Caroline was supposed to have fulfilled her NEED and stop fucking with Echo.

Oh that's right. I had forgotten about that.

But then in the next episode, Echo asked for an imprint, so it's clear she didn't go back to her blank slate.

yes, that's true. So the current theory is that Caroline is working to protect the Dollhouse.

Viewers probably think that Caroline is working to protect herself since the spy she caught was the one person who tried to kill Caroline in the DH.

So the current theory is that Caroline is working to protect the Dollhouse.

The Dollhouse people seem to be thinking that (see DeWitt's reaction to finding out that Echo was helping them) - but I think we had doubt cast on that with Dominic's "one day you'll be erasing them, and even after all this they still won't see it coming". He's foreshadowed her destruction of the Dollhouse. I'm inclined to follow that clue.

yes, I should have said "DeWitt's current theory"

I like the theory that erika linked too. It's pretty much how I have seen the show. I never got the impression that the show was endorsing the icky, evil things that they were showing. The whole verse of the show is corrupt in one way or another.

Indeed - but a whole show built around the self-congratulatory meta premise that television is shallow, exploitative and tasteless, and that the viewers are too...

Yeah. Still pretty much want to slap someone.

I think said theory is a little too subtle and some of what has been portrayed is unnecessary if this was the original intent.

Why was it necessary - at all - to establish Sierra as someone who entered the DH against her will by someone she refused to have sex with and has been rented out to him periodically? Then she's been raped by her handler?

I don't think you can rely on the viewer to bring this kind of understanding to a weekly tv show if you want people to hang in there for the long haul.

I don't think you can rely on the viewer to bring this kind of understanding to a weekly tv show if you want people to hang in there for the long haul.

I think that might be a big part of the problem. It's asking a lot of the viewer. I have friends (who know Joss's previous shows and are intelligent people) who have given up on Dollhouse because they see it as doing nothing more than buying into stereotypical male fantasies - and, as such, a total backtracking of everything that Buffy was. If they want to communicate some of the more complex ideas that they may or may not be hinting at, they're going to have to get clearer about what they're doing with this show.

Which I'm *really* still really hoping they will...

but a whole show built around the self-congratulatory meta premise that television is shallow, exploitative and tasteless, and that the viewers are too...

Yeah. Still pretty much want to slap someone.

Yeah, if I buy into that theory, I feel like it's *me* being slapped in the face. Is this a cat in a box?

Word.