"Dollhouse": "Instinct" Trivia Quiz

Answer: The ability to breastfeed an infant

Topher is delighted by his achievement in altering Echo's body "on a glandular level," and paints a dramatic picture of what else he might be able to accomplish with this kind of tool. "I don't want to use the word 'genius,'" he insists, "but I'd be okay if you wanted to." Ballard shows no signs of wanting to.

Answer: Sierra

On long-term jobs, the Dollhouse seems to have a habit of bringing in other Dolls to serve as a support network. It's a clever trick: if the Doll-on-assignment never makes any "real" friends, then who'll notice anything amiss when the engagement ends and the Doll disappears? Here, Echo/Emily and Sierra/Kelly are suburban housewives, trading complaints about their husbands on a sunny day -- but Echo/Emily has more than the usual problems on her mind.

Answer: They're pictures of his late wife.

"I knew her before I knew you," Nate (Kristoffer Polaha) tells her when she confronts him, "and I was in love with her. But she died." This is true, but not complete. The whole story, which is revealed later in the episode, is that the woman was his wife, who died giving birth to their child.

The pain was too great; he couldn't trust himself to care for the baby properly. So he engaged a Doll to be its mother, really believing she was its mother, while he coped with his loss. He never suspected that the Doll would realize that something was wrong with their "marriage."

Answer: A late-night phone call and a black van

She's noticed the windowless black van before, always parked near the house. (Unbeknownst to her, her handler Ballard is inside, keeping tabs on her well-being.) But the van takes on a more sinister significance when she overhears Nate on the phone in the middle of the night. He's furious about her accusations, and has called the Dollhouse to complain: "You people promised me something that you cannot deliver. This is not working. I'm calling it off. Get rid of her!" A pause, and then -- "I'll get rid of the baby."

We know he isn't planning bodily harm. The baby will be placed for adoption, and she'll return to the Dollhouse to have her personality wiped -- which, of course, will be the end of Emily. She doesn't know any of this, though, and fears for her life.

Answer: Wiretap transcripts -- and a name

Someone is feeding Senator Perrin information. After his press conference in the previous episode ("Vows"), his NSA source has gone to ground and he's been left with some rather unreliable witnesses -- but now, everything he needs is laid out before him.

He now has some evidence of all the Dollhouse's sleazy activities, from human trafficking on up -- and he has a name. But whose? We'll have to stay tuned to find out ...

Answer: To remind her to come in for a diagnostic test

Madeline is nervous about Adelle's visit, especially since she knows she's been released from her Dollhouse contract years ahead of schedule. "I have this irrational fear," she confides, "that if I say one wrong thing, men in suits are going to throw me in a black van and take me away." Adelle assures her that no such thing will happen; all they want is to make sure she's still neurologically healthy.

Answer: She runs away with the baby.

Echo/Emily is programmed to trust her handler, Ballard, on sight -- but she never gets a close look at him. Upstairs with the baby after Nate has prevented her from leaving the house, she calls her friend, Sierra/Kelly, to come get her -- and is horrified when she sees the Dollhouse types usher her into their black van.

By the time Ballard comes up the stairs, knocks on the door and offers her a treatment (a code word that's supposed to make her complacent), she and the baby are gone -- out the window and down a fire ladder.

Answer: Echo/Emily is fighting hard, screaming that they've taken away her baby.

As she'd promised Adelle, Madeline has come in for a neurological work-up; Topher gives her "a clean bill of health" and tells her she should be in the recruitment DVD. Just then, Ballard drags in a distraught Echo/Emily, kicking and clawing and screaming that she wants her baby back. Neither the Doll-handler trust relationship nor the "treatment" code word can calm her.

The scene is particularly disturbing to Madeline because of her own history. As she tells Ballard, she signed up with the Dollhouse to cope with her grief over the death of her toddler daughter from cancer. "I go to sleep for five years, I wake up without pain." But the image of a distraught and grieving mother gives her pause.

Answer: To find the baby

Echo has lost most of Emily's personality -- she's forgotten the baby's name, for example, and the details of starting a car -- but her body remembers the fact of the child, and she aches to have him back. "Perhaps triggering lactation was a bridge too far," Topher admits when he comes to. "Live and learn."

A few minutes of classic horror fare follow -- she stalks Nate, cuts his phone lines, threatens him with a butcher knife. It's even a dark and stormy night. But, in the end, she gives the baby back to his father -- who has, finally, discovered his love for the child.

Answer: No

The experience of being made to love a baby -- and then being made to give him up -- has been unusually hard on Echo. "They make it so real," she tells Ballard, her voice breaking. "Every time, they make it so real. Why do they do that?"

Ballard worries that Echo's suffering is too much for her, and wants to rescue her and bring down the Dollhouse on his own -- but Echo insists that she's still his partner. "I'm awake now," she says. "I don't want to go back to sleep."