Last night marked the end of Dollhouse, the latest creation from the infamous Joss Whedon. I was thirteen years old when I first was exposed to his brilliance. Buffy was my gateway drug, not just to Joss, but to the fandom world in general. It was the first show I wrote fanfic for, the first I made fanart for, the first I vidded, even the first I attended a convention for. Considering my dedication to Buffy, it was only natural that I embraced the spin-off Angel. It took me longer to give Firefly a try, but when I did it became one of my alltime favorite shows. I knew then not to doubt this man's vision. Dr. Horrible came next and I have to admit the concept of a super villain/hero musical sounded a whole world of weird, however once again it was love at first sight.
So when I heard the announcement that Joss was going to make another show, this time with Eliza Dushku in the lead (whom I've also followed the career of since she dazzled me in Buffy), I was confident it was going to be brilliant.
Dollhouse has so far been the one project of Joss that didn't take off instantly with the fans. I loved it, but many fellow Whedon fans didn't share the sentiment. I think that comes down to several factors.
* First of all Fox got in the way. Clearly they didn't learn from the Firefly days to lean back and trust Joss' vision. The pilot was scrapped and Joss was forced to take the show in a different direction. I'm happy they decided to include the original pilot on the DVD box set, because it gave the fans the chance to compare it to the pilot that actually aired. Fox's desired pilot was all fast paced action and very little mythology and character focus, which is where Joss real powers lie. The original pilot, however, it had the mythology, the character focus, it felt much, much more like Joss than the Fox approved pilot did.
* Secondly the concept behind Dollhouse is probably one of the hardest things to realize. I mean, what is the one most important thing to any show out there? That they have characters that people can connect with, and here we have a show where most of the character ensemble aren't even themselves, not only that, they don't even have the same personality from one episode to the next. Finding an angle to show that and still have us connect with the individual characters, that's probably the hardest thing to accomplish. Of course it takes more than one episode to do it.
As time went by and new episodes aired (each topping their predecessor) many who'd viewed Dollhouse as a disappointment to start with (but had continued watching despite of it) began to come around. And I was beyond thrilled when I found out Fox actually had learned a lesson from the Firefly days and renewed the show for a second season.
It came as a shock, at least to me, when Fox so quickly announced Dollhouse's cancelation, and for several reasons. First of all I got immediately afraid they were going to give Dollhouse the Tru Calling treatment (where they had renewed the series only to stop shooting six episodes into the second season, giving it a very up-in-the-air ending), but I was quickly assured that they would let the season run its course. Secondly it came as a shock because the announcement came after the airing of "Belonging", which I still think is the most powerful episode in the entire show. It was hard to understand that *this* was the time Fox chose to cancel it.
Now, at the end of the journey I am both grateful and amazed at how Joss managed work in what had to be seasons worth of revelations into the remaining episodes. He gave us a proper ending with answers and conclusions, while still keeping a few mysteries to himself. I'm very sad this has to be the end, but at the same time I am just so darn grateful for what I got and I want to give my thanks to everyone who was involved in the process.
I now can't wait to see what Joss will come up with next. All I know is that whatever it is I will watch it, and I will love it.
MY FAVOURITE FILMS OF 2019
4 years ago
I have to admit I was one of those people who were disappointed to begin with but you Misskitten convinced me to keep watching and I was really glad I did. I think the Fox aired pilot was off putting, because it was all action and as you say MissKitten, it lacked the mythology and character focus that Joss does so well. I haven't seen the original pilot episode yet, but I intend to buy the DVD and watch the whole series from beginning to end once again.
ReplyDeleteI too, was surprised by the timing of the announcement that the show was to be cancelled, but I was glad that Whedon had the chance to wrap up the series so nicely and give us all the pieces of the puzzle by the end of the very last episode.