Plot
The episode begins with a large, sun-drenched estate. An older lady rides up on a horse, says goodbye to her obviously much younger partner and rides away. Shortly afterwards the horse comes back – without its rider.
Cut to the Dollhouse: Echo has just been imprinted. Adelle, who is also in the lab, is addressed by her directly and by name. Echo asks what has happened, because Adelle looks troubled. Adelle says she is sorry to have to tell her, but she is dead.
Boyd enters Topher’s lab and asks why Echo was imprinted although all the dolls are supposed to be resting at the moment. He mentions having heard rumours that she was given the personality of a dead woman. Topher confirms this and explains that you only get something like that if you were very well liked. The lady who is now “inside” Echo was a good friend of Adelle’s.
Meanwhile Echo – or rather Margaret – is in Adelle’s office, admiring her new body. It turns out that three weeks ago she came to the Dollhouse to have her personality copied; Echo’s body now carries that state. Margaret is delighted by everything. The two women eat together. Adelle reminds Margaret that this solution is only temporary.
Margaret knows, but she is looking forward to watching her own funeral. She also wants to solve her death, which does not seem to have been an accident. According to the autopsy report it was a heart attack, but she does not believe it, since she was actually very healthy.
Shortly afterwards Adelle and Margaret attend the funeral. Margaret poses as her own pen friend Julia – a woman she invented but mentioned to her family now and then. She also says that she remembered Julia in her will. During the priest’s eulogy Julia introduces her family to Adelle: her children have come, as have her brother, her husband Jack and the household staff. The rest of those present are her “friends”, who would not even know her name.
In the Dollhouse Topher starts a special experiment. He “borrows” Sierra and tells Boyd it is a special scientific matter. But when Sierra gets up from the chair, it becomes clear that she has been imprinted as Topher’s friend. The two spend their time eating pizza, playing computer games and roaming the Dollhouse.
At Agent Ballard’s place, he and Mellie are having dinner. She tries to make small talk, but Ballard does not respond. His girlfriend asks whether there is anything new about the Dollhouse, since he has talked very little about it lately, but he brushes her off. Mellie is a little crestfallen, but he manages to save the mood a bit by paying her compliments.
It becomes clear that Ballard finds it hard to keep up the act. In the kitchen he puts Mellie’s wine glass into an evidence bag.
After Margaret’s funeral the closest family and Julia gather at the house. Julia tells how she met Margaret, and it soon becomes clear that her family did not see her quite as positively as she saw herself. She was a bulldozer and not exactly a nice person. It also becomes clear that the family has rather set its sights on the money.
Her relationship with Jack is mocked too, as is the fact that she left him her beloved horses. Julia flees the room, and Margaret’s son follows her. He tries to explain what exactly was so bad about Margaret from their point of view: she was hard and dictated to her son what he should do later in life.
Julia defends Margaret and tries to explain her real motives. On the spur of the moment Nicholas kisses her, and Julia almost throws up.
Back in the house, Julia goes into Margaret’s bedroom out of habit. There she meets her husband Jack, who has locked himself in with a bottle of whisky. Julia wants to leave again, but Jack calls her back. She goes in and tells him that leaving him the horses – which he apparently resented – was a sign of her affection.
He replies that the horses were her real great love. He also says that the family calls him a murderer and thinks he only wanted her money. Later Julia phones Adelle and voices the suspicion that one of her loved ones may have killed her.
The next morning Boyd confronts Adelle with his opinion on “eternal life”, which he draws from Echo’s imprint. He talks about morality, the eternal question and religion. Adelle brushes him off, and Boyd is almost out of the room when she calls him back. Boyd then says that he took a closer look at Margaret’s horses, and that they are worth a small fortune.
So the husband, who “only” got the horses, would hardly come out of a sale poor. Boyd explains that he sent Victor to the estate as a potential buyer on his own initiative.
In the house Julia meets Margaret’s daughter Jocelyn, who is holding a family photo and crying. Julia sits with her, and when the daughter says she is being too emotional, Julia tells her she has every right – after all, she has lost her mother. The daughter says Margaret hardly knew her at all; she never came to a single exhibition.
Julia agrees that this was not right. But then she defends Margaret again when Jocelyn says her mother married a man as cold as she was. She accuses him of only being after her money and probably having one affair after another. She apparently cannot forgive her mother for never really caring for her but marrying Jack at once.
Agent Ballard visits his friend at the agency and asks her to run Mellie’s fingerprints through the computer. She says she is not allowed to, but does it anyway. The database immediately produces a result: Annabeth S. But then it turns out that she is listed under several more names – including in connection with police photos.
Just as the two agents want to look more closely at the files, the screen first goes black and then shows that no results could be found. When Ballard asks what happened, his colleague only replies that she has just started to believe him.
In Margaret’s house Julia catches Jack packing some clothes into a bag. She asks whether he is going away, and he says yes. He says he does not belong here; he only belonged to her. They talk about marriage. Julia tests whether Jack responds to her advances, but he does not. Instead he accuses her of being a spy set on him by the family.
He says he is only selling the horses because he cannot bear being constantly reminded of the woman he loves. He also says they should take a closer look at Margaret’s brother, Bill. He did not arrive for the funeral but a day earlier; he had spoken to Margaret and probably wanted money, which she refused.
Shortly afterwards Julia gets talking to Bill. He says that he and his sister did not speak for a long time because they were both too stubborn. Margaret was not particularly pleased when he turned up at the estate, but supposedly they made up at that meeting. Then he mentions that Nicholas had money problems.
When Agent Ballard comes home, Mellie has prepared a romantic atmosphere. After some small talk Mellie opens up and says she feels very comfortable with him and is ready to do anything for it. Ballard kisses her, but becomes a little rougher. They have sex.
Later that evening Julia goes riding on Margaret’s favourite horse. When she returns to the stable, Nicholas surprises her. He says it is strange that the horse lets her get so close, since it generally likes few people. And then he adds: “Did you think I wouldn’t recognise my own mother?”
Julia tells him what she has done and says it feels good to finally be able to talk about it. Nicholas explains how he noticed and that it became clear to him after he tried to kiss her. It turns out that Nicholas, too, is a client of the Dollhouse.
The conversation ends with Nicholas confessing to his mother that he is addicted to gambling and has debts of millions of dollars. He breaks down in tears, and Julia/Margaret tells him everything will be all right. He tells her she left them too soon. At that moment they hear voices: Victor and Jack are talking agitatedly about Margaret’s favourite horse, which is said to have been doped.
Jack is obviously surprised; Margaret is simply shocked. Jack is so furious that he lashes out with a shovel and smashes the lights. Julia screams, and Jack comes towards her. But then he opens a horse’s stall, and the horse runs out and knocks him down. Nicholas and Julia flee, but Jack follows and attacks them. Nicholas drives a hook into his side and runs away with Julia.
In the Dollhouse Boyd tells Adelle the results of the horse’s blood test: Margaret was poisoned with the same substance as her horse. Boyd asks whether he should bring Echo back, but Adelle only tells him that Echo has a new handler and that he should start accepting it. He agrees and then brings up Topher’s imprint from the evening before and whether she knows about it. She does – and says she allows him that now and then.
Sierra surprises Topher with a small cake. It becomes clear that today is the scientist’s birthday…
Nicholas and Julia are still fleeing from Jack. They lock themselves in her room. Nick asks whether his mother has any evidence against him, which of course she does not. So he suggests she write a letter exposing him. But as she reads through what she has just written, she realises that Jack knew nothing about horses at all and therefore cannot be the culprit.
It dawns on her that Nicholas must be her murderer. At first he tries to keep pinning it on Jack, but then he pulls out a syringe, and it becomes clear that he killed Margaret himself.
Before Nick can inject Julia, Jack comes into the room too and shoots Nicholas. The two men fight, and in the end Julia knocks Nicholas out.
A little later the whole family is sitting together in the living room while Bill reads out a handwritten letter from Margaret. It says that she knew about her horse being poisoned and changed her will accordingly. Nicholas now gets nothing at all, the others all the more. Julia listens from outside and then leaves.
Later Julia stands with Jack at the paddock watching the horses run. Jack says he wishes Margaret were here. Julia asks him to pretend that she is. He says he really loved her. Julia hands the widower a letter from Margaret and then leaves for good.