I'm glad that in this interview, Joss Whedon says that he and the team "really understand Dollhouse now. We understand what works, and what didn't work so well." I do wish he'd figured it all out from the beginning, as it would have saved him the situation he's in now. Off to a very shaky start last season, Dollhouse barely eked out a renewal. The main problem is that it took about half of that short season for the show to find its voice and become something I was really invested in. So now Whedon needs to find a way for his show to "break out" in its second year, or I fear that Dollhouse will go the way of recent second season fails (not in quality, but in ability to make a third) like Pushing Daisies, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and the most famous of all, Jericho. That core passionate following is great to have, but you need to grow your audience to make it to three.
I've recently been watching the first season of The X-Files, and that show also took a bit to find its ground. And it didn't have a huge audience base either, dipping to 5 million viewers in an era of much larger television audiences. But it was more than Fox giving it a second shot that made it a sensation. It was a lot more than just the subject matter of unexplained phenomena that made the show click.
It was the the characters of Mulder and Scully that people latched onto, and more importantly, their relationship. That's what makes a show succeed and find its footing after a shaky start. Considering Whedon is the mastermind behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which featured some amazing characters right off the bat with Willow, Xander, Buffy, Angel and Giles, I'm just not sure why none of the Dollhouse characters are jumping off the screen. Maybe because none of them have any real connections to any of the rest of them.
No one on the Dollhouse staff is compelling enough in their own right for me to care about (I only have so much caring to spare so I have to be selective). That leaves Echo, Victor and the other Dolls who spend more time outside of their own personalities than they do as themselves. Hell, even their Doll state isn't themselves, so who are they?
I do think it's possible for Dollhouse to break out and find a bigger audience than it's ever had. It has the capacity for "done in one" episodes, which the top of the ratings charts prove are very popular with the general audience. And it has the ability to tell a longer, more complex story throughout its run. Kind of like Buffy or The X-Files, which is really the type of model it needs to be looking at. Interweaving connections throughout.
What I'm hoping to see is Echo retain some of her growing awareness so we have a stronger reason to be invested in her. Maybe develop a secret relationship with her handler or Alpha or Sierra or someone. Not sexual, but rather a professional desire to take down the Dollhouse or further some agenda that we can get behind. We need connections between some of these characters that are real and that we can latch onto. Otherwise they're just a bunch of pretty faces in a pretty bizarre set-up. Fun for awhile, but ultimately unfulfilling.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-12-2009 @ 5:42PM
Wii60 said...
There were 2 problems with the show last year-
1. The first 5 episodes
2. The Friday time slot
Seems like they've only fixed one of those problems. It had gotten so good towards the end that I'll tune in, but I seriously doubt it breaks 4 that first Friday.
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6-12-2009 @ 5:44PM
CRVBOY said...
The big problem with the first half of the season was that the executives at FOX fraked around with the show instead of letting Joss do it his way. He knows what he's doing. Buffy and Angel showed that.
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6-12-2009 @ 5:49PM
Leroy said...
I want to remind everyone that the reason it took half a season for this show to find itself was because it took half a season for the idiots at Fox to realize that their vision of the show was wrong and that Joss had the right idea from the beginning. Episode 6, that everyone loved so much, was where Joss wanted the story to start, but Fox prevented him from doing that and, just like they did with Firefly, forced him to start the show their way.
If they had aired the original pilot of Firefly, I think the show would still be running today and we wouldn't even be talking about Dollhouse. If they had let Joss do the first six episodes of Dollhouse his way, there wouldn't have been any question about whether to renew it because it would have kept and built on its initial audience instead of losing it over the next four weeks.
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6-12-2009 @ 7:27PM
Creep said...
Thinking how Firefly could still be on the air still bugs me. There was so much potential. So many likable characters. So many interesting story lines to explore. Alas, that is not the case. However, there is Dollhouse. I may not enjoy it as much, but I trust Whedon to sculpt a unique and interesting universe with it... as long as he has the freedom to do so.
6-12-2009 @ 5:55PM
Jake said...
Well said.
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6-13-2009 @ 2:12AM
David said...
Totally agree
6-12-2009 @ 6:46PM
RTMS said...
You completely miss the fact that Joss did not get creative control until the 6th episode, where he finally was able and allowed to tell the story his way. FOX exec. interfered with the show and made it so bad. Stick it in a terrible time slot and it was a lost cause.
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6-12-2009 @ 11:39PM
smwvc said...
The one reason I wouldn't care if I never saw that show again is the character Topher Brink. That character is the most annoying useless piece of TV airtime since Rosie O'Donnell.
Also, Adelle DeWitt is definitely a mis-cast on that show. Get rid of them and the rest of the show and slide Firefly in it's place and your alll set!
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6-13-2009 @ 2:06AM
YouFaceTheTick said...
Is everyone forgetting how supremely awful the last episode was? It wasn't just bad. It was trainwreck A-team bad. The villain of the entire season turns out to be a turd who takes a girl to his dungeon in an effort to make her like him? How totally, completely, insultingly unoriginal. We watched Dollhouse and found the slow development of the characters fine. The penultimate episode was fantastic. Then the finale. It was so bad i'm not sure we will tune in. My wife was so angry with the finale that she's flat out told people not to watch it.
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6-13-2009 @ 9:49AM
Leroy said...
It sounds to me like you let a personal reaction to the plot elements of this episode interfere with your ability to put it in context. Clearly Alpha had been going crazy in a lot of ugly ways for a long time due to the whole brain-wiping process. This plot was perfectly in line with that.
I'm sorry your feelings about something like this happening to a woman will prevent you from continuing to watch a fascinating and complex story.
6-13-2009 @ 12:05PM
YouFaceTheTick said...
leroy, the switch from Alpha being a smart, savvy, cunning villain to a raving lunatic occurred in one episode. That's piss-poor writing.
The show devolved from a thought-provoking, often times amusing look at the human brain into a basic Batman TV Series plot of the super villain taking a girl hostage in his lair and threatening to experiment on her.
It was an insult to the viewers and to the fans of Whedon's other smart work. Imagine if Serenity had gone totally off the track from the stories laid in Firefly? while Serenity threw curveballs (including Tudyk's demise), nothing went so completely awry that the viewer paused and said, "Egad this is idiotic. did a 12 year old boy write this?'
6-14-2009 @ 10:26AM
Leroy said...
I don't understand your claim about Alpha suddenly changing for the last episode. The first two things Alpha did after the incident that messed his mind up were to kill the original doctor and slash Whiskey's face. Are you saying that was not the behavior of a lunatic?
6-26-2009 @ 11:07PM
Kay said...
Your point about caring for the characters is right on the mark. That's why I quit watching. The problem for me was that, at least early on, there was no core character to care about. The premise required Echo to be someone new every episode. Maybe her "real" person eventually came out, but I wasn't there to see it as I found nothing worth connecting with.
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6-15-2009 @ 1:05PM
Jennifer said...
In the times we live in now, there's no way in hell Dollhouse can get MORE viewers than it ever has before in a second season. We're lucky to get that, but it's not going to be renewed because it's already turned off plenty of potential fans with those first six episodes. Why would anyone come back and give it a chance that got pissed and fed up the first time?
Really, how many shows here has anyone started liking after not liking the first ones? In my case, I hated the Bones pilot big time but started watching it after getting a freebie off iTunes of the second season premiere. I don't know how on earth Joss can get people back, though. It was a fluke that I even watched Bones again.
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6-15-2009 @ 8:55AM
Karen said...
I'm waiting to be more consistently impressed with Dollhouse, and I couldn't agree MORE that the lack of core "team" of characters that are deeply invested in EACH OTHER is one of the things keeping me from deeply investing in the show. It's a trademark of Whedon's, like his quirky-fabulous humor, and it's missing.
But I do always keep in mind the lackluster first seasons of Buffy and Angel, when those shows were just starting to find their way. I can't tell you how many friends I've tried to turn on to the treat that was those shows, and I couldn't persuade them to hang in there after the first few episodes. They just have no idea how much they WOULD have later come to love those characters, or how fondly they would look back on those first shaky baby steps of the series.
I hope that's what's happening now with Dollhouse. We'll just have to hang in there and see.
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6-15-2009 @ 1:35PM
Lisa said...
Buffy started out as a mid-season show and i remember that many people hated the first season, so much that after a few episodes, they stopped watching....and look how that turned out. If Fox lets Joss do what he does best, i have no doubt that this show could and will be amazing.
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