Round two with the actives down at the Dollhouse brought with it some much welcomed back story for Saunders, Boyd, and Alpha. Along the way, it introduced us to a new character, Mellie. For now, based on what’s been on the screen, all we can safely say is that Mellie is Ballard’s neighbor, and she seems a bit smitten with the hunky FBI agent. But there has to be more to her story than that, right? I have some thoughts, but given that they are based on possibly spoilery information, stop here if you have those sensitive eyes.
OK, here’s the thing: if you head over to IMDb and look at the Dollhouse page, Miracle Laurie is still listed there as playing November. Now, it’s not a big jump to “November is an active.” But wait — for those of you that haven’t been data mining the internet for all things Dollhouse, that ship has already sailed. In a post on Whedonesque, Whedon explained that, “…the character of November has fallen out of the mix, because the show simply moves too fast now for me to do what I wanted with her.” He goes on to mention that Laurie is remaining with the show, in a new role, which is where we get Mellie.
Certainly, Mellie could just be a sweet girl that has the good fortune to live across the hall from someone that looks like Tahmoh Penikett, as opposed to, say, a giant scary bastard like me. It would come as a surprise to me, but it would offer a gateway for Ballard to talk to the viewer. That being said, it just can’t be that simple. Especially given the fact that DeWitt mentioned earlier that the Ballard situation was under control. If you’re ready to walk down that path, it leaves a couple options.
Mellie could still be an active, imprinted with the sweet lasagna-making personality, serving as the eyes and ears for DeWitt to monitor Ballard’s actions, and perhaps install some surveillance equipment. Or, she could be a regular employee of the Dollhouse on that same assignment; that one actually makes sense, considering that DeWitt really doesn’t seem that concerned with Ballard’s investigation. Perhaps, at this time, it’s not a big enough risk to warrant assigning an active and her handler to do the job.
What do you think? Is there something more dastardly to learn about Mellie? Or is my tin-foil hat just a little too tight this week?
Clacked by Brett Love 
on Feb 24, 2009 @ 14:00 EST5EDT
Totally an Active. She’s too creepy fake smiley to be real!
I just don’t think they would have had that little scene focused on her unless there was something more to the story than “neighbor thinks Ballard is cute, but he’s married to his job.”