Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse"

[paulpogue]

Anyone watching this? Anyone have any thoughts?

I have to say, this is more evidence that the scheduling gods hate hate HATE Joss Whedon. Episode 6, which aired last night, has been played up for weeks now by both the Dollhosue crew and fandom with the same vigor that "Monarchy" fans used to insist that you'd love the series if you just went on the Internet and read all the footnotes. "No, really, Dollhouse will stop sucking and start the plot moving, we promise?"

And what do you know? It lives up to the hype. A show that I've largely been watching out of habit now has me eagerly awaiting the next installment. (When I say "out of habit," I'm mostly referring to the fact that I gave up on "Firefly" in disgust after three episodes and then greatly regretted it, particularly when someone showed me "Jaynestown.)

Anyway, it looks like the show has found its footing, but when is this quasi-mythical episode aired? By sheer coincidence, right smack up against what is possibly the biggest sci-fi television event of the frakking DECADE.

[K-Box]

Here's a thought, for Joss Whedon and everyone else who makes a TV show:

You have exactly ONE episode to get your shit together and sell yourselves effectively to the viewing public - the FIRST one. That's IT. Expecting, or even asking politely for, more than that? Inexcusable self-indulgence.

For fuck's sake, even DAVID FUCKING LYNCH could manage this trick, with the pilot of Twin Peaks, and ANYBODY who suggests that JOSS WHEDON is less tapped into the popular culture and mainstream media zeitgeist than DAVID LYNCH needs to be punched into the nose.

[jessebaker]

Even before the show aired, Whedon was playing the "Meddling Suits" card, saying that the network was giving him shit about the show not having enough action and basically begging fans not to bail on the show after the first couple of episodes.

That said, the whole premise does not work well with the female-centric nature of the program. As designed by Whedon, the whole "Doll" concept would work WAY better if it were exclusively men volunteering to be mindwiped/reprogrammed for dating/killing/protecting others. You could get a decent series playing around with the idea of a group of men, who volunteer or are kidnapped and mindwiped, that end up becoming prostitutes for hire, right down to having their brains reconfigured to make them whatever their client desire as a metaphor for the constantly shifting view of what masculinity is and what being a modern man is supposed to be.

The whole idea of what it means to be a man, at the dawn of the 21th Century, could be an interesting thesis for a show using the plot devices of "Dollhouse". Instead, we get Elisha Dusku (crappy spelling) essentially showing off her range as an actress by playing different character archtypes each episode.

Also I really REALLY think Whedon needs to stop with his obsession towards only having his shows air on the Big 4 Networks and go to cable or Pay-TV for his next shows. FX, AMC, Sci-Fi, USA, HBO, or Showtime would give Whedon his creative freedom and a HELL of a lot of room to breathe as far as not worrying about getting instant big ratings. The Big 4 are no longer the be-all, end-all channels to get your show aired on. Whedon needs to abandon his BS pride and accept Cable/Pay-TV as the place to get his shit aired on, since the Big 4 will only rape him anally without lube with them screwing up his shows.

[jensaltmann]

Mar 22, 2009 15:56:46 GMT -8 K-Box said:

Here's a thought, for Joss Whedon and everyone else who makes a TV show:

You have exactly ONE episode to get your shit together and sell yourselves effectively to the viewing public - the FIRST one. That's IT.

I agree completely. In comics, you have the first issue to draw me in and hook me. If I'm on the fence, you have two issues to convince me to spend my money on you.

On TV? You have, at most, one episode to convince me to spend my time on you, instead of some other show or working, or reading.

Telling me, "Just wait, it gets better?" How long am I supposed to wait? And if you can't get your shit together right out of the gate, how much time should I give you that I could otherwise spend on something else that *did* hook me right out of the gate?

My time is as limited, and as valuable, to me as my money.

[jensaltmann]

Mar 22, 2009 15:06:34 GMT -8 paulpogue said:

Anyone watching this? Anyone have any thoughts?

I torrented the first couple of episodes, on the strength of Joss Whedon't past record.

I watched maybe half of the first episode, before I switched off and deleted the remaining files unseen, because the first half of the first episode bored me to sleep.

Unlike some, if it doesn't drag me in right away, I don't go back. I value my time too much.

[Anders]

Mar 22, 2009 15:06:34 GMT -8 paulpogue said:

Anyone watching this? Anyone have any thoughts?

I watched the trailer that was released last fall and thought it looked awful. The first episode pretty much confirmed my suspicions: the story was uninteresting, the characters were uninteresting, and the actors were uninteresting. It's also stuck in the one-note land of "everything is deadly serious all the time so we all have to furrow our brows" which I have come to hate. Heroes, Sarah Connor, Lost (except Hurley and some bits with Sawyer) all suffer from this, and it's awful.

But I've stuck with it for four episodes now, I think, and it's gotten a little better. It's still down on my to-watch list after Big Bang Theory, 30 Rock, South Park, CSI and re-watching West Wing but every now and then I'll take in half an episode and not hate it.

It doesn't feel at all like Whedon to me, though.

[paulpogue]

I agree that "wait for six episodes and we won't suck!" is just about the worst programming strategy imaginable. I wouldn't be surprised by the "meddling suits" card Whedon has mentioned, though; it's exactly what happened with "Firefly," when he had to dump the two-hour opening movie in place of a fairly pedestrian heist episode. The original movie was AWESOME, and if it had aired first, I would have been hooked.

Personally, I think the show isn't going to make it past two seasons, if that, and as much faith as I have in Joss Whedon to plot out long-term, I simply cannot accept that there is a decent five-year plan inherent in this concept. The entire conceit of the show is staggeringly limited in terms of world-building. Even though we got some nifty revelations in this episode, none of them were what could be called tremendously surprising. The only real plot twists you can make are "Echo starts remembering who she is a little more!", "Someone is a sleeper doll!" and "Someone is playing both sides against the middle!" Which could last a while, but certainly not a massive uberplot. Even if, as it seems, the Dollhouse is a cover for a much bigger and more sinister operation, it's going to be damned difficult to shift gears and still remain anything resembling the same show.

Not that it would be a bad thing to be something other than the status quo it is now -- but I've been watching TV politics long enough to know that you don't get to muck around with the status quo very often. (The biggest genre effort of the last few years, BSG, had major status quo changes -- New Caprica and the Pegasus joining the fleet -- cut short for the very simple reason of "We can't afford to maintain the sets.") Hell, the two longest-running genre shows in American history -- Stargate SG-1 and The X-Files -- never changed their status quos in any significant ways. (One might argue that point, and they did evolve in incremental ways, but at the end of 10 years of both, the setup was the same: "A team of soldiers and a smart guy or two go to another planet and investigate what's there, while engaging in long-term warfare against evil aliens." "A couple of FBI agents investigate the paranormal while trying to hunt down a worldwide conspiracy." What works about those is they are both extremely open-ended concepts. Do you think Dollhouse could remotely carry on that plot for a decade, particularly with a setup which, until it ends up getting changed, makes it literally impossible to have much empathy for the main character?

[K-Box]

See, the first few times that Whedon pulled out the "meddling suits" excuse? I sympathized, and I believed, because we all know by now how unbelievably fucking stupid those meddling suits can actually be, for real.

But once again, I keep coming back to David Lynch and Twin Peaks, and the fact that Lynch managed to get not only a PILOT, but an entire goddamn FIRST SEASON, greenlit by selling stuff so unbelievably out there and NOT in line with "meddling suit" thinking that even the most experimental thing that Joss Whedon has ever done would qualify as an According to Jim episode by contrast.

And that's my real problem, I suppose, is that Joss Whedon has built an entire fanbase, not to mention a respectably successful mass-media mini-empire, on being EXTREMELY plugged into the pop culture and mass-media zeitgeist, and should only be getting MORE market-savvy as time goes by (since his actual CREATIVITY seems to be growing more LIMITED), and I'm supposed to believe that THIS guy, with his proven track record of generating filthy lucre for the meddling suits (which is, after all, one of the few things that WILL get them off your back), is somehow having MORE trouble dealing with the meddling suits, STILL, than the guy who probably pitched the Twin Peaks pilot like this:

"So, we'll devote a three-minute-long pan shot to showing nothing but the mina bird's blood, dripping onto the donuts, right as the audience is sitting down to dinner, and THEN, Agent Cooper will receive his clues from a dream about a backwards-talking dwarf, only we don't actually KNOW who killed Laura Palmer yet ourselves, but that doesn't matter, because the Log Lady will tell him that the owls are not what they seem, and ..."

I mean, COME THE FUCK ON.

[paulpogue]

I have a feeling that Lynch got away with a hell of a lot because he had a couple of particularly friendly execs having his back on that one.

And to be honest, although Whedon is well known in fan and television circles, he doesn't have one-tenth of the cachet Lynch does. Lynch was one of the most highly regarded directors of his time, a guy who was already a decade past his first Oscar when he pitched Twin Peaks, and landing him was probably considered a major "get."

(Okay, nerds, yeah, technically Joss Whedon owns a fraction of an Oscar too, and there are few prouder of him than I, but nobody thinks of Joss Whedon as "The Toy Story guy.")

I don't know the ins and outs of TV money well enough to know if Whedon is considered a serious moneymaker, but I was always under the impression that Buffy and Angel garnered respectable enough viewership to be renewed for 12 seasons, but not enough to be considered major hits.

Whatever the case, I honestly do believe that Lynch managing to get "Twin Peaks" on the air is a nonrepeating phenomenon that shouldn't be used as a benchmark for other shows, especially ones not helmed by Academy Award-winning directors.

[K-Box]

You raise good points, but then again, I would also point out that, when David Lynch pitched Twin Peaks, his highest-profile Hollywood venture at the time was still DUNE.

That'd be like if George Lucas's most well-known film was Howard the Duck. So, yeah, you're right, Lynch undoubtedly had some friendly execs on his side, but that's the only reason he even had a CAREER after that shit.

[jessebaker]

Regarding Kirk throwing out David Lynch references:

1. Twin Peaks was initially pitched during the Writer's Strike of 1988, which probably helped him out since the networks were desperate for content.

2. Twin Peaks being greenlighted was contingent on the fact that Lynch had to film about 30 minutes of extra footage (including a reveal for who killed Laura Palmer) to be tact onto the pilot so that it could be sold overseas as a movie. Which in turn, led to all sorts of bullshit regarding ownership of the pilot episode, which only in the last year was finally resolved.

3. Lynch had pretty much buried the failure of "Dune" when he put out "Blue Velvet"; "Blue Velvet" was his big comeback film and helped set the stage for him being able to do Twin Peaks.

That said, in the end Lynch DID get fucked over by the suits: they made him reveal who killed Laura Palmer and basically drove him leave the showrunning to his underlings until the very last episode.

[jensaltmann]

Kirk: Lynch had Eraserhead, Elephant Man, Dune and Blue Velvet under his belt by 1986. That's more than just the Howard the Duck equivalent. There were some other movies, all of which aren't as noteworthy as the above.

Blue Velvet came after Dune, as did Wild at Heart, both of them were out before Twin Peaks was launched. I'm old enough to actually remember the hype at the time, it was all about CRERATED BY DAVID LYNCH.

[jensaltmann]

Fairly recent stuff that worked right out of the gate, no "please be patient for six weeks" required.

Bones, Leverage, Burn Notice, Dexter, Rome, Heroes, Terminator SCC, Doctor NuWho, BSG, Middleman, probably a lot more that I've never heard of because I don't really pay that much attention to television.

All of the above didn't whine, Please stay with us until we've hit our groove. They went and did it, come hell or high water.

[paulpogue]

Mar 23, 2009 19:55:13 GMT -8 jessebaker said:

That said, in the end Lynch DID get fucked over by the suits: they made him reveal who killed Laura Palmer and basically drove him leave the showrunning to his underlings until the very last episode.

In that case, I felt it was an example of suits not screwing things up so badly. Sometimes a writer needs serious editing, especially if they start to believe their own press too much. The Lynch-directed episode that revealed Laura Palmer's killer was one of the finest goddamn hours of television of the entire DECADE, and it helped set up the stuff that led to the almost-as-awesome series finale.

As much shit as we give the suits and the editor types, sometimes a writer with a penchant for weirdness really needs to be told, "No, seriously, GrantDavid, this is just a little TOO much."

[Anders]

Mar 24, 2009 9:20:46 GMT -8 paulpogue said:

Mar 23, 2009 19:55:13 GMT -8 jessebaker said:

That said, in the end Lynch DID get fucked over by the suits: they made him reveal who killed Laura Palmer and basically drove him leave the showrunning to his underlings until the very last episode.

In that case, I felt it was an example of suits not screwing things up so badly. Sometimes a writer needs serious editing, especially if they start to believe their own press too much. The Lynch-directed episode that revealed Laura Palmer's killer was one of the finest goddamn hours of television of the entire DECADE, and it helped set up the stuff that led to the almost-as-awesome series finale.

As much shit as we give the suits and the editor types, sometimes a writer with a penchant for weirdness really needs to be told, "No, seriously, GrantDavid, this is just a little TOO much."

I recently re-watched (or, for parts of season two, tried to) Twin Peaks, and nowadays I'm not particularly impressed with that episode. Season one is great, as is the final episode, and though there are good things in season two a lot of it is total crap. (And yes, I know Lynch didn't have much to do with the second season.)

But I digress.

Though I agree with Jens in principle, I think that a good show is a good show, whether it starts out being good or doesn't get there until half a season has passed. Personally, I watched the first half a dozen episodes of Battlestar Galactica and found it sorely lacking, but I expect to get around to watching the whole thing sometime since it apparently got better.

Perhaps more clearly: I won't watch something I find sucky just in the hopes that it will get better, but I won't avoid watching something that got better because I found it sucky at first.

For Dollhouse in particular, the first four or so episodes that I have watched haven't been great, but they haven't been horrible either. Unless there are major improvements I'll probably drop it eventually, when something better comes along, though.