In this last episode of Dollhouse, we go ten years in the future to 2020. Yep, I’d be an old gal by then, but not yet ready for my walker. I can take on the butchers that rule L.A. And do they rule. Zone and Mag get out with Caroline by the skin of their teeth and then get captured by the last stand of Rossum’s men and taken to Neuropolis. Echo and Paul are already there and cause havoc in their rescue of the inhabitants and killing off Clive 2.0 and Harding.

Bad news for Echo when Boyd drugs her so she cannot reveal whom the top bean is…namely him. The group decides to go to Tucson anyways and Adele tells everyone that they will walk through the front door as they have what Rossum wants. Whiskey is now Clyde version something-er-rather, and she/he separates the group, and when Boyd gets Topher and the gang out, no one is the wiser.

The series finale of Dollhouse was set to air this Friday, but now it's been bumped back a week so that FOX can show the Haiti telethon special that George Clooney is putting together.

Okay, by now you’ve seen the episode and I can crack out the shocking ending. Spoiler Alert for you troglodytes out there who haven’t seen this stunner as yet. C’mon! Get with the program!

Echo is in the Attic, but is having a recurring nightmare that she and Priya and Anthony are escaping, but Priya and Anthony are killed in the process. When she proceeds out of the area, she realizes that nothing is real and she is inside her mind. That’s when Dominic comes in and she fights him until he explains himself. Echo tells him that he is her mind and wonders how he is traveling between minds, but before he can tell her she disappears into some Japanese man’s mind. She finds out that there is a weakness with the mainframe, and then Dominic turns up while she is in the kitchen exploring. The man is killed by Arcane, who Dominic is pursuing to stop from killing people, but since Echo and Dominic are in the man’s brain they must get out before it shuts down.

Victor is on a Miss Lonelyhearts engagement, which is really with Adelle. He cannot go through with it as he is in love with another woman, namely Sierra. When he is brought back to the Dollhouse, Adelle is furious with Topher and accidentally reveals herself to be Miss Lonelyhearts. When Victor is blanked from the mission, he immediately asks for Sierra, which solves the mystery for Adelle, much to her chagrin.

Someone, okay Alpha, has been killing Echo’s previous romantic engagements. Echo has been in isolation with Victor being her shrink, and he is convinced that she is in a childlike state. Adelle brings Echo out of isolation to go to an engagement, where her date is dead and a message is left for her from Alpha. Boyd and Paul figure out that all of Echo’s previous romantic engagements have been killed, save two. While Echo is put back in isolation, they go to save one of the gents, who is blown up by Alpha. They manage to bring in the last man standing with Echo’s help, but then they catch hell from Adelle for taking Echo out of isolation.

Echo is on her own in Texas and tries to help a girl get food, but the girl – Galena - is caught by police and Echo manages to get away. Back at the Dollhouse, Mr. Harding is in charge of the house and Adelle is his assistant, which is depressing. Topher has Victor and Sienna helping him on some secret project. Paul is now with Echo and they are living together, planning to break out Galena. Echo is working as a nurse at County Hospital and she and Paul have been training to takedown the Dollhouse. The escape for Galena has a wrench thrown into the works when Galena wakes up too soon from a shot designed to fake her death. Echo manages to get them out with Paul pulling a wild card to get the pursuit called off.

It's episodes like this that make me hate FOX with a passion – tense, funny, character driven, action packed, and lots of mythology to digest. It was almost everything you could want from a show, and yet it's hard to celebrate its accomplishments when the outcome of cancellation is already known. At least I'll have fun rewatching this episode again when it comes out on the hopefully inevitable DVD.

Dollhouse finally returns, though it's a bittersweet return since we know the show is being cancelled at the end of this year and FOX is mostly burning through these episodes now by showing two a night for the next three weeks (it's a plus here since they're connected, but still). Lots of twists, turns, and Summer Glau makes her first appearance on the show – an overall solid episode that makes me sad over the eventual demise of the show.

The Chicago Tribune now has up a long and interesting interview with my icon Joss Whedon. In it he talks about what they tried to do with Dollhouse, why he thinks it ultimately failed, and talks a tiny bit about Dr. Horrible. Here is an excerpt:

"The problems that the show encountered weren’t standalone versus mythology [episodes]," Whedon said. "Basically, the show didn’t really get off the ground because the network pretty much wanted to back away from the concept five minutes after they bought it. And then ultimately, the show itself is also kind of odd and difficult to market. I actually think they did a good job, but it’s just not a slam-dunk concept."

"We got the espionage that the network wants, but it’s the questions about identity that we want," he noted. "There are other things about the show that never came back, and I didn’t really realize it until the second season -- [there were] things that we were ultimately sort of dancing around.... We always found ourselves sort of moving away from what had been part of the original spark of the show and that ultimately just makes it really hard to write these stories."

FOX just released their schedule for the rest of the television season. While one of the biggest news bits is Glee taking a four month break (gasp) there is a lot of news regarding sci-fi television. Here are the highlights:

- Human Target series preview on January 17th
- Human Target premieres January 20th Eastern
- Dollhouse series finale is January 22nd
- Fringe "winter finale" is February 4th
- Fringe returns after "winter finale" on April 1st

The new inevitable has happened yet again: Fox has misused another Joss Whedon product (this time Dollhouse) and have once again cancelled it before its time. The only good news - if you can call it that - is that Fox will still apparently show all 13-episodes of the show and the series will end in an appropriate manner. Joss responded to the news by saying:

"Hmm. Apparently my news is not news.

I don't have a lot to say. I'm extremely proud of the people I've worked with: my star, my staff, my cast, my crew. I feel the show is getting better pretty much every week, and I think you'll agree in the coming months. I'm grateful that we got to put it on, and then come back and put it on again.

I'm off to pursue internet ventures/binge drinking. Possibly that relaxation thing I've read so much about. By the time the last episode airs, you'll know what my next project is. But for now there's a lot of work still to be done, and disappointment to bear.

Thank you all for your support, your patience, your excellent adverts. See you again."

This episode is Sierra-centric, where we find out how Sierra came to be ensconced within the Dollhouse. She used to be a free-spirited Aussie named Priya, who caught the attentions of a sociopath doctor for Rossum named Nolan. Nolan drugged Priya, making her seem insane, and had her committed. Topher takes the “insane” Priya from the clinic and wipes her to be one of the Actives. Unfortunately, it means that Nolan becomes her regular client. When Adele tries to stop Nolan he demands Sierra be imprinted for him and dropped off for permanent position within his household.

Personally speaking, I thik Fox is wasting a big opportunity to raise Dollhouse's ratings by not airing any episodes during November sweeps. Instead, the network is seemingly burning them off by airing new back-to-back episodes for three consecutive weeks in a row. Looks like Fox is screwing Whedon...again.

Dollhouse will then return with back-to-back originals starting at 8:00/7:00c on December 4, 11 and 18.