The reading was great, as usual. If Rajan Khanna hasn't submitted his readings to audiobook companies, he needs to start doing so.
I have to admit, I'm not a huge Tanith Lee fan, and to be honest I didn't really notice the feminist/sexual politics stuff until I read about it here. The only possible reason I could think of for the rape retelling to be included was to legitimize the heroine offering Erlen her bed as a form of payment, but even then... ehh?
Overall the story wasn't too bad. I think it was really more about Erlen trying to please his father than Rapunzel herself. But even then it got a little saccharine at the end.
Fairy tale retellings as a genre I'm not terribly unhappy with -- I've even written one of my own, which is now being considered by The Lorelei Signal, but the fairy tale I chose isn't one you might think of as a traditional fairy tale -- but I think readers are a little jaded on them by this point. I remember them being a LOT bigger in the 90s, when I first got into fantasy fic -- for example, the first time I read Sheri S. Tepper's "Beauty", I quite enjoyed it.
The reading saved the episode.
PS: Dave, there are no backslashes in URLs. Just sayin'.