Fox Cancels Dollhouse

[ShadowMaat]

Eliza Dushku....Summer Glau....Jewel Staite....Nathan Fillion....

I think we can reasonably safely say that it's actually Joss Whedon who's bad luck for TV shows

Truth. I think Joss isn't nearly as good as his fans believe he is, but part of that means latching on to people who... may not be at their best. Dunno about Summer and Jewel since I haven't seen 'em on much else and I kinda like what little I've seen of Nathan, but Eliza? Again, I haven't seen her in much but I also haven't enjoyed what I've seen.

[huntress]

Eliza Dushku....Summer Glau....Jewel Staite....Nathan Fillion....

I think we can reasonably safely say that it's actually Joss Whedon who's bad luck for TV shows

You can't blame Joss on bad luck. Both Buffy and Angel did well and Firefly should have done well if fox hadn't been so dumb to cancel the show way too early on.

Jewel Staite is a nice actress but had some serious bad luck in the shows she was in. Firefly was brilliant but Fox couldn't see it, Wonderfalls was also great but just like "Pushing Daisies" underappreciated, Jewel joins SGA *blam* it gets cancelled one season later, which wasn't her fault but that of the writers and their shoddy stories. I never saw "Flash Forward" but that show also didn't last longer then a season. Jewel has more bad luck then Joss. Eliza....I love her but she isn't much of an actress to be honest and she doesn't have the range that is needed for a role like Echo. "True Faith" just sucked. Summer Glau is stuck at being typecast which has a lot to do with her slightly strange look. No matter where she turns up, she is usually an android, robot, in a psychic ward or should be LOL Nathan is right now very successful with Castle, which is doing well and will probably stay around for a while.

[Giantevilhead]

Nathan Fillion now has Castle, which is doing very well in the ratings.

Also, the premise to Dollhouse isn't nearly as original as people say it is. It's basically based off of Dark City and Planescape: Torment.

[Replicator Todd]

I wish Fox went bankrupt and someone better took its place...I really do.

[Krichton]

Dollhouse is unwatchable. This is the only Whedon show that should have been cancelled during season one. I'm shocked that it's lasted this long and that just shows how badly warped the minds are at Fox. They cancel the good shows early and then keep the bad ones too long.

[Alan Wake]

Bummer. No surprise there, I suppose. Maybe this will learn 'im about getting in bed with Fox.

Meh... Fox has stayed out of my bed for years now. The only channel I let under my covers is probably only Syfy.

Occasionally SPIKE will creep in.

Oh, and I believe this show is long overdo for being channeled.

[FromOutside]

The storytelling has, in my opinion, been too awkward and uneven to be really effective.--

There's more to the Dollhouse than just "OMG sex toyz" and as Sierra's backstory proves, even the sex toy angle can be about more than some rich horndog wanting to scratch an itch. Instead of having everything be shallow and surface-y they could have been building up layers and nuances, but for the most part they didn't and I think that lack of depth helped contribute to the show's demise.

What kind of awkward storytelling you mean? Personally I think that storytelling in Dollhouse is somewhat dreamy, dream-like, and that is actually a plus sign to the story. Echo's life is shown as sharp fragments (different imprints) loosely tied together with the misty eyed time she spends in the Dollhouse and that is what makes storytelling special.

But what comes to bigger picture, storytelling is just too slow when its one ep in one week. If one ep in onw dat, it doesn't bother too much.

I am actually kind of happy they canceled the show, and that is because of 'more than just "OMG sex toyz"' aspect. I think Dollhouse is nice and entertaining but a bit too easy to figure out overview to western philosophy of 'me'. (So it's not that much about adventure etc. and and slow storytelling is more or less ok). And what would the next season to be about if there was any? Western basics of 'me' is already pretty much used and if they were going to deeper and more complicated philosophy of the subject, there would be very few to watch the series since few would know the philosophy they are referring to. At least I guess, I don't know if they study the subject in USA high school or so.

-> better cancel than crush the whole point.

(That was difficult to write, hopefully it's not as difficult to read...)

[ShadowMaat]

What kind of awkward storytelling you mean? Personally I think that storytelling in Dollhouse is somewhat dreamy, dream-like, and that is actually a plus sign to the story. Echo's life is shown as sharp fragments (different imprints) loosely tied together with the misty eyed time she spends in the Dollhouse and that is what makes storytelling special.

Huh. That's a really interesting way to look at Echo. I have a hard time not seeing Eliza trying to understand what the point of her character is and just sort of bumbling along with all of Echo's personalities just kinda being variants of the same Faith-like character.

I'm not sure I can really quantify what I find awkward about the storytelling except that the focus doesn't always seem to be in the right place. For instance, wasting episode after episode to show us how "different" Echo is when they could be using that different-ness to push the story forward. I don't need to know "Hey look, she's different, she REMEMBERS stuff," I need "She remembers stuff and this is what she's doing with it." We got some of that in the last episode with her setting off the other characters but I feel that there should be more of that sort of thing. It doesn't have to be heavy-handed (and couldn't be or Adele & crew would be more likely to pick up on it), but just show us more of Echo manipulating things toward a specific end.

Or maybe she's been doing that and it was TOO subtle for me to notice.

I also really detest the heavy focus on Echo herself. I know she's the star of the show and the whole focus is supposed to be on her, but if we got a better chance to know the other dolls then they wouldn't have to keep underlining the "she's so different" thing; it'd be obvious by watching the other dolls and seeing how they react- or fail to react- to certain stimuli.

But what comes to bigger picture, storytelling is just too slow when its one ep in one week. If one ep in onw dat, it doesn't bother too much.

I do think the storytelling is too slow and, IMO, too prone to repetition. That kind of stuff only becomes more obvious, not less, when you watch it in marathon sessions. Or it does for me, anyway.

And what would the next season to be about if there was any? Western basics of 'me' is already pretty much used and if they were going to deeper and more complicated philosophy of the subject, there would be very few to watch the series since few would know the philosophy they are referring to. At least I guess, I don't know if they study the subject in USA high school or so.

Yeah, I don't think philosophy gets covered too much in school unless you take specific courses for it in college/uni, but as far as what future seasons would be about it'd be more of the same: Echo is different and the Dollhouse is a dangerous concept staffed (at least in LA) by people who are in a moral gray area and who are not fully aware of the bigger picture. Lather, rinse, repeat.

[Jeff O'Connor]

ShadowMaat beautifully summed up my thoughts on the series. It never really did it for me, and as it stands there's still only just the one television series by Whedon that I actually agree with (most, not all) of the love toward. Dollhouse isn't that show.

Eliza Dushku has never done it for me. She has plenty of fans; I'm just not one of them. I mean no disrespect to her person, but her acting is not my cup of tea. At all.

And as DigiFluid said, the series has had as many unwatchably bad episodes as it has outstandingly good ones. Except IMO, the 'outstanding' bit is only so because those episodes are so much more tolerable than the rest of the muck. They're still far from four stars as far as I'm concerned.

My girlfriend watches Dollhouse, and she agrees with me to some extent about the problems it has had since square one. She thought the show was picking up the pace and getting much, much better toward the end of the first season, to the point that she couldn't wait to tune in next week. Me, not so much, but I saw improvements. Now she thinks the second season has been almost as rocky as the earlier parts of the first, and has lost much of the enthusiasm she had when Alan Tudyk was doing his thing and all that.

I'm glad for her that Whedon is trying to wrap things up as well as possible for the finale, but Dollhouse lost me a long time ago.

[EvilSpaceAlien]

Eliza Dushku....Summer Glau....Jewel Staite....Nathan Fillion....

I think we can reasonably safely say that it's actually Joss Whedon who's bad luck for TV shows

Reed Diamond is the reason for Dollhouse' cancellation!!! He was on Journeyman too and that show got axed, so this means that it's all his fault!
If someone else would have played Mr. Dominic the show would have gotten 14 million viewers in it's first season!!!!!

[FromOutside]

I'm not sure I can really quantify what I find awkward about the storytelling except that the focus doesn't always seem to be in the right place. For instance, wasting episode after episode to show us how "different" Echo is when they could be using that different-ness to push the story forward. I don't need to know "Hey look, she's different, she REMEMBERS stuff," I need "She remembers stuff and this is what she's doing with it." We got some of that in the last episode with her setting off the other characters but I feel that there should be more of that sort of thing. It doesn't have to be heavy-handed (and couldn't be or Adele & crew would be more likely to pick up on it), but just show us more of Echo manipulating things toward a specific end.

--

I do think the storytelling is too slow and, IMO, too prone to repetition. That kind of stuff only becomes more obvious, not less, when you watch it in marathon sessions. Or it does for me, anyway.

Ah, that's what I meant to slow Snail sedated to death slow, it is.

But that never bothered me when I watched Dollhouse... not quite marathon but 2+ ep in one day. True indeed, repetitions become more obvious like that, but when one episode isn't enough, one just turn the next one on and watches, and when it's not enough, then comes next ep and so on. Of course watching like this asks much free time (at least "free" time) and some patience but I don't lack either when it comes down to watching series But of course, this is just me and I can fully understand other may see this differently.

Yeah, I don't think philosophy gets covered too much in school unless you take specific courses for it in college/uni, but as far as what future seasons would be about it'd be more of the same: Echo is different and the Dollhouse is a dangerous concept staffed (at least in LA) by people who are in a moral gray area and who are not fully aware of the bigger picture. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Yup, definitely better to cancel than be stuck with this! Dollhouse, the way it was left, has some strong points, but they wouldn't carry the show much if any further. It would ask one neat idea to continue and keep up the good work.

[HAL2100]

It was good. Hmm... A feature film would be nice...

[Giantevilhead]

Dollhouse does seem to be the most derivative of Whedon's shows. When I'm watching Dollhouse, I keep getting reminded of Blade Runner, The Bourne Identity, Dark City, The Prisoner, and Planescape: Torment. On the other hand, even though Firefly took ideas from Star Trek and Star Wars, I was never really think about them when I was watching Firefly.

[Ashman]

To bad I found this series on hula today! After hearing about it from GWPodcast! I am bummd. Eli D was more girl just one more time!

[HAL2100]

Dollhouse does seem to be the most derivative of Whedon's shows. When I'm watching Dollhouse, I keep getting reminded of Blade Runner, The Bourne Identity, Dark City, The Prisoner, and Planescape: Torment. On the other hand, even though Firefly took ideas from Star Trek and Star Wars, I was never really think about them when I was watching Firefly.

There is a difference between a work being derivative and it containing similar themes or concepts. Would you say that BSG was a derivative of Blade Runner given the skin jobs? or that it was a derivative of Alien given that Nash(?) was an human looking android?

Likewise Firefly didn't neccessarily 'take' ideas from ST or SW.

There was a show in the '70's about a guy that suffered some brain injury that could download any skill that he needed. (I wish I knew the name of it.) But you could argue that The Pretender stole from that show as did Dollhouse. DH moreso.

Its not about the themes or plot devices, its about how their used and the stories that are being told whether it be the story of the characters as individuals or as a group.