Dollhouse: don't forget to watch the premiere

by: Adela P.

Tomorrow, Friday the 13th (is this a bad omen or just a coincidence?), is the series premiere of Dollhouse -- the series that Whedon fans have been hyping, anticipating, and cajoling Fox to just please at least let it air for a full season, and please air the pilot, and please air the episodes in order -- in short, oh please OH PLEASE give it a standing chance.

Fans are already peeved that Dollhouse was given the dreaded Friday night slot. This excerpt comes from Pinkraygun.com's Melissa Voelker:

This week my rant is all for Fox. Fox, why do you hate your own programming? First you buy shows and announce that you will be their new best friend, and then you start to hurt them. Its like you are the ultimate abusive boyfriend. Take Dollhouse, for instance, Joss Whedon's new show that all of use Whedonites are salivating over. You bought it, you advertised it, then you decided not only to sit on it until 2009, but you are going to air it on Friday nights. Friday nights are No Man’s Land for TV shows, the equivalent of Where Programming Goes to Die. That was how you killed Firefly, after all, a fact which none of us forgive you for. But while its a terrible thing you are doing to “Dollhouse,” at least that show hasn’t even started yet so it isn’t like you’ve been super nice and supportive of it first. (Really I only think you bought it so no one else could because you don’t want it airing opposite any of your shows. I think you’ve got a deep crazy person hatred for Joss Whedon, but that is another article.)

There has even been some fan response protesting the inevitable cancellation of Dollhouse:





Well, to be fair, fans have no reason to trust Fox. Like Melissa Voelker said, Fox does seem like the ultimate abusive boyfriend. They pretend to be nice but then they give their new shows the worst time slots imaginable. Why couldn't they have eased Dollhouse into our primetime with a nice Sunday night slot? After all, Brothers and Sisters and Desperate Housewives fare pretty well, right? Is Sunday night such a bad time? That would solve the problem of Dollhouse being in contention with all of the ridiculously popular shows that have no real cred, right? Man, I wish I were in charge of these things.

James Poniewozik wrote an article for Time way back in December, and then again a few days ago -- hey, at least he's giving Dollhouse some long overdue attention. Poniewozik seems pretty conflicted. He worries about the premise -- Whereas his past series had ready-made good-vs.-evil setups, Dollhouse is morally nebulous. Sometimes we're rooting for Ballard to bust the Dollhouse, sometimes we're rooting for Echo's handlers and protectors in the organization that pimps her out. He worries about Dushku -- Dushku, memorable as the bad-girl Faith in Buffy, isn't much of a chameleon. She's passably callow as Caroline and nicely eerie as the doll-like "blank" Echo, but she doesn't transform with each personality, à la Toni Collette in United States of Tara. And he worries about the logic (cue tiny tiny spoiler warning here) -- A scene with a skeptical colleague addresses head-on a basic implausibility of the premise: why the hell does a billionaire need to turn to some kind of bizarre sci-fi brianwashing whorehouse to get the perfect date, or the perfect crime investigator, or the perfect whatever, when they can perfectly easily go out and hire one who hasn't had their personality wiped? His response: when you have everything, you want something more—more exotic, more perfect, more specific. Not so persuasive on the surface, but if the show is well enough done, hopefully we won't care.

But beyond all of this, Poniewozik readily admits that he might be wrong: I wasn't crazy about Firefly when it first debuted, in retrospect one of the worse calls of my career. And he also touches upon one of the main reasons Whedon fans are watching at all -- For me, the main draw now is not seeing Dushku become a different person every week, but getting to see Joss Whedon become a different writer every week. I personally know a few people that are not particularly drawn to Dushku or Amy Acker, the two actors that garner the most attention for having already been on a Whedon show. Rather, they are drawn to the prospect of another Whedon show to which they can devote time, energy, and sometimes scholarship. I admit, I feel the same way. I've never seen an episode of Tru Calling in my life, though I'm told by many that it's a fairly decent show. I don't get overly excited when I come across Acker on an episode of Supernatural or Alias. She just doesn't get me excited in the same way that seeing some of the other actors does. (I about flipped when Amber Benson and Mercedes McNab made appearances on Supernatural.) But even though the cast doesn't overly excite me, I absolutely cannot WAIT for Whedon to be in my living room again.

This Quote-Video-Meta maze I've constructed here is my attempt to make you realize that Dollhouse is going to need a lot of help from Whedon fans to get it rolling. Word spreads best through your mouths, people, so start telling your friends to watch. Friday nights are BLEH. People are out and about, being social, doing whatever -- oh, of course, except for me, because I'll be sitting in front of my television, watching Dollhouse, and being sure to record it on the DVR for any of my friends who miss it and can be convinced to come to my humble abode and watch.

So watch. WATCH. Tell others to watch. Record it for others to watch. Spread the word so it doesn't suffer the fate of cancellation. If you watch Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles, stick around and watch Dollhouse too. (Why, Fox, couldn't you just keep T:SCC on Monday nights but stick with the T:SCC/Dollhouse idea? Okay, soapbox gone now. Really.) Oh, and if you're a Whedon fan just tuning in on Friday for Dollhouse, come on over an hour earlier to witness the amazingness of T:SCC. Let's get these shows back into some normal timeslots so they have a chance at success. What do you say?

PS: The Chicago Tribune described Dollhouse as a "twisted exploration of the malleability of female identity." Intriguing description. Perhaps we'll come across a paper about this at the Slayage conference someday.

PPS: Do take time to check out dose.ca's Joss Whedon Moments We Loved. It made me smile a lot.