You're right- it looked like she was dressed for the part, and that was a substitution for actually having that credibility.

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I agree with most everything said, including the 'two more eps for Joss' sake' indulgence.

I groaned out loud with the Miss Penn character just happened to randomly bump into her karmic nemesis and found the cosmic resolution her desperately broken and ultmately soul-defeated progenetor never could.

All is right in Heaven and I'm a bit disgusted. She couldn't just have good deductive skills and defeated a monster similar to hers? Oh, no. Of all the piers in all the world, The Ghost had to stumble onto hers. Feh.

This added fuel to my agreement that ED didn't really sell the persona. It would have been so much better if it weren't her singular wound being redressed.

When I saw the naked guy I mumbled under my breath, "That BETTER not be the actor who played Buffy's Adam." Cuz, you know. Creative bankrupcy.

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Eliza doesn't seem to have that sort of gravitas if she's not allowed to beat people up in the scene.

So this. I really thought her negotiator role was thin. "I am panicked so I will fumble for my inhaler". I didn't get the sense she *needed* that inhaler. A lot of it was also her voice. It didn't command the respect of someone in control. I might watch the first episode again. I did watch it at 3am, so who knows, maybe it's a bit better when I'm rested.

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I did watch it at 3am, so who knows, maybe it's a bit better when I'm rested.

I wouldn't hold out much hope. I agree with you 100% about the inhaler, too.

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Also, last time I checked, asthma was an actual physical condition, not something psychosomatic (though of course stress can trigger attacks in those that actually have it). I could buy Penny's imprint thinking she had asthma, but Echo's body shouldn't have obliged her with an attack.

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Interestingly, the inhaler thing didn't ping me at all. I assumed it was filled with air and the persona's dependence on it was psychological. More a panic attack model than an actual respiratory problem.

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Shortsightedness isn't psychosomatic either. I think the premise is that the imprint runs even deeper than that, and can tell the nervous system what it's receiving from the body. Is the nervous system involved in asthma? I don't know. But it could be possible to trigger asthma symptoms neurally.

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P-C, can you elaborate? I don't get this. It seemed pretty clear that when the Actives sign up, they know they're going to be mindwiped. The imprinted personalities don't know they're going to be zapped away, but that's not the same thing.

That's who I'm talking about, the imprinted personalities. They're basically tricking the Actives into believing they ARE these people and then ripping those identities away without their permission.

I guess I didn't express myself well. It seemed clear to me that when the Actives sign up, they know that they're going to be (1) mindwiped, (2) imprinted with other personalities, and (3) have those personalities mindwiped when they're finished with an assignment.

So the imprinted personality might not consent to be mindwiped away, but the personality *isn't* the person who consented to be erased and taped over and erased and taped over and erased and taped over, ad infinitum. Unfair to the imprint, but the imprint isn't real, and unless I really misunderstood the premise, the Actives consented to not only be mindwiped, but be programmed and then have those imprints erased when they were done.

And I'm doing what I suppose Joss wants the fans to do -- sit and ponder identity -- "Who is the 'real' person -- the person who signed up, or the imprint?" -- instead of getting our rage on over the skeevy gender aspects of the show.

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I agree with you 100% about the inhaler, too.

Also, the inhaler technique was crap. Maybe on purpose, but I think someone didn't bother to show ED the proper way that someone who was really having an asthma attack -- or believed she was -- would use a rescue inhaler.

(I know, now it sounds like I'm nitpicking, but I have asthma, so that jumps out at me in every TV show and movie [Goonies, I'm looking at you] that uses the "asthmatic reaching for hir inhaler" bit. Plus, someone else at the party I was at noticed it, too, immediately. Which made me feel a little better about being nitpicky.)

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The more I look at it, the more I think the show is (or should be) about identity rather than human trafficking.

I hope so. I'm way more interested in identity than human trafficking.

When a character shows up in the first episode with a huge scar across her face, there's backstory.

I totally did not notice the scar at all. Maybe I was just distracted because it was Amy Acker.

And I'm doing what I suppose Joss wants the fans to do -- sit and ponder identity -- "Who is the 'real' person -- the person who signed up, or the imprint?" -- instead of getting our rage on over the skeevy gender aspects of the show.

Ha, exactly. That's what I'm getting at, though. For all intents and purposes, the imprint IS the Active's identity for that short period, and I hate seeing it constantly wiped away. Sure they consented before they joined, but it's like the way you can't give legal consent if you're intoxicated. There's no room for consent once your original identity, the one who consented in the first place, is replaced with ephemeral identities that have no rights.

So I think the issue is that I see the imprints as real, but you don't.

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