Season 1

But Gothic houses are all about secrets, and the Dollhouse is crawling with them. Much of season one is the progressive revelation of a traumatic event in the series’ past, when one of the dolls went berserk, slaughtered a bunch of people with only a kitchen knife, and escaped. In the aftermath, the Dollhouse ticks along, but no matter how hard the staff tries, it can’t quite resume perfect equilibrium, perfect control. There are always flaws, secrets, hidden agendas, traces of imperfection. It even has the requisite “mad woman in the attic”, Dr. Claire Saunders (Amy Acker), a physically and mentally scarred rejoinder to the Dollhouse’s regime of beauty and order.