seems, as opposed to the openness and the brightness of outside.
Still. Interesting, with the balconies! I don’t think it’s an absolutely ludicrous stretch to notice the parallels there. Just a quasi-ridiculous stretch.
Then, there are the fight scenes. This is the one thing that I actually, genuinely suspect was canonically intended in the writing and direction, because I just don’t understand what the point of the detail would be otherwise.
Now, I tend to space out during fight scenes a little bit. I like it way better when people are talking quippy to each other. Fight scenes all just tend to go by in a big blur of ‘Oh, look, limbs flying!’ when you’re me. So it took a lot of watching before I even really began to contemplate this in a serious way. In any case, though, we are presented with two big fight scenes in this episode, one in act three and one in act four: Adelle’s swordfight with Roger, and Dominic’s fight with Echo.
And they are actually strikingly alike.
One thing that really interests me is - why have the Adelle/Roger swordfight in the first place? I mean, okay, there is the general reason of Olivia And Enver Swordfighting All Sexy, That’s Awesome! And, well, duh. Far be it from me to hate on that. But it’s a pretty long scene, and therefore I always really just wanted it to mean more than ‘Ooh, fight fight MAKEOUTS!’ And now, I kinda think it does. And that very much hinges upon the Dom/Echo fight scene.
The thing is, there are some weird similarities here, people.
It’s really easy to see the dolls as surrogates, in a weird way. Obviously Roger is a substitute for something in Adelle’s life - a boyfriend who’s an actual human. (Whose name is Laurence Dominic.) But the fact that it’s composed so that, looking at it side by side, Dominic is literally in Victor’s place -- oh, I like that.
Then there’s the fact that the fights take a very similar turn. Adelle and Victor swordfight; Dominic and Echo use shards of glass as, ya know, a slightly more hardcore version of Let’s Slice Each Other Up.
Then, there is this: both Dominic and Victor get sliced on the right arm.
Weirdly, out of everything, I feel like this is the one that’s On Purpose, the thing that points toward Dominic being subtextually marked as Victor, or Victor as Dominic. Otherwise, why the detail? Why have them both sliced on the same arm, shot in such a similar way?
Not to mention that where Victor is standing when he gets cut is the exact same place in the room where Dominic will soon be sitting.
Possibly there is some crazy going on up in here. It’s me. It’s not surprising. In fact, it’s expected! Cherished, at this point! But this just gets me. In an episode where love and pain are synonymous from the get-go, this seems like an ‘I love you’ quaintly written in blood. And I can’t quite get the sense that it is all just in an ‘Adelle/Victor, Dominic/Echo otp!!!1’ kinda way. “Don’t you get it? You’re a doll,” Dominic sneers at Echo; “You aren’t …” Adelle struggles to tell Victor - who, interestingly, misunderstands and says, “I’m not … who you need?” Not what you need, but who.
Basically: Victor. Echo. Substitutes.
Then there’s the question - why does Adelle’s “perfect date” (to snag the phrase Olivia Williams always employs so adorably re: Dollhouse engagements) involve an intense swordfight? I mean, sure, yeah, it’s cool to watch, and it just seems fitting of Adelle. But more specifically: she wants someone to fight her. She wants to fight back. She wants to win, but she doesn’t want that to be a given. She wants to be legitimately challenged, too.
Roger, weirdly, says to her, after she slices his arm and the fight escalates to a whole new level of intense that alarms her: “This is what you wanted, isn’t it? Otherwise, you wouldn’t have cut me.”
Huh.
They are literally sparring here, rapiers and whatnot. Adelle and Dominic verbally spar -- a lot. In 1x02, they disagree about how to handle Ballard; in 1x03, they fight over Echo’s actions; in 1x05, they do it again; by 1x07, it’s become such a standard facet of their relationship that exasperated Adelle says, “And Echo? I suppose you’ll be recommending she be sent to the Attic?” In 1x08 they disagree over allowing the four Actives to roam free in the outside world.
Dominic challenges her. Frequently.
Interestingly, all this challenging tends to be accompanied by some seriously inviting body language on our lady’s part:
He crosses his arms, clasps his hands behind his back; she is all open and come-hithery. So the notion that she might find said sparring sexy, especially in conjunction with the swordfighting scene - not all that out there!
And of course, this tendency to spar becomes the most apparent of all in their confrontation scene in this episode. In terms of how their exchanges go, it really isn’t that atypical of them. He’s always contradicted her and told her his own viewpoint on the matter.
There’s the fact, too, that the swordfighting scene has a sexual component - considering, ya know, it ends with Adelle and Roger making out against the wall and him carrying him off to go ravish her.
The fact that Adelle busts out the sword whilst sentencing Dominic, then, is made all the more interesting:
Another detail I like very much:
The image of Adelle sitting in her chair and Dominic standing beside/in front of her at attention is pretty much the most iconic one that this pair gets. It appears in 1x00, 1x01, 1x02, 1x03, 1x04, 1x06, and 1x08, sometimes more than once within an episode. It is Their Thing.
During the confrontation scene, their roles are reversed-
Now it’s Adelle that’s standing and closed off, arms crossed in a stance that is 100% Dominic, and Dominic is sitting, and - because he’s bound - forced into the open body language for once. (Sidenote: I really like that the key event that implicates Dominic is body language, and just the way that Eliza delivers the line “You got loose.” It’s such a great choice, considering his body language is, without fail, always so restrained. This ties in nicely to Adelle too - always so elegantly restrained, but in this episode there is kissing and swordfighting and sex. Basically, she gets loose in a way that she doesn’t typically allow herself to! And, wouldn’t you know, it leads to her downfall too. The scene with her sobbing, too, is pretty much the pinnacle of her ‘getting loose.’ You know. In a soul-crushing way.)
This works so nicely symbolically, because before it was always him with the secret and her with the freedom to speak; now, she is fighting like hell to hide exactly how brokenhearted she is in that moment, and he’s the one who’s open, trying to convince her that it wasn’t all a lie.
Another Dominic/Roger-slash-Victor similarity: the threads, baby! Dominic is, of course, always suited up. That is a very essential part of the magic that is Laurence Dominic. Check out this suit! Soft like a kitty! Roger, when we first see him? Suited up, y’all. (Though, needless to say, not with nearly as much style as Dom.) And then, at the end of the episode, they’re matching again: both are in t-shirts and sweats. I think one of the things that’s so horrifying about Dom getting Attic’d, in a weird way, is the fact that they change him into, like, casual-wear to do it. His being so well-dressed is such an inherent part of his character, so the fact that he’s been put in a t-shirt and sweatpants just seems like the nail in the Let’s Ruin Dominic coffin. And then at the very end, with Adelle looking out of Saunders’ office at Victor, we see him back in his t-shirt-and-sweats dollwear as well.
But What About Dominic’s Feelings, Huh?
Thus far, this has all focused a whole lot on, you know, trying to prove the (TRUE TRUE) notion that Adelle’s channeling her feelings for Dominic into her time with Roger. But of course, Dom’s the one doing the Big Betraying in this episode: shouldn’t we be worried, then, about what he thinks about our lady fair?
For the record, I think he likes her. I think what he’s saying in their Big Scene of Angst, he totally, totally means.
We don’t get a lot from Dominic about his feelings for DeWitt, in the midst of all the spy-catching and everything.
We do get, though, early on-
DOMINIC
Our men have been trying to reach DeWitt, she’s still not picking up. Is she (gestures to Sierra) gonna be able to pull it off?
TOPHER
I threw my best secret agent parts into the build.
DOMINIC
The GPS on DeWitt’s cell transmitter isn’t registering either! If anything happened to DeWitt…
The way Reed plays this is nice. I tend to just watch the Adelle scenes from this episode over and over, so my memories of this one weren’t as fresh, and I was really struck by how genuinely worried he seems about her. (It kinda reminds me of Adelle’s “And please … take care of him” from “Echoes.” Aw, you guys and your awkward not quite admissions of love sparked by worrying telephone calls or lack thereof!)
Then, later-
IVY
Why would I spy on the Dollhouse??
DOMINIC
I don’t care why! We’ll get that out of you when DeWitt has me torture you.
… okay, I don’t really have a lot of substance to add to that one. Mostly just TEEHEEHEE, TORTURE. You two are relentless!
Then there’s his conversation with Echo during their fight, which really just reiterates the character arc we’ve seen from him throughout the series thus far, in spite of us not knowing about his spy-being.
DOMINIC
You’re dangerous. You shoulda been in the ground a long time ago.
ECHO
You tried to kill me before.
DOMINIC
You’re another Alpha waiting to happen.
Even in this scene, when he’s got nothing to hide and he’s being pretty much as hardcore badass evil as we ever see him, that’s still the line he sticks with. Just like he’s told Adelle a number of times before - he doesn’t trust Echo. He wants her out of the game, because he believes she’s going to jeopardize the House. That lends some nice credence to his “I never lied to you - about my methods or my priorities” to Adelle later on. From what we can tell here, no, he didn’t.
THAT SCENE ITSELF
Considering I’ve rambled on for twelve pages here, and if we get into this I could happily go on for fifty more, I will keep myself from saying a whole lot about this scene. For a long time, though, I will say, it did not inspire much in me besides a sense of AUGHHHH WHYYYY because this, this is emotionally traumatic stuff! But watching it with a bit less emotional scarrage is great, because oh, the nuances!
I love how soft he is with her at first, like he is genuinely trying to get her to see from his perspective, to make her see reason about the House and about the fact that the tech needs to be contained. It’s only when she’s so hard and so angry and cold, completely refusing to listen, that he loses it.
I am also in love - in love - with the moment when he snaps with “It’s embarrassing, how naïve you are,” and the fact that even though she has been frigid and hard as hell in this whole scene, here it hurts her, and we see it hurt. She looks down, almost flinches, breathes sharply, closes her eyes. He really, really gets to her. She trusted him, she trusted what they had, and this is where - because he’s angry, I think, and because he thinks she’s better than this job lets her be (er, though that part might be my fic sensibilities talking), and because he’s trying to get a reaction out of her at all - he throws that in her face. And that hurts, and that’s when she decides to send him to the Attic.
“You’re signing my death warrant like it was a business transaction” - a moment of appreciation, y’all, for the emphasis on the ‘my’ there.
And, because I’m just this geeky, the scene with the crying edited in in order. Oh, don’t tell me I’m the only one who wanted to see it that way! For, you know, the proper emotional impact.
IT’S NOT ABOUT THE PAIN
--Everyone thinks it’s about the pain. It’s not about the pain, it’s about trust. Handing yourself over fully and completely to another human being. There’s nothing more beautiful than letting go like that.
--In my experience, that kind of trust always leads to pain.
This episode is a big weird mess of sex and pain and betrayal and trust. Paul and Mellie are in the throes of smoochy bliss when November interrupts, and tells Paul that everything between them has never been real. Adelle and Roger lie naked in bed talking about real yous and ersatz yous and things that she can never have; Roger tells her he trusts her, completely; Roger, of course, has no other choice. Adelle has a choice; Adelle chose three years ago; Adelle trusts Dominic to run the House while she’s away; trusts him with a gift. They never touch, but they linger close, and Echo (who sees everything she shouldn’t be able to see) notices this. She makes him convulse with pain (he makes her convulse with sobs, but nobody gets to know that); he makes her bleed, scars her; all the while, their eyes are locked; this is the skewed consummation they get. “With my life,” Echo says at the end, in the chair, her eyes locked with Boyd’s. No matter what, some bonds just don’t break.
This is Dollhouse, and it’s friggin’ messed up, and somewhere, somewhere, there is so a love story in that.
HAUNTED (‘Cause you know I’m not shutting up yet!)
I don’t believe Dominic is ever mentioned by name in the episode following “A Spy in the House of Love.” Interesting, considering the fact that some SERIOUSLY REAL HARDCORE NONSENSE just went down concerning the guy. But this is Adelle, who Does Not Admit She Feels Something, and therefore, it is kind of perfection.
This episode is (in my skewed perception) all about subtextual mourning. It’s called Haunted, man!
MARGARET
It's a chance to indulge my curiosity. To see my own funeral. Who wouldn't want that?
ADELLE (pauses, stricken by the remark)
To hear what the world really thought of us? To count up the number who love us?
MARGARET
Addie? Are you all right?
ADELLE
Well, let's see. My friend just died.
What really gets me in the way Olivia plays this scene is how hard that first remark of Margaret’s hits her. She goes from Giggling With Her BFF to Pensive And Bitter And Sad in two seconds flat. Bam. “To hear what the world really thought of us” - if echoes of ‘It’s embarrassing, how naïve you are’ aren’t going through her head, well, they are at least definitely going through mine. (And hers. You know it.) The fact that she busts out the l-bomb, too, is interesting. The number who love us.
And, of course, her friend just died. Hello, handy double meaning, it’s great to see you! Also: oh, Addie.
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MARGARET
Adelle, there's just so much anger. At least the first time I died thinking people loved me. All just a worthless illusion.
ADELLE
Illusions aren't worthless. They're at the heart of most relationships.
Again, she goes from laughing to serious & sad like that. Plus: like your relationship with your Head of Security boyfriend, maybe? I think so. And I so love the acknowledgement of weakness here - a few times in fic, I’ve found myself exploring the notion of Adelle, in retrospect, wishing she hadn’t caught him, wishing he hadn’t been found out, so that things could go on the way they did. Willful ignorance seems like something she’s occasionally prone to. (See: Her Entire Justification Of The Dollhouse.)
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And then we get the scene of her watching Topher and Sierra on the monitor in her dark office with a drink in her hand. I believe the last time we saw her with said monitors, it was when she was standing all cozy and shoulder-to-shoulder with Dom in “Needs.” She is just a portrait of bitter sorrow.
And then, to Boyd-
ADELLE (sharply)
She has a new handler. You're going to have to get used to it.
The subtext here: ‘I have a new Head of Security. I’m going to have to get used to it.’
BOYD
Yes. I guess I am.
Boyd, for the record, seems to get it.
This might be reading into it too much, but I almost don’t think so. (Although I am admittedly biased.) There is something so pointed about this performance. And then:
ADELLE
Loneliness leads to nothing good. Only detachment. And sometimes the people who most need to reach out are the people least capable of it.
Note: is this the first time we see her drinking alone in her office? I feel like it is, although I don’t know for sure. In which case - OH MY HEART. Dom, you are so the cause of her descent into alcoholism! derevko_child’s hilarious icon speaks truth!
Also, regarding the end of this episode - again, we have Adelle with someone she loves in the chair, but this time, she’s teary, emotional. She holds Margaret’s hand and promises her she’ll see her whole life flash before her eyes. The juxtaposition between Dominic in the chair and Margaret in the chair, and Adelle’s reactions to each of them, is so remarkable. I like that, rather than having her get steadily harder & crueler post-“Spy”, we see her soften instead. Oh, Adelle. ♥ This is a beautiful episode for her. (Complete with a JUDITH CAMEO, y’all!)
And now that I have rambled FOR ACTUAL EVER, please, your thoughts! Tell me how crazy I am! How much I should have spent this time writing my essay on Waiting for Godot instead! (Which, for the record, only has to be 2,000 words. This is 5,300+. Why oh why can’t I take a class on Dollhouse!) Why, exactly, Roger is totally, totally, totally Mr. Dominic! What you think about Adelle in “Haunted”! Why She Does That Sexy Arm-Over-Head Thing post-Roger Sexytimes and whilst being held at gunpoint by her slightly grumpy ex-Head of Security!
Discuss! And stuff!
… I apologize for the weird existence of this gigantic monstrosity. Possibly I should have channeled some of this enthusiasm into Waiting for Godot.
A Literary Analysis.
Except Slightly More TV-Shaped.
First and foremost, a disclaimer: this is all nuts. If the majority of this - or, well, okay, any of this - was actually intended by the writers, director, etc., I think I will promptly perish of shock. But by God, I’ve been English majoring for four years now, and the most valuable thing I have gotten out of that (besides an unholy talent for Putting Off My Reading ‘Til The Last Possible Second - which I may or may not be doing at this exact moment!) is the stance that if you’ve got evidence, and you can argue your point, then bam! Your point is valid! It may not have been intended by the author, but guess what? Too bad, author! And since this is our ultimate shippy powerhouse, I figured, by God, why not just go all crazy? So I did. A lot. There are nuances here so psychotically miniscule that you’ll probably want to stick me in a madhouse by the time you’re done reading. Please, if you possibly can, refrain.
Anyway. I remember that my first reaction to this episode, after “AAAAAAUGH!” and a great deal of overwhelming despair, was, ‘Okay, Roger was somehow all about Dominic. I don’t get how, I cannot actually sort it out in my brain, but I KNOW HE WAS!’ This is me, finally endeavoring to sort it all out in my brain. Welcome along to this crazy ride, kiddies.
BEGINNING NOTE: A Spy in the House of Love is a novel by Anais Nin. It is also a rather hilarious song by this guy, but that one’s title is “Spy In The House of Love,” minus the “A,” so we’re gonna choose to believe that our title’s referencing Anais Nin. Not that that song’s not dandy.
Anyway! The novel is about a young woman, Sabina, who is married to a nice guy named Alan, but has lots and lots (and lots and lots?) of love affairs. I haven’t read it, and all my knowledge has thus been gleaned from Amazon and Wikipedia. However, I very much like that in selecting this title, there’s the instant invocation of themes of betrayal - specifically as related to love.
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Our first D/D reference in the episode (though of course, at first we don’t know that’s what it is yet) is the following-
SIERRA
What’s happening?
ECHO
She made a mistake. Now she’s sad.
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Then we jump back twelve hours, and we get this. Eliza Dushku is dressed up like a dominatrix, so I can see how it would be easy to disregard any of the actual stuff she’s saying. But the actual stuff she’s saying - oh, guys, it is so very, very relevant to our interests.
DOMINATRIX!ECHO
Everyone thinks it’s about the pain. It’s not about the pain, it’s about trust. Handing yourself over fully and completely to another human being. There’s nothing more beautiful than letting go like that.
BOYD
In my experience, that kind of trust always leads to pain.
(Er, totally off-topic sidenote in the light of the end of this season: ouch.)
This establishes a theme that gets driven home in such a thorough way throughout the rest of the episode: Dominatrix!Echo, in addition to making Fox very happy because they get to show ads with Eliza dressed as a dominatrix, presents the concept of romantic/sexual desire, trust, and pain all entangled with one another.
The theme of trust is verbally & implicitly referred to time and time again afterwards in this episode. Verbally, here are the other occasions-
(In bed with Roger)
ADELLE
We just can’t have that. You have to trust me.
ROGER
I do. I trust you. Completely.
(To Boyd, during the employee interrogation)
ECHO
I don’t know why, but I trust you.
(First lines of the confrontation scene)
ADELLE
I trusted you with a gift, Mr. Dominic.
DOMINIC
The Dollhouse is not a gift.
(Last lines of the episode; Echo getting her new handler)
TRAVIS
Do you trust me?
ECHO (to Boyd)
With my life.
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Having Echo speak those very definitive lines about the episode’s theme puts her at the center of it in terms of her awareness, and we see a lot of what goes down subsequently through her eyes. Of course, the two parts that I’m interested in are the D/D scenes. (I am a lady of limited & very specific interests.)
The way the first scene between them, in particular, is shot is compelling. In terms of content, it’s pretty run-of-the-mill, standard DeWitt/Dominic stuff. They talk about work and are a little snarky, she’s the boss, he’s her trusted right hand, the end. But the way it’s filmed is very striking. There’s a slowness and a physicality to it that is pretty atypical.
When Dominic first sees Adelle, the way it’s shot makes it a Big Moment. He’s striding along, he sees her, he pauses. The camera cuts to her walking up, and lingers there long enough that it seems like a pretty significant Ooh, It’s Adelle moment. We get a quick shot of Dominic walking over to her, and even though it’s easy to miss, he smiles. We stay with Echo a little bit after he’s walked out of the shot, and therefore there’s the sense that, in the following faraway shots of them, we’re seeing them through Echo’s eyes.
When he walks up to her (and oh, this is the kind of observation that only spending way too much time fanvidding could have afforded me with), he - interestingly - reaches out to her with his left hand, but by the time he reaches her, he’s back in default Arms Crossed stance. There’s that brief moment wherein the body language threatens to get a shade more uncharacteristically intimate.
Then we see Echo going down the stairs, framed by their bodies on either side of her and thus symbolically suggesting, via the way the shot’s constructed, that Echo is aware of the physicality between them.
And as our handy dandy visual aid here proves, we get this again later when she sentences him to Atticdom - this is about as close as they’ve ever been, dark parody of a prelude to a kiss, and Echo’s right there between them again. Aware of the connection there. She made a mistake. Now she’s sad. / Everybody thinks it’s about the pain. It’s not about the pain, it’s about trust.
HIDING YOUR SINS
And now, to enter the Girrrrrl, You Extra Crazy portion of our program!
Firstly, I’d like to introduce the concept of marriage. Not, er, to the world, or anything. Civilization kinda already beat me to that one. But in terms of this episode! It is, of course, implicit in the title, because the Nin novel A Spy in the House of Love is about an adulterous woman and her marriage.
Adelle and Dominic are kinda … work-married. (A subject that I recently breached very sillily in a very silly fanfiction.) They are Mr. and Mrs. Dollhouse. The previous episode, “Needs,” is bookended with scenes of the meeting in Adelle’s office, and therefore with shots of them standing together at the head of the room, matching postures, matching crossed arms. There’s a sense of equality there, not the sense established from some of the prior episodes that Dominic’s subservient to her. So in the previous episode to “A Spy in the House of Love,” we’ve been subconsciously presented with that image of them being an equal partnership. (Interestingly, the episode before that one, “Echoes,” introduces the elements of betrayal that will fracture their relationship for either character: Adelle’s seeming throwaway line to Topher about Victor - “Ooh, I have a good story about him!” - and Dominic’s indignation when he discovers that Topher programmed Victor to be an NSA agent. Fittingly, Victor figures prominently into both of these little foreshadowing moments. Also fittingly, this episode has the scene that is perhaps the most prominent indicator of some kind of romantic feeling between them - the Inexplicably Hella Awkward post-drugged scene in her office at the episode’s end.)
So, basically, we have a sense of that partnership going into this episode. Adelle leaves; Dominic is in charge. We even get what is pretty much the ultimate visual evidence of this, him sitting in her chair-
As oltha_heri once flawlessly put it: “Also, one thing I noticed in a rewatch of Spy In The House Of Love is how chilled out Dominic is lounging in Adelle's throne. I have this feeling every other employee would like use touching the thing as the worst possible dare after they were all three sheets to the wind and Dominic's like, I've totally had sex in this chair so I can totally hang and mock your silliness from here.”
Just sayin’.
There is, too, the fact that Adelle makes an overt reference to marriage during her conversation with Roger in bed.
ADELLE
Everyone has their first date, and the object is to hide your flaws, and then you’re in a relationship, and it’s all about hiding your disappointment, and then once you’re married, it’s about hiding your sins.
ROGER
Katherine: mistress of the dark observation.
ADELLE
But with you, there’s no reason to hide anything real.
And of course, Adelle and Dominic each have a sin to hide here: Adelle, her engagement with Victor; Dominic, his NSA spydom.
And this right here is, I promise, the craziest we’ll get. There’s no way this ain’t anything besides me being nuts, and if they paid this much attention in the making of this episode then they are as crazy as I am (and no one, no one’s as crazy as I am) but gosh darnit, I noticed it, so I’m sharing it! Symbolismmmm! Ridiculously intricate symbolism that probably doesn’t even exist! I can’t resist it.
Something that I’ll mention later got me particularly interested in tracking hands and arms and left versus right in this episode (seriously, you guys, I am crazy), and then of course, I started wondering whether any significance could be attributed to the left in terms of Adelle and of Dominic - left hand, wedding ring, married.
At the beginning of the episode, as he walks toward her, Dominic reaches out his left arm to Adelle. At the end, when he shoots her, it’s in her left side. A reaching-way-too-far observation, I know, but I think there’s a resonant symmetry to it all the same: the fact that it bookends, the beginning and the end, and that Adelle’s surroundings at the end look just like the surroundings during the scene at the beginning with Dominic. (They aren’t standing in the exact same place, technically, but the shots are so similar that it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to consider it deliberate.)
Wedding rings are so trite, anyway. With these guys, it’s all about the atypically open gesturing and gunshot wounds!
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PATHETIC, SELF-DELUDING SOULS
“Roger is Adelle’s substitute Dominic!” I have cried in endless fics, vids, etc. pretty much since this episode aired. But if you asked me to actually concretely defend that position, well, I wouldn’t really know where to start. Really, it’s just a vibe that I got, and a vibe that I like, and therefore a vibe that I’ve stood by for a very long time. But here is me, at long last, trying to scrounge up some actual evidence.
This, needless to say, is gon’ get crazy, you guys.
If, by any weird and random chance, anyone who has actually worked on Dollhouse in any way ever encounters this - er, I’m sorry. And … hearteningly enthusiastic about your TV show, at least?
Right.
Let’s do this.
Repression has a strong presence in this episode, especially in terms of Adelle and what she’s doing.
Right after the first DeWitt/Dominic scene, we follow Echo to her doctor’s appointment in Saunders’ office. Here, we get this conversation between her and Boyd-
BOYD (re: the engagements)
You really think it has to do with need?
CLAIRE
Sometimes, yes. Having a desire you’re afraid or ashamed of expressing can be terribly debilitating.
To jump all the way forward to the end, we find ourselves back in Saunders’ office. That’s where we get this exchange:
CLAIRE
I know you were close to Mr. Dominic.
ADELLE
He was an employee with whom I worked closely. There’s a difference.
CLAIRE
It’s okay to feel something.
ADELLE
That would imply I’d lost something.
CLAIRE
Didn’t you?
ADELLE (looking at Victor)
Nothing I can’t live without.
This exchange becomes even more resonant & D/D friendly with the shadow of that earlier scene - ”Having a desire you’re afraid or ashamed of expressing” -- hanging over it. Here is Adelle, literally, actively not expressing her feelings, and it’s on the subject of Dominic.
NO, BUT SERIOUSLY, ROGER IS TOTALLY SUBSTITUTE DOMINIC
Let’s return, if we may (which … we may), to the first DeWitt/Dominic scene again. I can’t help it! It’s so pretty! But anyway. I watched these two scenes about 8937539 times before this occurred to me. And then it occurred to me, and I really, really liked it.
The scene where Dominic walks up to Adelle and the scene where Roger comes up to find her are quite strikingly similar in terms of how they’re composed.
They’re initially even standing in the same positions (though Roger and Adelle switch when he steals her phone), with Adelle in the same place and Dominic/Roger in the same place, and it’s shot the same way-
There’s also the fact - and this kinda made me go ‘ooh!’, I won’t lie - that they’re both standing on balconies, and in both cases the shot calls awareness to that choice. I also really like the contrast between the dark red interior of the Dollhouse, how stiflingly intimate it seems, as opposed to the openness and the brightness of outside.
Still. Interesting, with the balconies! I don’t think it’s an absolutely ludicrous stretch to notice the parallels there. Just a quasi-ridiculous stretch.
Then, there are the fight scenes. This is the one thing that I actually, genuinely suspect was canonically intended in the writing and direction, because I just don’t understand what the point of the detail would be otherwise.
Now, I tend to space out during fight scenes a little bit. I like it way better when people are talking quippy to each other. Fight scenes all just tend to go by in a big blur of ‘Oh, look, limbs flying!’ when you’re me. So it took a lot of watching before I even really began to contemplate this in a serious way. In any case, though, we are presented with two big fight scenes in this episode, one in act three and one in act four: Adelle’s swordfight with Roger, and Dominic’s fight with Echo.
And they are actually strikingly alike.
One thing that really interests me is - why have the Adelle/Roger swordfight in the first place? I mean, okay, there is the general reason of Olivia And Enver Swordfighting All Sexy, That’s Awesome! And, well, duh. Far be it from me to hate on that. But it’s a pretty long scene, and therefore I always really just wanted it to mean more than ‘Ooh, fight fight MAKEOUTS!’ And now, I kinda think it does. And that very much hinges upon the Dom/Echo fight scene.
The thing is, there are some weird similarities here, people.
It’s really easy to see the dolls as surrogates, in a weird way. Obviously Roger is a substitute for something in Adelle’s life - a boyfriend who’s an actual human. (Whose name is Laurence Dominic.) But the fact that it’s composed so that, looking at it side by side, Dominic is literally in Victor’s place -- oh, I like that.
Then there’s the fact that the fights take a very similar turn. Adelle and Victor swordfight; Dominic and Echo use shards of glass as, ya know, a slightly more hardcore version of Let’s Slice Each Other Up.
Then, there is this: both Dominic and Victor get sliced on the right arm.
Weirdly, out of everything, I feel like this is the one that’s On Purpose, the thing that points toward Dominic being subtextually marked as Victor, or Victor as Dominic. Otherwise, why the detail? Why have them both sliced on the same arm, shot in such a similar way?
Not to mention that where Victor is standing when he gets cut is the exact same place in the room where Dominic will soon be sitting.
Possibly there is some crazy going on up in here. It’s me. It’s not surprising. In fact, it’s expected! Cherished, at this point! But this just gets me. In an episode where love and pain are synonymous from the get-go, this seems like an ‘I love you’ quaintly written in blood. And I can’t quite get the sense that it is all just in an ‘Adelle/Victor, Dominic/Echo otp!!!1’ kinda way. “Don’t you get it? You’re a doll,” Dominic sneers at Echo; “You aren’t …” Adelle struggles to tell Victor - who, interestingly, misunderstands and says, “I’m not … who you need?” Not what you need, but who.
Basically: Victor. Echo. Substitutes.
Then there’s the question - why does Adelle’s “perfect date” (to snag the phrase Olivia Williams always employs so adorably re: Dollhouse engagements) involve an intense swordfight? I mean, sure, yeah, it’s cool to watch, and it just seems fitting of Adelle. But more specifically: she wants someone to fight her. She wants to fight back. She wants to win, but she doesn’t want that to be a given. She wants to be legitimately challenged, too.
Roger, weirdly, says to her, after she slices his arm and the fight escalates to a whole new level of intense that alarms her: “This is what you wanted, isn’t it? Otherwise, you wouldn’t have cut me.”
Huh.
They are literally sparring here, rapiers and whatnot. Adelle and Dominic verbally spar -- a lot. In 1x02, they disagree about how to handle Ballard; in 1x03, they fight over Echo’s actions; in 1x05, they do it again; by 1x07, it’s become such a standard facet of their relationship that exasperated Adelle says, “And Echo? I suppose you’ll be recommending she be sent to the Attic?” In 1x08 they disagree over allowing the four Actives to roam free in the outside world.
Dominic challenges her. Frequently.
Interestingly, all this challenging tends to be accompanied by some seriously inviting body language on our lady’s part:
He crosses his arms, clasps his hands behind his back; she is all open and come-hithery. So the notion that she might find said sparring sexy, especially in conjunction with the swordfighting scene - not all that out there!
And of course, this tendency to spar becomes the most apparent of all in their confrontation scene in this episode. In terms of how their exchanges go, it really isn’t that atypical of them. He’s always contradicted her and told her his own viewpoint on the matter.
There’s the fact, too, that the swordfighting scene has a sexual component - considering, ya know, it ends with Adelle and Roger making out against the wall and him carrying him off to go ravish her.
The fact that Adelle busts out the sword whilst sentencing Dominic, then, is made all the more interesting:
Another detail I like very much:
The image of Adelle sitting in her chair and Dominic standing beside/in front of her at attention is pretty much the most iconic one that this pair gets. It appears in 1x00, 1x01, 1x02, 1x03, 1x04, 1x06, and 1x08, sometimes more than once within an episode. It is Their Thing.
During the confrontation scene, their roles are reversed-
Now it’s Adelle that’s standing and closed off, arms crossed in a stance that is 100% Dominic, and Dominic is sitting, and - because he’s bound - forced into the open body language for once. (Sidenote: I really like that the key event that implicates Dominic is body language, and just the way that Eliza delivers the line “You got loose.” It’s such a great choice, considering his body language is, without fail, always so restrained. This ties in nicely to Adelle too - always so elegantly restrained, but in this episode there is kissing and swordfighting and sex. Basically, she gets loose in a way that she doesn’t typically allow herself to! And, wouldn’t you know, it leads to her downfall too. The scene with her sobbing, too, is pretty much the pinnacle of her ‘getting loose.’ You know. In a soul-crushing way.)
This works so nicely symbolically, because before it was always him with the secret and her with the freedom to speak; now, she is fighting like hell to hide exactly how brokenhearted she is in that moment, and he’s the one who’s open, trying to convince her that it wasn’t all a lie.
Another Dominic/Roger-slash-Victor similarity: the threads, baby! Dominic is, of course, always suited up. That is a very essential part of the magic that is Laurence Dominic. Check out this suit! Soft like a kitty! Roger, when we first see him? Suited up, y’all. (Though, needless to say, not with nearly as much style as Dom.) And then, at the end of the episode, they’re matching again: both are in t-shirts and sweats. I think one of the things that’s so horrifying about Dom getting Attic’d, in a weird way, is the fact that they change him into, like, casual-wear to do it. His being so well-dressed is such an inherent part of his character, so the fact that he’s been put in a t-shirt and sweatpants just seems like the nail in the Let’s Ruin Dominic coffin. And then at the very end, with Adelle looking out of Saunders’ office at Victor, we see him back in his t-shirt-and-sweats dollwear as well.
But What About Dominic’s Feelings, Huh?
Thus far, this has all focused a whole lot on, you know, trying to prove the (TRUE TRUE) notion that Adelle’s channeling her feelings for Dominic into her time with Roger. But of course, Dom’s the one doing the Big Betraying in this episode: shouldn’t we be worried, then, about what he thinks about our lady fair?
For the record, I think he likes her. I think what he’s saying in their Big Scene of Angst, he totally, totally means.
We don’t get a lot from Dominic about his feelings for DeWitt, in the midst of all the spy-catching and everything.
We do get, though, early on-
DOMINIC
Our men have been trying to reach DeWitt, she’s still not picking up. Is she (gestures to Sierra) gonna be able to pull it off?
TOPHER
I threw my best secret agent parts into the build.
DOMINIC
The GPS on DeWitt’s cell transmitter isn’t registering either! If anything happened to DeWitt…
The way Reed plays this is nice. I tend to just watch the Adelle scenes from this episode over and over, so my memories of this one weren’t as fresh, and I was really struck by how genuinely worried he seems about her. (It kinda reminds me of Adelle’s “And please … take care of him” from “Echoes.” Aw, you guys and your awkward not quite admissions of love sparked by worrying telephone calls or lack thereof!)
Then, later-
IVY
Why would I spy on the Dollhouse??
DOMINIC
I don’t care why! We’ll get that out of you when DeWitt has me torture you.
… okay, I don’t really have a lot of substance to add to that one. Mostly just TEEHEEHEE, TORTURE. You two are relentless!
Then there’s his conversation with Echo during their fight, which really just reiterates the character arc we’ve seen from him throughout the series thus far, in spite of us not knowing about his spy-being.
DOMINIC
You’re dangerous. You shoulda been in the ground a long time ago.
ECHO
You tried to kill me before.
DOMINIC
You’re another Alpha waiting to happen.
Even in this scene, when he’s got nothing to hide and he’s being pretty much as hardcore badass evil as we ever see him, that’s still the line he sticks with. Just like he’s told Adelle a number of times before - he doesn’t trust Echo. He wants her out of the game, because he believes she’s going to jeopardize the House. That lends some nice credence to his “I never lied to you - about my methods or my priorities” to Adelle later on. From what we can tell here, no, he didn’t.
THAT SCENE ITSELF
Considering I’ve rambled on for twelve pages here, and if we get into this I could happily go on for fifty more, I will keep myself from saying a whole lot about this scene. For a long time, though, I will say, it did not inspire much in me besides a sense of AUGHHHH WHYYYY because this, this is emotionally traumatic stuff! But watching it with a bit less emotional scarrage is great, because oh, the nuances!
I love how soft he is with her at first, like he is genuinely trying to get her to see from his perspective, to make her see reason about the House and about the fact that the tech needs to be contained. It’s only when she’s so hard and so angry and cold, completely refusing to listen, that he loses it.
I am also in love - in love - with the moment when he snaps with “It’s embarrassing, how naïve you are,” and the fact that even though she has been frigid and hard as hell in this whole scene, here it hurts her, and we see it hurt. She looks down, almost flinches, breathes sharply, closes her eyes. He really, really gets to her. She trusted him, she trusted what they had, and this is where - because he’s angry, I think, and because he thinks she’s better than this job lets her be (er, though that part might be my fic sensibilities talking), and because he’s trying to get a reaction out of her at all - he throws that in her face. And that hurts, and that’s when she decides to send him to the Attic.
“You’re signing my death warrant like it was a business transaction” - a moment of appreciation, y’all, for the emphasis on the ‘my’ there.
And, because I’m just this geeky, the scene with the crying edited in in order. Oh, don’t tell me I’m the only one who wanted to see it that way! For, you know, the proper emotional impact.
IT’S NOT ABOUT THE PAIN
--Everyone thinks it’s about the pain. It’s not about the pain, it’s about trust. Handing yourself over fully and completely to another human being. There’s nothing more beautiful than letting go like that.
--In my experience, that kind of trust always leads to pain.
This episode is a big weird mess of sex and pain and betrayal and trust. Paul and Mellie are in the throes of smoochy bliss when November interrupts, and tells Paul that everything between them has never been real. Adelle and Roger lie naked in bed talking about real yous and ersatz yous and things that she can never have; Roger tells her he trusts her, completely; Roger, of course, has no other choice. Adelle has a choice; Adelle chose three years ago; Adelle trusts Dominic to run the House while she’s away; trusts him with a gift. They never touch, but they linger close, and Echo (who sees everything she shouldn’t be able to see) notices this. She makes him convulse with pain (he makes her convulse with sobs, but nobody gets to know that); he makes her bleed, scars her; all the while, their eyes are locked; this is the skewed consummation they get. “With my life,” Echo says at the end, in the chair, her eyes locked with Boyd’s. No matter what, some bonds just don’t break.
This is Dollhouse, and it’s friggin’ messed up, and somewhere, somewhere, there is so a love story in that.
HAUNTED (‘Cause you know I’m not shutting up yet!)
I don’t believe Dominic is ever mentioned by name in the episode following “A Spy in the House of Love.” Interesting, considering the fact that some SERIOUSLY REAL HARDCORE NONSENSE just went down concerning the guy. But this is Adelle, who Does Not Admit She Feels Something, and therefore, it is kind of perfection.
This episode is (in my skewed perception) all about subtextual mourning. It’s called Haunted, man!
MARGARET
It's a chance to indulge my curiosity. To see my own funeral. Who wouldn't want that?
ADELLE (pauses, stricken by the remark)
To hear what the world really thought of us? To count up the number who love us?
MARGARET
Addie? Are you all right?
ADELLE
Well, let's see. My friend just died.
What really gets me in the way Olivia plays this scene is how hard that first remark of Margaret’s hits her. She goes from Giggling With Her BFF to Pensive And Bitter And Sad in two seconds flat. Bam. “To hear what the world really thought of us” - if echoes of ‘It’s embarrassing, how naïve you are’ aren’t going through her head, well, they are at least definitely going through mine. (And hers. You know it.) The fact that she busts out the l-bomb, too, is interesting. The number who love us.
And, of course, her friend just died. Hello, handy double meaning, it’s great to see you! Also: oh, Addie.
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MARGARET
Adelle, there's just so much anger. At least the first time I died thinking people loved me. All just a worthless illusion.
ADELLE
Illusions aren't worthless. They're at the heart of most relationships.
Again, she goes from laughing to serious & sad like that. Plus: like your relationship with your Head of Security boyfriend, maybe? I think so. And I so love the acknowledgement of weakness here - a few times in fic, I’ve found myself exploring the notion of Adelle, in retrospect, wishing she hadn’t caught him, wishing he hadn’t been found out, so that things could go on the way they did. Willful ignorance seems like something she’s occasionally prone to. (See: Her Entire Justification Of The Dollhouse.)
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And then we get the scene of her watching Topher and Sierra on the monitor in her dark office with a drink in her hand. I believe the last time we saw her with said monitors, it was when she was standing all cozy and shoulder-to-shoulder with Dom in “Needs.” She is just a portrait of bitter sorrow.
And then, to Boyd-
ADELLE (sharply)
She has a new handler. You're going to have to get used to it.
The subtext here: ‘I have a new Head of Security. I’m going to have to get used to it.’
BOYD
Yes. I guess I am.
Boyd, for the record, seems to get it.
This might be reading into it too much, but I almost don’t think so. (Although I am admittedly biased.) There is something so pointed about this performance. And then:
ADELLE
Loneliness leads to nothing good. Only detachment. And sometimes the people who most need to reach out are the people least capable of it.
Note: is this the first time we see her drinking alone in her office? I feel like it is, although I don’t know for sure. In which case - OH MY HEART. Dom, you are so the cause of her descent into alcoholism! derevko_child’s hilarious icon speaks truth!
Also, regarding the end of this episode - again, we have Adelle with someone she loves in the chair, but this time, she’s teary, emotional. She holds Margaret’s hand and promises her she’ll see her whole life flash before her eyes. The juxtaposition between Dominic in the chair and Margaret in the chair, and Adelle’s reactions to each of them, is so remarkable. I like that, rather than having her get steadily harder & crueler post-“Spy”, we see her soften instead. Oh, Adelle. ♥ This is a beautiful episode for her. (Complete with a JUDITH CAMEO, y’all!)
And now that I have rambled FOR ACTUAL EVER, please, your thoughts! Tell me how crazy I am! How much I should have spent this time writing my essay on Waiting for Godot instead! (Which, for the record, only has to be 2,000 words. This is 5,300+. Why oh why can’t I take a class on Dollhouse!) Why, exactly, Roger is totally, totally, totally Mr. Dominic! What you think about Adelle in “Haunted”! Why She Does That Sexy Arm-Over-Head Thing post-Roger Sexytimes and whilst being held at gunpoint by her slightly grumpy ex-Head of Security!
Discuss! And stuff!
… I apologize for the weird existence of this gigantic monstrosity. Possibly I should have channeled some of this enthusiasm into Waiting for Godot.