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I had a pretty strange reaction when I first heard that FOX planned to move “Fringe” to Friday nights in January. I could’ve cursed a blue streak at my television, but instead I basically bypassed four of the five Kübler-Ross stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining and depression — and headed right to acceptance. That didn’t really make sense: Why was I so ready to let go of one of my favorite shows so quickly? Then I saw the name of the first Friday episode and thought wearily, “Oh yeah. That’s why. They’ve done this before. And now they’re twisting the knife.”
‘Dollhouse’: Has the Whedon body count become predictable?
by Tracy V. Wilson | February 1, 2010
When I sat down on Saturday morning to watch the series finale of “Dollhouse,” I really had only one question on my mind: “Who’s going to die in this episode?” It was sort of the inverse to my thought at the end of the third-to-last episode, “Getting Closer”: “Oh, yeah. This is a Joss Whedon show.”
“Dollhouse” has been having a lot of fun with little inside jokes and winks to the audience of late — think Victor’s stay at the Hyperion Hotel and Bennett’s desire to probe Caroline’s amygdala — but the most interesting Easter egg in last week’s episode came from what seemed like a throwaway line at the end of the hour.
TV execs can breathe a sigh of relief now. As it turns out, in spite of all of the hype around Hulu and other streaming sites, they still represent the future of television — and that future isn’t as ominous as you’d think.
It’s a good news/bad news kind of announcement: Fox is canceling “Dollhouse.” In spite of storytelling that picked up in the last half of season one, the show’s ratings have been poor, even with DVR results factored in. This probably doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone. As if reports that Joss Whedon would be treating the season finale as a series finale weren’t enough, the show went on hiatus during November sweeps — presumably so it wouldn’t pull down Fox’s average. The good news (if you’re a “Dollhouse” fan) is that the network plans to air all 13 episodes of the second season after the show returns from its hiatus.
The first season of “Dollhouse” is out on DVD today, and included in the set is the unaired 13th episode, “Epitaph One,” along with other goodies. I’d been anxious to see “Epitaph One” for a couple of reasons. One was simple curiosity. After hearing that the episode was quite different from the rest of the season and was made on a fraction of a regular episode’s budget, I really wanted to see whether “new direction” and “less money” combined to make something amazing or something lame.
May is, without a doubt, my favorite month of the year. It’s not just the green trees and increasingly beautiful weather … there’s also the annual influx of summer blockbusters and fall TV schedules to look forward to.
The biggest TV renewal news this weekend was by far the unexpected non-cancellation of Joss Whedon’s “Dollhouse.” The show had become more nuanced and complex over the last half of the season, right about the time the ratings started to drop. There are lots of theories on just what saved the show from almost certain doom. The Live Feed points out that it’s the sort of show that’s likely to attract lots of DVR and online viewers, so even though it hasn’t fared well in ratings, it has enough viewers to keep it going. And devoted fans who will do things like allegedly crash Fox’s phone system asking for a reprieve are the same ones who are probably going to buy DVDs later on.
I’ve read a lot of discussion in the blogosphere about “Dollhouse” over the last few months. Posts at The Angry Black Woman and This Ain’t Livin’ refer to the show’s events as rape. Then there are the 25+ pages of comments at the Television Without Pity forums discussing whether the show is feminist. And now that the first season has ended, I’m finding the show’s events, which deal with a corporation that imprints human bodies with new personalities before selling their services to wealthy clients, hard to classify.
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