As delightful as the Boyd reveal was, it was so random and not plausible, the fact that so much started to hang off it means it's fruit of the poisoned tree for me. While it was fun, and gaspy ooh-ahh! fun to boot...he took a few dubious shortcuts to get where he's going, and Eliza Dushku still hasn't learnt to act.

Even though she was surrounded by some amazing talent, the story hinged on her being special and amazing, and she absolutely *never* sold me on anything other than "looks great in that dress" on that show. Well, okay, maybe she looked good in pants too. I'll give her that.

So, tree poisoned, weak keystone in the arch.

As delightful as the Boyd reveal was, it was so random and not plausible

Yeah, I didn't like that. That's where I have a narrative objection. But Alan Tudyk's run as Alpha (starting S1) is fantastic. And I think they worked around ED's limitations and brought it back to her strengths (she doesn't have wide range, but she's got deep charisma). Franz was awesome. Olivia was awesome. Enver was awesome. Harry was awesome. Amy was great. AD, Summer - excellent.

I'm mostly with you, Hec, though I have some of the same criticisms as ita re: Boyd (it was never planned, and it showed) and Eliza Dushku's performance. I agree that near the end of season one, the show became actually good, and then season two was really good, especially the last several episodes where they just went for broke. And of course everyone else's performances were awesome. I'd throw Dichen in there too.

One of the big plus points for me getting Netflix streaming was rewatching Dollhouse. I don't need to own S1, but having the eps there and being able to watch from "Briar Rose" on is great. I had really missed a lot of the characters.

The unaired pilot is must watching/having on the season 1 set, though. I'm still nail-spitting mad that Fox made Joss contort his concept so much, because that pilot did in an episode what took most of season 1 to do. Ptuiii! We shall never speak of it again.

I did think the Boyd came out of frelling nowhere, though, like the rest of you.

I did think the Boyd came out of frelling nowhere, though, like the rest of you.

One of the all-time asspulls in Whedon history.

Up there with:

Summers blood. (whatev)
Xander setting off the OMWF. (Seriously? After he's had love spells go awry and spoke Latin in front of the books?)
Everything that happened for two seasons on Angel was set-up by Jasmine. (they just lost me there.)

Those are the three least supported examples of plot-whiplash. Those were not properly setup so they just felt random.

Xander setting off the OMWF. (Seriously? After he's had love spells go awry and spoke Latin in front of the books?)

My headcanon is that he's covering for Ethan Rayne, who threatened to expose some embarrassing secret.

Hey, did Mark revisit his Buffy S7 predictions?

I think they worked around ED's limitations and brought it back to her strengths (she doesn't have wide range, but she's got deep charisma)

Yeah, we're never going to agree on that. I think she's visually sexy, but I don't get the charisma angle, and even if there were buckets of it, it's not something that's important to her character, so...I think she was woefully miscast, and did not at any point live up to the Very Special Doll with all the people inside, and since every week she had to be someone different, it was grating and rubbed in my face with each episode. They never wrote themselves out of that hole.

I don't know if I'd call Summers blood or Xander setting off OMWF asspulls so much as things you don't like or think are OOC. The Boyd reveal was a panicked move that came out of nowhere after they'd been building up in god knows what direction, but that wasn't it. As far as Summers blood goes, I figure they always thought it was something like that--they just had a bad idea. And telling me Xander made another goof...well, yeah. Actually I don't see it as OOC at all. Annoying, but workable.

Hey, did Mark revisit his Buffy S7 predictions?

I think he's posting that today.