I understand what's happening there with the changed behaviour, since you earlier linked to that jQuery section already.
I only just rolled the update out so I don't have any code that changes the handling of the response. I've had other problems in a separate update but that's not related to this (it was coming from jQuery 1.4.2).
I'm just glad I'm not going crazy here. And it's taught me a lesson: sometimes you're not crazy.
I'm going to roll just that change in my source and then wait for 4.4.5+.
Thanks for your help, tony.