One day Eliza Dushku might surprise me by doing something she didn't intend to look sexy doing onscreen, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Oh, yeah. I mean she is naturally sexy; I wish it just didn't always read so intentional. Then again, I find unintentional sexiness much sexier.

I don't want to seem like a rape defender, but it's not Echo. It's a fully created personality outside of "Echo", and that personality has consensual sex.

I am in no way saying that this makes the rape issues go away, I'm just saying that I think identity is an important component.

We're doing all this talking about mind-wipes (which I imagine to some of us, as Buffy fans, has a certain magical context to it), and sophisticated roofies, etc. In the end, to me, she is being brainwashed. The girl is still inside there, but people are brainwashing her to do things and some of those things she arguably couldn't and/or wouldn't do. A drunk person is unable to (legally) consent to sex. So when it comes to sex, I think if you brainwash a person into having sex with you, you're raping them -- because you're taking away their ability to consent. Her mind is being addled. She has no ability to consent. Therefore, to me, it's rape.

It's rape like it was when Warren did whatever he did to Katrina. When she came to -- that is, when she got her own personality rose back to her conscious state -- she knew it was rape.

I don't think the guys we have seen so far wanted sex per se. They wanted the "girlfriend experience." We saw much more bonding stuff than sex (motorcycle racing, rock climbing, dancing, banter) from each of them (even Killer Guy) than of sex. The first guy gave her a necklace and seemed to really like her, real or not. It isn't that they didn't want sex, but that they didn't want ONLY sex, or primarily sex.

Maybe this is from my time as a stripper, but I don't find this farfetched There were lots of guys who came in and paid lots of money just because they wanted a girl to talk to them and flirt with them. They weren't hungry for sex, which was available just outside the door at much cheaper. They were hungry to have a girl hang out with them.

It's rape like it was when Warren did whatever he did to Katrina. When she came to -- that is, when she got her own personality rose back to her conscious state -- she knew it was rape.

Oh, thank you, Cindy! This is the best way I've heard it put, and that's exactly it.

Even if we know what they're going to choose, they still do choose.

This is how I see it as well.

Say the Dollhouse is the best matchmaking service ever, with unimaginable resources. Instead of "creating" a perfect date, they find one. They use demographic profiling, credit reports, personality tests disguised as wacky LJ memes, whatever. They locate a woman who has always been attracted to guys just like Motorcycle Guy, and who Motorcycle Guy would be equally (and genuinely) attracted to. Oh, and this woman tends to fall head over heels immediately. Without letting her know that they are matchmakers, the Dollhouse arranges for her to meet Motorcycle Guy. When their eyes meet across a crowded Harley dealership, does the woman have free will? For that matter, does Motorcycle Guy?

I'd say they have as much free will at that moment as anyone ever does. Granted, I'm not big on free will, so that isn't saying much.

For me the big ethical problem isn't creating new personalities, it's erasing them. Of course, that's also the big narrative problem, since from my point of view the show's protaganist is long dead.

I'm holding out some hope that she's only Mostly Dead, and little flashes like that shoulder-to-the-wheel gesture show that she's getting better in between assignments.

Yeah, this. Scrappy, that's interesting.Not what the culture would lead you to think. But I guess it wouldn't be good business to appeal to Lonely Guys as Lonely Guys, advertising-wise.

and little flashes like that shoulder-to-the-wheel gesture show that she's getting better in between assignments.

Wasn't the shoulder-to-the-wheel gesture just left over from the imprinting for the-most-dangerous-game guy? Or at least leftover from what he said to her? Rather than a re-emergence of her base (Caroline) personality. So it shows that the Dollhouse isn't successful at completely erasing the experiences she's undergoing, I guess, but I'm not sure it's leftover from Caroline herself.

So it shows that the Dollhouse isn't successful at completely erasing the experiences she's undergoing, I guess, but I'm not sure it's leftover from Caroline herself.

But she also wasn't following the script for interacting with the handler when he was shot in the woods. When he said "Everything's going to be all right." And she was having flashes of Caroline.

But she also wasn't following the script for interacting with the handler when he was shot in the woods. When he said "Everything's going to be all right." And she was having flashes of Caroline.

I'm not convinced by the interactions between her and her handler (my favorite parts of the episode) because they flipped around the call-and-response script, but it was still the same words. (It's not like she suddenly started saying "look, this is a screwed up situation, and we need to trust each other. You're hurt, I'll take over from here." She mostly just repeated, in whatever order, words that had already been drummed into her brain. Except for the bit about her brothers. Do we know if Caroline actually has brothers, or are they the brothers of the imprinted personality?) But I HAD forgotten that she kept seeing flashes of Caroline. I was so squicked by that point that I stopped paying close attention.

The handler started the script, and I think she responded right to the first prompt and didn't to the second. Later they flipped it.