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.

and what is especially galling is that I think the main audience for DH is 18-22 year olds.

Are most really going to reflect on popular culture in this way?

Really?

Hasn't Joss been pretty open about the whole genesis of this idea being Eliza wanting to say something about the actor's experience in Hollywood? I didn't think the show's meta-fiction aspect was any mysterious hidden thing.

I noticed Echo never poked through her imprint this week. I wonder if the imprint is harder to overcome if it comes from a single source.

Margaret was a single, whole controlling personality, but I'm wondering if the fact she was aware of being an imprint in a body other than her own had anything to do with Echo not peeking out.

I think the reason Topher is coming out as my favorite character from this show is that he's a typical Jossian character that this show is generally missing. he and Sierra's scenes were the best part of the episode for me.

Seska? the bronzer Seska? welcome!

tiggy: You remember me! Aww!

And I am in much agreement that Topher is the character that this show needs more of.