Spoilers Ahead…

The set up for “Gray Hour” showed F. Murray Abraham-Looking-Guy (I always get Tony Amendola confused with F. Murray Abraham)  meeting with Ms. DeWitt (Olivia Williams) to hire one of the Dollhouse operatives for a job with “special requirements.”  Given Ms. DeWitt’s concerns regarding the risks and the subsequent scene of Echo (Dushku) all tarted up in a hotel lobby crawling over some guys, I was about ready to turn this thing off.  I mean, I’ve about reached my threshhold on the abuse, right?

But Whedon did what he does best.  He switched it up.

Echo wasn’t there to entertain four guys out on the town for a bachelor party.  Nope, it was a cover allowing her to lead a high-tech heist on the high-security building next door.  “Gray Hour” refers to the 60-minute span of time that the high-security building’s detection grid is offline for service.Dushku in her role as Echo is in full-on-badass mode under the imprinted guise of Taffy, the best super-criminal you’ve never heard of.  She’s can throw a punch and crack a safe!

Taffy’s hardcore spouting such lines as: “I figured out on my first job when a little creative thinking on my part almost got me not-paid: Never second guess a client. And wear comfy shoes.”

We’re on Taffy-time throughout the episode until things go horribly, horribly wrong.  Via the wonder of cell phone and Now Network technology perhaps, someone sends a signal burst and wipes the Taffy imprint leaving us with tabula-rosa-Echo.  As you might guess, things get funky from there.

Looks like our Big Bad, Alpha, is all over Echo.  One wonders why he’s so interested in her in particular.  Approaching episode six, the mid-point for this season, I would expect to see a huge reveal as we charge into the season ender.

For the first time, I’m actually hoping the show gets picked up for another season.