Last thing I saw him in was Without A Trace, and he was a rapist in that, so I was quite prepared for this once I even saw his name in the credits. For some reason he's translated to slimy characters in my head.

He'll always be Darien Fawkes to me.

Somewhere between getting files from Dr. Saunders office and cutting the power, probably. Or between cutting the power and showing up in Topher's office.

What I really meant was that I missed THAT she called Ballard. Did we see him get a call? I don't remember this.

We saw and heard him play back the message at the end.

Yeah, it's right at the end P-C. You might have turned over as it looked like the episode finished a moment before that scene.

Also, Dollhouse got a series low in the ratings last night.

Oh, that explains it. I haven't seen the very last minute or so; we had satellite issues.

It's very cheering to hear good things, finally, this week and last week. But, for fuck's sakes, it took us a long slog to get here!

Have normal, non-fannish people been making happy noises about the show? Have we any reason to think that the episodes of worldbuilding (or whatever the earlier episodes were supposed to be) have been a good thing for the audience?

The earlier episodes were all higher rated than the 'Fox let control of the series go to Joss' episodes.

I've kept a very close eye on the reaction on non-fandom sites. We've got past the point of people thinking Echo was a robot (which went on for several weeks) to people starting to like the show. Reaction is still totally mixed, though.

I started out defending the show here against the This-is-evil vibe. The more I watch of it, however, the more I think it's a bit of a fuck up in terms of messages. The show casually dresses up Echo as a slut, has her saved by a man (last week), has her prisoned by a woman (this week), has the kiddy actives getting rapped... mostly without discussing what's going on. It's beginning to really offend me. I thought they were going to go somewhere with it, but I suspect... not.

Frankly I found it totally skeevy that the "resolution" for Sierra's utterly traumatic rape issues is... to have another man be romantically interested in her. It gives me nasty flashbacks to fanfic where the rape survivor is healed by the magic penis of the fannish BSO.

I'm not sure I liked that episode much, actually. I mean, the writing was pretty good, but I don't know that we got much further with the arc, and I have decided that Caroline is really damned naive. She's got no sense of strategy. I want her to out-think her opponents, and instead she just kind of rushes into things. She's not Buffy.

Consuela, a man also punched rape boy, remember.

Caroline is a moron, which - yes - doesn't help. In terms of arc, we're back at the beginning. Victor didn't even stand and wait for Sierra at the end.