Now I’m not your typical Joss Whedon fan. I hadn’t ever seen anything from him before this year. Someone pointed me towards the internet sensation that was Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog and like Dorothy I followed the yellow brick road of Whedon properties to find the great wizard that I enjoy and decides to grant me my wishes of what I want to see (most of the time at least). I spent a period of almost three months watching and catching up on Buffy the Vampire Slayer which I fell in love with. I loved the story of a girl having to deal with the supernatural and at the same time balance teen life and maturing over the years. Now I definitely don’t want to go and call it the best thing I’ve ever seen on TV (I leave those comments for things like The Wire) but I enjoyed it and would still recommend it to people to go and try out for themselves.
Funnily enough what people call Whedon’s best work yet, Firefly, I didn’t enjoy as much as I’ve enjoyed Buffy and Angel. It was his last show that was cancelled (at FOX coincidentally) and fans we’re all, unlike now, weeping and wailing about how unfair it was. Eventually they got a good movie out of the franchise, Serenity, which didn’t do too great at the box office (according to BoxOfficeMojo.com it cost $39M to make and made $38.8M worldwide and $25M came from the US market).
Then on February 13th of this year the first episode of a brand new Joss Whedon show debuted, the show was called Dollhouse. Yes it starred Eliza Dushku who we all knew couldn’t act at all and in a show where she would need to play a different person week to week it seemed impossible for anyone to like it and the show did go under a lot of scrutiny throughout its running on air. I even questioned my love for Whedon during the first half of the first season. Then eventually, as happens in every season of Buffy, the shit hit the fan and more or less our apocalypse was upon us and things were looking up (for the viewers not the characters). The show was getting good and I was enjoying it. It started to hint at all the scientific and philosophical issues that anyone with half an inch of sense would ask when reading the premise for the show.
After having a rocky start to the season and being shifted around on the FOX timeslot as to when the show was going to air everyone had more or less either given up on the show or given up on the show being renewed. I think that FOX learnt their lesson with Firefly; they want to let the writers run the show into the ground before pulling the plug and getting a ton less hate mail from fans. So for the first time FOX decided to take a chance and renew Dollhouse for another season (with a smaller budget) and Whedon was pleased and went back to the drawing board. So after the show finished airing it’s 12 episode run of the first season and everyone got a peek at the hidden 13th episode on the DVD all fans were once again pumped to see the show come back again. Some more sceptical than others, but overall everyone was excited.
On September 25th the show returned in its Friday timeslot with high hopes of catching fans imaginations again. Unfortunately, like six months ago, the ratings were not that impressive. So it comes to no surprise that last week it was announced that FOX is officially cancelling the show. They are planning to air the entire 13 episode season but that will be it. Somehow it feels special to be experiencing the ups and downs of a Whedon show for once. As I said this year is my year of Whedon and this is the first Whedon show that I’m watching as it is being originally aired.
Personally I agree that Dollhouse isn’t the greatest show but I enjoy it. It definitely has had its bad weeks, but it also has had its great weeks. I’ve enjoyed watching Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett) find the Dollhouse during the first season and watching him so far this season trying to save Caroline (Eilza Dushku). I still enjoy seeing Boyd (Henry Lennix) watching over the house while trying to see how far he will push his moral boundaries so as to meet his requirements as an employee of the house. I’ve enjoyed watching some of my favourite minor characters like Victor (Enver Gjokaj) and Sierra (Dichen Lachman) fall in love and Topher (Fran Kranz) and Dr. Saunders (Amy Acker) loath each other even more over the period of just 16 episodes thus far.
In the end I was prepared to see the show go and at the same time I’m still sad that the show couldn’t find some form of mainstream appeal to keep it going. Whedon said when the show began that he had a five year plan for the characters, and even though I know that it would be insane to expect any company to hold his hand financially for that long just to see that plan through I would’ve loved to see the plan come to fruition.