Some casting script pages from episode seven, "Echoes," have turned up. In a flashback, we meet Leo, a goofy guy whose girlfriend Caroline knits him a penis costume, in case his penis wants to go incognito. They're waiting for some mysterious guy to call "” and then he does. They clasp hands as Caroline answers the phone.
In another flashback, Caroline is telling Leo, plus their friends Penny and Trevor, about some research in 1941, when the Rossum Corp. got $17 million, which mysteriously vanished. But it turns out the Corporation was building mysterious lead tunnels underneath the college, leading to the Rossum Building. Leo warns Caroline that this could be dangerous, but she says Rossum is exploiting animals in its research, and they can't back out. Leo says he's not backing out.
In the present day, a high-up guy in the Rossum Corp. tells Adelle at the Dollhouse about a worker named Owen, who's working on an experimental Alzheimer's drug and may be stealing samples for himself. The drug improves synapse function, but Owen may have been selling it as a party drug on the college campus. And now Owen has killed himself under the drug's influence. The Rossum suits want a "doll" to help clean up this mess before the company's reputation is damaged. And it sounds as though the "dolls"' activities are funding some ongoing research at the company that supports the Dollhouse.
Echo goes to the makeshift memorial on campus for Owen. She meets a smart, strong-willed student named Sam, and asks him why Owen killed himself. Sam asks if she's a reporter, and Echo says no, she's a dominatrix. "I left a client. I never leave a client." She saw Owen's picture in the paper and couldn't help herself, she had to come there. Echo says she has to help "him" but she doesn't know who "he" is "” maybe it's Sam. But Sam already had his spanking today.
Echo insists that Sam is in pain and she can help. Sam is angry because last night Sam's girlfriend tore into her own eyeballs, leaving herself blind and a semi-vegetable, thanks to a mysterious drug called "Blue." She wasn't the type to do drugs like that. "I see a lot of people who aren't 'the type.' For all sorts of things," Echo says. Turns out Owen worked at the Rossum lab, and maybe he was making the drug that messed up Sam's girlfriend. Owen had a secret stash of the drug, and Sam wants to find it before anyone else gets hurt.
But it turns out Sam is the bad guy "” he and Owen were in cahoots to sell the nasty drug. Sam gets Echo and her fellow "Doll," Victor, tied up and doses them with Blue, so their brains go crazy. Turns out Owen died because he ODed on his own product, but he didn't tell Sam where to get more "” so Sam used Echo to get to Owen's stash. (And it seems as though maybe Echo gets a bit of self-awareness from being dosed with that drug.)
