Is Dollhouse ending after two seasons a good thing? Or should it have been allowed to complete its 5-season arc?
Dollhouse Ending: Good Thing or Bad?
- Thread starter Joe Washington
- Start date
It depends on whether or not the arc was working. The show did not receive anywhere near the type of acclaim Firefly did, with the Zap2It entertainment site actually defining the cancellation as something of a mercy killing. I do think if Whedon did have a 5-year plan for the show, considering the 99% failure rate of such shows on mainstream networks (including his colleague Tim Minnear's Wonderfalls which also had a multi-year arc mapped out, and Threshhold and Terminator Sarach Connor Chronicles also come to mind), he'd have been better off pitching Dollhouse to a cable network than Fox.
Alex
Alex
The show had some very interesting things to say and ideas to explore, but the framework chosen to present them wasn't equally interesting. Thus anyone who wasn't interested in looking past the surface got bored quickly.
They should have made the apolcalypse a more central part of the series from the start, that would have held the average viewer's attention better.
They should have made the apolcalypse a more central part of the series from the start, that would have held the average viewer's attention better.
Why assume every show has to have a 5-season arc? Whedon doesn't work that way. He almost invariably plans each season as though it were the last, making sure to give it a reasonable amount of closure in the event that it doesn't return.
In this case, it's amazing that the show even got to finish its first season, let alone get a second. It's a brilliant but very challenging and unconventional concept, never something that could've drawn a large enough audience to succeed on network TV. But it did get two seasons, which is twice as much as Firefly got, and it certainly hasn't held back on telling the big stories. Whedon himself feels that he's completed the story satisfactorily. Here's a good in-depth interview with him from the Chicago Tribune:
http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2009/12/dollhouse-fox-joss-whedon.html
So yeah, it would've been nice to get more Dollhouse, but what we are getting is twice as much as we could've gotten, and it's a reasonably thorough exploration of the concept and characters. It won't just break off in the middle of a story, but will be a complete narrative in 26 chapters. And I think that's a good thing -- not that it's ending per se, but that it got to be told at all and that it got to be complete.
In this case, it's amazing that the show even got to finish its first season, let alone get a second. It's a brilliant but very challenging and unconventional concept, never something that could've drawn a large enough audience to succeed on network TV. But it did get two seasons, which is twice as much as Firefly got, and it certainly hasn't held back on telling the big stories. Whedon himself feels that he's completed the story satisfactorily. Here's a good in-depth interview with him from the Chicago Tribune:
http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/entertainment_tv/2009/12/dollhouse-fox-joss-whedon.html
So yeah, it would've been nice to get more Dollhouse, but what we are getting is twice as much as we could've gotten, and it's a reasonably thorough exploration of the concept and characters. It won't just break off in the middle of a story, but will be a complete narrative in 26 chapters. And I think that's a good thing -- not that it's ending per se, but that it got to be told at all and that it got to be complete.
I was pretty sure it had been said he had a plan, I think Eliza Dushku herself said there was a five year outline or something, and she had seen it and thought it was great. With that said, I think it sucks the show was canceled, low ratings on a Friday Night? On Fox? Gee...who'd have thought..Cancellation to low ratings is a further slap in the face when you were deliberately pulled from the line up for sweeps so Fox could air games and whatever else they did.
In any case though, from what I've learned of the show, it never really recovered from the forced retooling in which they had to spend five or six episodes doing assignment of the week (as some others call it), which is a shame to, because the premise is interesting and presents a challange to the actors who may have to slip between personalities in mere seconds in the same scene.
I'll certainly miss this show.
In any case though, from what I've learned of the show, it never really recovered from the forced retooling in which they had to spend five or six episodes doing assignment of the week (as some others call it), which is a shame to, because the premise is interesting and presents a challange to the actors who may have to slip between personalities in mere seconds in the same scene.
I'll certainly miss this show.
Dollhouse was created by Joss Whedon. It aired on FOX. It was cancelled. The dolls look and feel like their programmed personalities. They are programmed to think they are their personalities. There are nine episodes left to air. And there is a plan
Well, I'm sure he had ideas for where to take the show if it ran for several years, but "plans" for TV series are never as rigid as fans tend to assume, because a producer is virtually never guaranteed a full run. You have to be able to adapt your ideas to whatever length you get -- to have a version of the story to tell if you get five years and a version to tell if you get one year, or two. Whedon said as much in the interview, that he had ideas for how to continue it if he got the option, but he knew going into this season that it would probably be the last and thus didn't hold back when it came to finishing this particular story.
Oh, wow. Joss has never done this before and still the body counts were high and the endings were bittersweet. Maybe we really will get a "kill everyone" ending this time.
And given how existential Firefly's "Objects in Space" was, I'd love to see him take it a step further. Have the penultimate episode be the bloody action finale, then take a page from Evangelion and have the final ep be abstract versions of the characters sitting in an empty room, giving long philosophical/psychological monologues. It'd be epic!
I think Dollhouse had great concepts and ideas, but the execution was inconsistent and a little poor. Part of that seems to have come from Fox, which interfered with the creative process early on and ended up wanting a different show than what Joss pitched to them. I would like to see the show continue, but obviously it's not going to happen. I guess I should just be grateful that it was given a second season.
It's hard to build a successful show when the weakest actor in your cast is the lead. I like Eliza fine but she has a very limited range. Within that range she's great. But when you're literally playing a different person every week, you have to have the acting chops to stretch your range to the absolute limit. Eliza hasn't done that. Now if Amy Acker had been cast as Echo...
A good thing. It wasn't any good and got what it deserved. And I like Firefly to some degree. It's just not compelling story telling.
Interesting to hear he found making the Firefly movie exaughsting, considering most don't like it. Also, interesting he felt he needed to explain who the characters were to people who didn't watch the show, a classic mistake.
Imagine if Star Trek had felt it really needed to make Star Trek movies for those who never saw and didn't usually like Star Trek? See movies 7-11 for the answer to that question, but movies 1-6 for ones made for the fans.
Anyway, back on track to Dollhouse, it had some great episodes, but I don't think the team making it ever found their true footing. A shame.
Imagine if Star Trek had felt it really needed to make Star Trek movies for those who never saw and didn't usually like Star Trek? See movies 7-11 for the answer to that question, but movies 1-6 for ones made for the fans.
Anyway, back on track to Dollhouse, it had some great episodes, but I don't think the team making it ever found their true footing. A shame.
We told you so, Joss! You should never have gone crawling back to Fox. Favour to Eliza or not! They should have put it on cable. Whedon's shows, as great as they are, do not seem to appeal to the mainstream. Just put it on a cable channel where ratings don't matter so much.
The concept could have been rescued if:
1) The lead had been male, thereby removing temptation on Whedon's part to indulge his nausea-inducing fetishes about creating victimized females who he pretends to empower; avoiding the hypocrisy at the heart of the premise would have solved about 50% of the problem right off the bat.
2) No - or damn few - mitigating factors had been presented to make the lead character a poor widdle victim. Even switching genders, there still would have been the usual difficulty of getting the audience to "like" a morally repugnant character. But making the character morally repugnant, at least somewhat, will avoid the problem of the character being a pathetic victim and therefore engendering contempt, which is the most off-putting trait for any lead character to have.
3) Put it on cable. Broadcast TV can't handle an off-putting, morally repugnant lead character, but cable does it all the time. Dexter, Breaking Bad, Big Love, Mad Men, Sons of Anarchy. It's high time we had a sci fi series in that mold, and done correctly, Dollhouse could have been it.
1) The lead had been male, thereby removing temptation on Whedon's part to indulge his nausea-inducing fetishes about creating victimized females who he pretends to empower; avoiding the hypocrisy at the heart of the premise would have solved about 50% of the problem right off the bat.
2) No - or damn few - mitigating factors had been presented to make the lead character a poor widdle victim. Even switching genders, there still would have been the usual difficulty of getting the audience to "like" a morally repugnant character. But making the character morally repugnant, at least somewhat, will avoid the problem of the character being a pathetic victim and therefore engendering contempt, which is the most off-putting trait for any lead character to have.
3) Put it on cable. Broadcast TV can't handle an off-putting, morally repugnant lead character, but cable does it all the time. Dexter, Breaking Bad, Big Love, Mad Men, Sons of Anarchy. It's high time we had a sci fi series in that mold, and done correctly, Dollhouse could have been it.
Oh, it happens all the time. See The Six Million Dollar Man. Or The Drew Carey Show. Lead actors are often comparatively bland, or chosen for reasons of looks or celebrity rather than skill.
Although I think Dushku is actually a perfectly good actress. She's not a chameleon like Enver Gjokaj, but then, neither is Sean Connery, neither is Jack Nicholson, neither was Lauren Bacall. I'm not saying she's in their league, but the point is that just because you don't vanish entirely into a role, that doesn't make you a bad actor, just a lead actor rather than a character actor. But though all Dushku's roles are recognizably her, I think she differentiates them well.
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