Season 1, Episode 11:
Briar Rose
Note: Recap pages are Spoilers Off per policy and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been WarnedEcho helps set a rebellious teen straight. After breaking up with Mellie, Ballard tracks her down as she returns to the Dollhouse. He then enrolls Stephen Kepler, an environment systems consultant who helped design the Dollhouse, to help him break into the place.
Tropes
- Cop and Scientist: Technically "FBI Agent and Scientist", but this is Ballard and Kepler's dynamic.
- Dead Person Impersonation: Alpha impersonates Stephen Kepler. The real Stephen Kepler is the man he kills at the beginning of the episode.
- Fairytale Motifs: The story of Sleeping Beauty, as the episode title implies. Susan finds it triggering when Echo reads it to her, because of the heroine's apparent helplessness and dependency. Echo encourages her to instead think of it as the princess saving herself by willing the prince to appear. The prince awakening the princess is also paralleled with Ballard's (and Alpha's) attempt to rescue Echo.
- Foreshadowing:
- Victor as Dominic shouts "Whiskey!" when Dr. Saunders prepares to inject him. Dr. Saunders dismisses this as him asking for a drink, not piecing together the fact that he just called her "Whiskey".
- After breaking into the Dollhouse, Kepler turns away whenever someone walks by. While this behavior can be mistaken for him being agoraphobic, it is a subtle sign that he doesn't want his face to be seen and recognized as Alpha.
- Alpha's conversation with Dr. Saunders can be a giveaway away that she is an Active.
- Hurricane of Excuses: When Ballard enters Kepler's apartment, the latter shelds his weed from him, and then blurts out all of the stock excuses in a row:Kepler: Carrots. Medicinal carrots. Personal-use medicinal carrots that were here when I moved in, and I'm holding it for a friend!
- Out of Focus: Echo is barely present in this episode, spending her time in a subplot where, as one of the Dollhouse's pro bono engagements, she helps a Troubled Teen named Susan who was sexually abused by her deceased mother's former boyfriend, having been imprinted as the best possible future adult version of the same girl.
- The Reveal: Kepler is actually Alpha.
