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More Dollhouse hysteria.

^ There will be none of that around here, young man! Where do you think you are? This is a house of knee-jerk reactions, jumping to ill-informed conclusions and repeating the same negative preconceived notion over and over again!

Tharpdevenport, where are you located? The only time change move I ever saw X-Files make in the States was to go from Friday to Sunday.
 
Thrall said:
The part that pisses me off is that there is an assumption that fans of Joss will simply lap up anything he creates regardless of quality.
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Because it's true. Buffy Season 6 and 7 were awful, and critically and commercially panned. The content of those seasons alienated many longtime casual viewers and led to it's eventual end. However there remains a large number of Whedon fans who not only defend those seasons to their dying breaths, but feel they were the best of the show. I'm sure there are more then a handful on this board.

Firefly, while good, isn't nearly as good as his fans think it is. Fans should be thankful the show wasn't a hit and it got canned after 13 episodes. They really don't know how lucky they are. Because eventually Whedon would done to that show what he did to Buffy. Zoe and Wash probably would have gotten a divorce after Wash cheated on her with Saphron. Book would have betrayed the group at some point or given up his faith and become a drug addict or something like that. It would have been stupid crap like that and his fans would be defending it every inch of the way.

Serenity is a forgotten mess of a film whose most memorable part involved killing off a well liked character for nothing other then shock and to to beat his audience to death with his nihilistic philosophy of how life is nothing but pain and misery. I know a lot of casual fans who are still pissed off at that. That whole scene summed up what this guys about. If angst were tangible, we could pave roads with all the emo that Whedon dishes out.

I'll wait and see on this one. I love Eliza D, and Whedon is good when he has to keep it simple. But this concept sounds like a tough sell and it's FOX, who wouldn't know a good scripted show if their jobs depended on it, and usually it kind of does. I sadly expect this one to be gone faster then Firefly was.
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Jeez, you just sound bitter more than anything.

I admit Joss can go off track sometimes in his storytelling, and yes, he likes torturing his characters a little too much... but I have to agree with most of the critics (not sure which ones you've been reading) who have felt that, even at it's worst, his writing is still some of the most interesting and witty and original stuff we've seen on TV in years-- especially when it comes to the scifi genre (I mean come on, have you seen Charmed and Stargate?). That's why I and a lot of other people kept watching Buffy those last two years.

And the same applies to Firefly. No it wasn't as "brilliant" as the Whedonites like to believe, but it was still a damn good show. And how was Serenity a mess? Even if you didn't care for the story, that was still the most well-structured and economically-written scifi movie to come along in years.
 
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Thrall said:
...Firefly, while good, isn't nearly as good as his fans think it is. Fans should be thankful the show wasn't a hit and it got canned after 13 episodes. They really don't know how lucky they are. Because eventually Whedon would done to that show what he did to Buffy. Zoe and Wash probably would have gotten a divorce after Wash cheated on her with Saphron. Book would have betrayed the group at some point or given up his faith and become a drug addict or something like that. It would have been stupid crap like that and his fans would be defending it every inch of the way.

Serenity is a forgotten mess of a film whose most memorable part involved killing off a well liked character for nothing other then shock and to to beat his audience to death with his nihilistic philosophy of how life is nothing but pain and misery. I know a lot of casual fans who are still pissed off at that. That whole scene summed up what this guys about. If angst were tangible, we could pave roads with all the emo that Whedon dishes out...
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I find you amusing.

How manu episodes DO you understand Firefly to have had?

How odd that a "bad" show was so strong its fans brought about the movie SERENITY.

As for the deaths in the movie, while I can't say anything about Book's, I do know that the death of Wash had been discussed WITH THE ACTOR WHO PLAYED HIM (who seemed to like the idea) as a possibility for season two. His death was simply done in the movie due to the show being ruined by Fox's insane scheduling and scrambled episode order.

FIREFLY was different and if handled properly by Fox, it would have been a huge hit.

The facts speak for themselves.
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gastrof said:
FIREFLY was different and if handled properly by Fox, it would have been a huge hit.
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I loves me some Firefly, but I think this is reaching. Whedon himself admitted that the show was a hard sell. If the show had been handled differently by Fox, then it may have lasted a full season or two, but I think that's about it.

I think it'll be some time before any space-based science fiction show will survive for any length of time on a major network.
 
The facts speak for themselves? I knew someone who was a big Firefly fan and went to more than one midnight screening of Serenity. Because those shows were packed, he assumed it was going to be a monster hit. He didn't take into account that the people there would be the only ones going back and willing to pay to see it.
 
I'm a big (tempered) Joss fan, but this show doesn't sound terribly exciting. It sounds like it's going to be too morose and unfunny. And if the characters' personalities/memories are basically "rebooted" at the end of every episode, it sounds terrible repetitive. It's like Alias if Sydney had no memories/personality of her own. I know that Eliza is going to keep her memories or something but what about the rest of 'em? But regardless of its quality, good or bad, I know in my heart it'll be gone in 13 weeks.
 
We'll see what happens. I do know that as a devoted Joss-y, those previews and trade-show snippets for Dollhouse looked like crap, the premise sounds awful, and the "Alias"-ish plot device points to a more episodic story-telling... all that points to a very disappointing outcome. I'll still give it a shot though.

I actually don't care about the timeslot. I've pretty much fallen into the "new media" world where I watch the shows one of five different other ways they are available (online at hulu or fox.com, onDemand, iTunes, downloading episodes, or on DVD via netflix)
 
cynical dreamer said:
I agree, as a fan of Whedon, there is a certain lemming-like quality to his fan base and a rather sad cult of personality that you can all witness in real-time over at whedonesque.com
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To be fair, I think all fanbases have some sub-sect that latches onto a person/character/concept/story/item etc. and then just loves the hell out of it no matter what. Whedon fans are perhaps just one of the most visible in the scifi/fantasy world.

As for "Dollhouse", there's so much stuff on TV that it's hard to get worked up about a show that is seemingly getting shafted by its own network.
 
Thrall said:
I'll wait and see on this one. I love Eliza D, and Whedon is good when he has to keep it simple. But this concept sounds like a tough sell and it's FOX, who wouldn't know a good scripted show if their jobs depended on it, and usually it kind of does. I sadly expect this one to be gone faster then Firefly was.
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While I think the rest of your post was completely wrong, this I have to agree with. Honestly, though, I'd rather we get at least some shows that are "hard sells" than all the me-too reality shows that appeal to the lowest common denominator - if the hard sells die, at least someone made the attempt. I still have the TV Guide with the Fall Preview from X-Files first season, and they pretty much put it on life support before it even aired; oddly enough, The Drew Carey Show started that same season and it, too, was given little chance to survive, so what we "know" before shows air has proven to be not necessarily so more than once.
 
I like Joss Whedon's work. I liked Buffy. I liked Angel. I liked Firefly. I liked Dr. Horrible. So I'll check out Dollhouse. But I'm not some sort of blind follower who will worship anything the man creates. If I don't like Dollhouse, I'll just stop watching. It's pretty simple.

I'd like for the show to be good and be successful. I'm not exactly getting warm fuzzy feelings from the execs at Fox, though. My gut instinct tells me that they're just going to burn the show off in the Friday deathslot and then it will go away forever. Regardless of rumors about productions delays, script re-writes and such, I just don't feel much support. And that's too bad. Give the show a chance before you declare it DOA.
 
Tharpdevenport said:
darkwing_duck1 said:
JoeZhang said:
or maybe he just wrote a shitty show?
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Unlikely, IMO.

Fox has a well-earned reputation for frakking people over when developing shows. They just can't seem to resist the urge to micromanage and/or studio politic things to death.
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Yes, as with not only messing with him when he did his script, to telling him he wasn't providing what they wanted and guilting him into re-filming the pilot.

And let's not forget "24" was post-poned because FOX junked the creators plot and scritps for the new season, giving them short tiem to come up with new stuff and write it out and have it ready for some filming.

Or that "Firefly" was shown out of order.

Or that they trook "The X-Files", started it out on it's Friday night Death Slot, watched the show get good ratings and decided the best way to handle that was move it around to Thursdays, Sundays, and I can't recall the other changes.


FOX can and WILL screw with a show as they feel fit.
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For your information, Fox's decision to move The X-Files from Fridays to Sundays in 1996 was a complete success. Ratings went up. The show became one of Fox's highest-rated dramas. And the show never moved to Thursday anytime during its run. If you want to talk about shows that were "screwed" by the network, stick to Firefly, Tru Calling and other failures.
 
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I'm really looking forward to this show given its pedigree and, despite its dodgy premise and that unthrilling clip from a few weeks ago, have no intention of judging it before I watch it myself. That said, there really is a huge sense that it's going to be very swiftly canned, no matter what its quality...
 
Warp Coil said:
I like Joss Whedon's work. I liked Buffy. I liked Angel. I liked Firefly. I liked Dr. Horrible. So I'll check out Dollhouse. But I'm not some sort of blind follower who will worship anything the man creates. If I don't like Dollhouse, I'll just stop watching. It's pretty simple.

I'd like for the show to be good and be successful. I'm not exactly getting warm fuzzy feelings from the execs at Fox, though. My gut instinct tells me that they're just going to burn the show off in the Friday deathslot and then it will go away forever. Regardless of rumors about productions delays, script re-writes and such, I just don't feel much support. And that's too bad. Give the show a chance before you declare it DOA.
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What makes it worse is this isn't even Joss's original vision for the show. So if it sucks and gets cancelled, we'll just be left with a compromised and dumbed down version probably.

Yeah I know he had to compromise a bit on Firely too, but I get the impression it wasn't NEARLY as bad as it's been with Dollhouse (and at least with Firely he started out with a much more compelling premise).
 
Jeez, you just sound bitter more than anything.
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I was for a while. Now I'm just kind of apathetic towards him. I've come see his unwavering worldview as the pretentious and predictable emo-trip that it really is. He tries to mask it behind a lot of cutesy humor, but it always finds a way to crawl it's way to the surface. His writing and worldveiw remind me of something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMvMzQ4Vu-8

Total B/S infact some critics hailed season 6 as it took a more darker tone, which something Angel was praised for many times. The fanbase may of been split but thats not a majorty. Season 7, even JOSS said he could not care about making everything make sense he wanted to tell a over the top epic ending and he succeded in that.
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"The Joss is perfect. The Joss is all knowing. The Joss is all loving. All hail The Joss. Bring forth the baby seal! So we may honor The Joss with this sacrifice!"

Yeah. That's why Salon.com wrote an article entitled "Why Spike Killed Buffy The Vampire Slayer". That's why the last two seasons of Angel, which were never big ratings wise, got better ratings then Buffy did, despite UPN being in more households at the time and The WB doing everything it could to kill Angel. There was no division in the fanbase. The hardcore Jossnazi's, who go to every message board and make everyone the know watch the shows on DVD, loved it. But, as proven by the replies, they love anything he does. Everyone else with a smidgen of free will hated it and stopped watching.

I find you amusing.
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Ask anyone I know. I'm not amusing. This is amusing:

FIREFLY was different and if handled properly by Fox, it would have been a huge hit.
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Like, the movie right? The one that was supposed to set the world on fire? The one that was going to set box office records? That one? When's this movie coming out? Because I can't wait to see when this all happens.

Hey, I'm a huge Farscape fan. But I know, and will always know, that it was nothing more then a small cult niche show. And that was the best it was ever going to be. Something Whedon fans still refuse to accept about the K-Mart version.

The facts speak for themselves.
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They do indeed.
 
Thrall said:
Like, the movie right? The one that was supposed to set the world on fire? The one that was going to set box office records? That one? When's this movie coming out? Because I can't wait to see when this all happens.
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We tried to spread the word. Some people seemed to get upset about that for some reason. The problems with the film were twofold: First, it wasn't quite as good as the show for whatever reason. The darker tone may have contributed to that. Second, Universal thought they could rely on online word-of-mouth to do the heavy lifting for them. Didn't work out.

While I understand your viewpoint, you are being perhaps a bit more inflammatory than necessary in how you're choosing to express it. Doesn't really help the credibility any. Just FYI.

Oh, and as good as Farscape was at times----and season 3 was pretty darn good----it hasn't inspired in me, at least, the same rewatchability factor. Therefore Firefly is "better" in my view.
 
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