Well, the news came today that nearly everyone who would care about has suspected was coming for a while now: Joss Whedon's TV series Dollhouse has been canceled by FOX. I must say I'm sort of torn about this in a number of ways.
First, I considered it something of a major miracle that the show even got picked up for a second season after the rather lackluster ratings of the first season. It already felt to me like the show was living on borrowed time as it was -- these extra 13 episodes really were unexpected.
On the other hand, though FOX might have shown a little more patience than usual with the series, it at the same time never really gave it much of a chance. Dollhouse was stuck on Friday night from day one, always paired with a weak lead-in, and seldom promoted. There was never really a good faith effort made to get the show to succeed.
But on my mind more than any of that is this: Dollhouse honestly was not that great a show. Oh, it certainly still had moments of brilliance -- the most recent being the last episode that aired just a few weeks ago before the series was benched for November sweeps. But overall, of Joss' four TV series (Buffy, Angel, Firefly, and Dollhouse), this show was a distant fourth. At its worst, not all bad; at its best, better than many things on television; yet still a shadow of Joss' past works.
Between the lack of surprise here and my lower sense of investment, this just isn't the sucker punch I felt years ago over the loss of Firefly. I'm not going to be hoping that Joss finds a movie studio to let him make a Dollhouse movie two years from now.
In fact, I'm really hoping there will be more upsides here in the long run. This could free Joss Whedon to go on and do other things. Maybe another TV series that's better than Dollhouse. Maybe a TV series on a cable network, where the sorts of rating he pulls would be enough to be successful. Maybe just a sequel to Dr. Horrible. Who knows?
3 comments:
Conversation in the Fox exec boardroom:
"Dollhouse, is that an episode of House?"
"No? Do you mean Treehouse of Horror?"
"Hmm...So that leaves something from Seth MacFarlane, JJ Abrams, or Gordon Ramsay. Which one is it?"
"It's NONE of those? Well then what the #*$@ are we spending money on it for?"
psssesstmmmmrrrphgrumble
"Aw shit, it's a Whedon show? We're never gonna hear the end of this. Why do we put ourselves through this every couple years again? Screw em. Put another rerun of Cops in there. Nobody will notice."
/prove me wrong boys...prove me wrong.
I was honestly hoping it would be cancelled. I was pissed off at the "bonus" episode from the DVD set. they basically ruined the X amount of seasons they had planned for the show by making an episode in the future that was flashing back to "past" episodes that had yet to be made. so the strongest part about JW's shows, the "OMG they did WHAT to WHO!?!" was destroyed by telling you who was doing what in the future.
the bonus episode would have been great without a 2nd season but I was really wondering what the point of making new episodes was after watching it. I had hoped they would start out the 2nd season by killing someone important (and thus nullifying the bonus episode) but they were obviously going to stay the course and maintain the plan they... planned.
was it me or did the actors always look like they were on the verge of laughing during the "did I fall asleep" line?
the mole
The sad thing is, I'm not even sure if I'll bother to watch the rest of the episodes. Almost certainly not as they air, but I might check them out on Hulu when I get around to them. Maybe.
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