See, but for me the thing is, now we know that all of her behavior is engineered. Of course she was a little clingy and creepy, and obsessed with infiltrating his life and watching him. That's how she's programmed.

right, I get her personality, but what I don't get is how she's suddenly in his apartment, eating dinner and hearing the down and dirty details of his case. Or having a key to his apartment. Why is Paul on board? I don't want most of the people I like having a key to my place, much less my across the hall neighbor who has a creepy crush on me.

Here's a question: We like Mellie. But she's not "real," only an imprint of composited personalities.

We have no idea what the original Mellie-shaped person was like.

Would it be cool to just let her live the rest of her life as Mellie? No treatments, no triggers, just be Mellie forever instead of whoever she was before?

The whole Mellie/Paul thing was too fast. It's like she was crush!neighbor with the puppy-dog drool one second, and then she's got a key and cosy take-out?

To be fair, she already had his key -- she was able to get into his apartment to get his medication to bring it to him at work. Obviously, she's been there a good long while -- long enough that Ballard knew the name of the guy she used to date that she broke up with more than a month before. My take is that, at the very least, she was the well-trusted neighbor, even if (on some level) he knew she was hung up on him. The one he left the spare key with in case of emergency, and who talked to him every day and was constantly trying to feed him.

She hadn't been a stranger to him in a long time, and in a lot of ways, even in the first episode, it was clear that, at the very least, he was fond. And hell, Ballard's so deep into his job that she was probably the closest thing he had to a friend at all.

Of course she was a little clingy and creepy, and obsessed with infiltrating his life and watching him. That's how she's programmed.

The other side of which is, if she was programmed that way, she was programmed in such a way because Ballard would respond to it. And really, he was desperate for someone to talk about the whole Dollhouse mess with. He needed to open up, and desperate to believe that he wasn't obsessed with Caroline, and there she was. It happened fast because she was totally conditioned to bypass his defenses.

Serial:

Would it be cool to just let her live the rest of her life as Mellie? No treatments, no triggers, just be Mellie forever instead of whoever she was before?

Jsut because we don't know who she really is, doesn't mean it would be right to leave her as someone we do like. For all we know, Mellie was chosen becuase she's remarkably similar to what they needed.

I'm going to say no. Free will, baby; we don't know what "Mellie's" life was like beforehand -- but even if we did, who are "we" to say that this is what is better/worse, whatev.

Even if her life was worse, it's her choice. People get to choose. They can choose crap, they can choose splendor, but there's gotta be some choice about it. That's kinda what the foundation of the show is, right:

What is choice? Can you choose not to choose? Did the Dolls know what they were choosing and choose anyway? Or like Echo, was the choice forced, and then the ability to choose further stripped from you?

To decide for someone else, even if it were an altruistic choice of "This is so much better than what you had before" -- nope. That's slavery. That's death of free will.

What is choice? Can you choose not to choice? Did the Dolls know what they were choosing and choose anyway? Or like Echo, was the choice forced, and then the ability to choose further stripped from you?

I find the man on the street interviews echoing in my ears. No one chooses to do that willingly ...

Erin, what if they offered Mellie the choice? Would that be okay, or would she still have no right since she's not the original personality? I suppose you could ask the original personality if she preferred being Mellie forever instead, but she wouldn't know whether it was better. And Mellie doesn't know either.

she already had his key -- she was able to get into his apartment to get his medication to bring it to him at work

I thought she broke in for that.

I don't know, I can envision a scenario where someone (no Caroline, but perhaps one of the other now-Actives) has made so many wrong, bad decisions that they see Adelle's offer as a gift from heaven.

Not that it's right to do, even so, but I can see someone choosing it willingly.

I suppose you could ask the original personality if she preferred being Mellie forever instead, but she wouldn't know whether it was better. And Mellie doesn't know either.

Doesn't she? That was the big reveal of the last episode ... all of what they've done and been is still in them, somewhere. Mellie, in her neutral state, remembered being attacked as Mellie; Echo had "echoes" of Caroline; Victor remembered his real self, but Sierra remembered being abused in her "neutral" state.

It's not just a glitch, whatever the Dollhouse thinks. Everything's still in there.