Let me admit this first: I am a Whedonite, meaning I love everything that Joss Whedon’s pudgy mitts get within 10 feet of. In fact, aside from my boyfriend, Firefly is my favorite thing in all the world. I love Buffy, Angel, Dr. Horrible, Fray, Astonishing X-Men, Joss’ episodes of The Office… and yes, even Dollhouse.
But I am not an idiot, and I don’t have bad taste in television. I know that the first season of Dollhouse was mostly terrible. But we all expected that, right? Joss is a notorious slow starter - just look at the first seasons of Buffy and Angel. But it started to get good towards the end of season one. And continued to get better and better at the start of season two. But, as we know, it didn’t get good enough, and FOX pulled the plug.
Recently (and somewhat surprisingly) Dollhouse started to get really, really good. The obvious possible explanation for this is that Joss is trying to take his best ideas from multiple planned seasons and cram them into the last few episodes he has left to tell the Dollhouse’s story.
I think what’s interesting, though, is that in a few years, when us Whedonites look at our Dollhouse blue-rays sitting next to our Firefly collection on the bookshelf, we won’t remember how awful the first season was, or how the show really only started to get great when the pressure was on and all last hope was out the window.
We’ll just talk about how fantastic Dollhouse was, and how stupid FOX was to pull the plug. We’ll eventually even forget that FOX has been under entirely new management since they cancelled our beloved Firefly, and we might even lump the two sad cancellations together. We’ll praise Joss for his sharp, intelligent writing and his quick, pointy jokes, and we’ll tell him how sorry we are for him and that we hope he gets back in the bull-pen soon with a new endeavor.
I’ll be one of those people.
Deep down, I’ll know I’m just a little bit wrong, but I won’t care.
Nope, not one bit.
I’ve thought about this a lot. Yeah, Buffy started slow. I’ve not watched a lot of Angel, but from what I know, I can imagine that it did the same thing. Dollhouse was arguably worse than both of those in it’s ramp-up. Much of the first season was simply boring. (However, there is always an exception to the rule - Firefly started strong out the gate, and kept on going strong throughout its entire ill-fated run.)
I am of the opinion that the fantastic turn that Dollhouse has taken in the second half of the second season is Joss cramming every idea he’s ever had into the show all at once. The show is not just good, it’s fast - almost hurried. The plot was progressing steadily, but very slowly, for the first half of the second season. Then, starting with the episodes filmed after the cancellation announcement, the show’s plot broke into a sprint, and there is literally not a single wasted moment on screen.
This tells me one thing: Joss works much better without an open-ended format. Remember Dr. Horrible? A nice little trilogy. Beginning, middle, and end.
I think what Joss wanted with Dollhouse was a series-long arc, with Rossum being taken down at the very end. Without an end in sight, he doesn’t know how to pace well, but who would? When cancellation can come down at any point, there isn’t any way to do that. Joss was lucky enough they told him mid-season instead of after the finale had already been filmed.
Solution: Mr. Whedon needs to start making movies, or at the very least, miniseries-style television.
Source: dustindeckard