Topher Brink? I love you. I love you like I loved Xander back in the day. You are beautiful and wonderful and smart and amazing, and it makes me cry thinking that you’re going to lose that beautiful mind of yours.
The Good: I saw Mellie’s end coming somehow, but that didn’t make it any less shocking. So many people with other people’s blood on their faces in this show! Poor Paul. Poor Topher and Adelle, having their hearts broken by Boyd’s manipulation and betrayal. Echo’s reaction to “family” when Priya and Anthony came back. One more glimpse of Victor/Anthony as Topher. Adelle reaching out and touching Topher’s hand when he was confronting Boyd about Bennett. Topher leaning over and touching her back when she tried to shoulder some blame. The relationship between Adelle and Topher is my favorite on the show. Whiskey as Clyde. Whiskey Whiskey Whiskey. How does she get from here to Epitaph One/possibly Two? Was she still in the building when it blew? And Boyd. Boyd being wiped, by Topher’s tech, and then strapped with a bomb and told to pull the pin on the grenade. My heart, it broke, it shattered, it blew into a zillion pieces at his wiped, innocent, obedient face. I cried big, fat rolling tears for a character I never truly loved, but liked a whole lot and was saddened by his end. I’m a little choked up now, writing about it, to tell the truth.
The bad: nothing. Everything, every second, was great TV.
Yes, I cried at the end of this episode, and through the credits and preview for the series finale because this has truly become one of my favorite shows ever. Ignoring the first six Fox-dictated episodes, what we got with Dollhouse was a mind-bending, mind-fucking show that made us really think about what it is to be a person, to have a soul, to own who you are based on neurons firing in your brain. What it means to have that taken away and reprogrammed, and how, even then, some things can come through. Who you inherently are isn’t just based on experiences but is ingrained in you and can’t be taken away. Anthony and Priya always found each other. Caroline always questioned. Madeline was always a victim, even in her Sleeper mode. Whiskey was always insane. I’m going to miss these characters and the stories we’ll never see.
I want to be Adelle DeWitt when I grow up.