While it's supposed to be poetically satisfying to watch (and I do really enjoy this episode, even being my third watch) it still doesn't sit right with me the judgment and moral approbrium that Adele and the rest get to heap upon the slimy rapist, when he actually does point out the (IMO, valid) fact that they do the same thing with the dolls. ((To be extra clear—what he did was deserving of punishment appropriate to the act, which was coerced rape by exploiting a guardianship)). Does institutional purpose make it somehow better? Does structure and might, rather than personal exploitation, truly make right? Because the characters certainly act like it does, here, and the show doesn't guide the audience into disagreement during the scenes where Sierra's handler/rapist gets his comeuppance.
And all of that becomes directly relevant with Sierra herself, later, with another abuser at the helm. It's a tricky business to make the lead cast of characters enjoyable to watch whilst they are the human element of enablement of an exploitative system.
In fact, there are at least a couple of direct linkages in other episodes that I think show that the kangaroo court in this episode was just as much a comment on the Dollhouse as the street interviews, the professor bit, and Boyd's missable line here— "They're all broken".
Simply participating—or being forced to participate—in a system often results in your daily choices enabling unnecessary harm, whether or not you're the one doing the immoral act. If you pay for deli sliced ham, you might not personally abuse animals, but you're paying for someone to violently slice the throat of a pig, in an industry that kills 125 million of them this way every year. The Dollhouse doesn't want people knowing what's going on for the same reason that ag gag laws exist: there's no way to do what they do without heinous acts.
Holy shit, I should have seen that coming but I didn't at all. O.o
Shout by kltiBlockedParent2020-11-15T14:33:40Z
That's the first episode that really does something interesting with their premise, jumping much deeper into the gray areas, and moves their story and world building forward in a significant way. I get it, you need to set up a lot of basic stuff, but the engagement of the week thing was getting boring.
That's not helped by the fact that Eliza Dushku is not the best actress in this cast, especially for that kind of role. But looking at the intro, you could think that this was the Eliza Dushku show, nobody else even gets to have their face in it. That really annoys me more and more, Envar Grokja, Dichen Lachman, Olivia Williams and Amy Acker kill it on a regular basis, they deserve more.