The birth thing really made no sense. Vortex, according to Joss it's about a million. I can't remember if he said almost a million or just over.

Was Topher's confidante (sorry, can't remember her name) the same actress as Agent Lee on NCIS*? For a little while I thought she was going to turn out to be the remote wiper, but maybe they just wanted to show some more human interaction for Topher.

Yes, it was, and I immediately thought she was a mole as a result. I still think she could be working with Alpha.

I liked it. I didn't like the birth scene at the beginning -- anvils, as Steph said, and also? Who pays half a zillion dollars for a freakin' midwife? WTF?

Was she ever called by name in that scene? Because when I was watching it I was assuming it was the real her before she became an active.

I thought maybe the midwife was delivering a secret baby.

Because when I was watching it I was assuming it was the real her before she became an active

I was wondering that, too, but then it did that "reverse memories" thing and she was in the machine.

A million dollars? Ok, that makes it even worse. Cause, yo, I may not have had a baby, and I am not dissing midwives. but for a million dollars, I would have to be a secret-baby delivering virgin billionaire's sheik's alien bride and she would have to have some pretty excellent pain-free telepathy skills. Which did not appear to be the case.

I'm wondering if the birth scene was supposed to be complementary to the addiction counselor scene in the original pilot script. The actives were supposed to have a certain number of pro bono jobs that were touchy feely to keep them from going ballistic. And, I'm guessing, to make us believe the Dollhouse isn't all bad because they allow them to work pro bono. But I could be misremembering the pilot script and drawing very way out conclusions.

SailAweigh, I think you're right. I'd forgotten about that completely.

Like Sail, I just figured it was a pro bono job. So many bits and pieces of the unaired pilot have leaked out into the actual episodes that I forgot that the pro bono work hadn't yet; possibly the showrunners did too (or possibly it in fact had and we just haven't seen it yet because the order the eps are airing in has gone all wonky).

Even if it was pro bono, the Dollhouse is still pure undiluted evil. IIRC from the unaired pilot, the pro bono was all the doctor's idea and the PTB agreed to it only because she convinced them that it'd benefit them in the long run (the doctor seemed to care for the Actives themselves; the PTB didn't give a shit about anything except their own bottom line).

Another scene in this episode which I think slipped under the radar - Adelle is on the phone to somebody, presumably her boss, who's giving her orders. If she's got a boss, it's a bigger operation than we know.

JZ, the episode order is nearly unwonky now. The next episode was shot as episode 6, but is now 5. Then episode 6 airs, then -- I think -- it's back to the originally intended order. Some episodes were knowingly shot out of order, which is the point we're about to get to.