Joss Whedon's Dollhouse Deathwatch: Day One

[james_davis_nicoll]

The Dollhouse series premiere airs tonight on Global at 9.00 et/pt.

Comments

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

The subject line of this post just made my day.

(Not because I want the show to fail or anything, it just seems kind of inevitable.)

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

My reasoning is that it is on Fox so it's probably doomed. It is definitely doomed if it pulls in the same number of viewers as Buffy or Angel because numbers that made the WB happy [1] won't please Fox.

I note that My Own Worst Enemy over on NBC had a related premise and it only lasted nine episodes.


1: And in the case of Buffy arguably helped keep the WB alive a little longer.

[wdstarr.livejournal.com]

My Own Worst Enemy over on NBC had a related premise and it only lasted nine episodes. That show had a harder-to-believe set of premises: (1) that the Sekrit Organization had the brain-tech to do what it did all the way back in 1990, and (2) that they chose to do what they did with it. Asking the audience to make two massive and independent suspensions of disbelief right off the bat like that probably contributed significantly to the show's failure.

[le-trombone.livejournal.com]

Now now. Just because the other your mind is ours show failed doesn't mean that this one will.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Joe 90 got 30 episodes out the idea, back in the 1960s. Maybe someone should get Tim Burton or Nick Park to revisit the concept.

[le-trombone.livejournal.com]

Huh. If that got broadcast in my area I missed it.

Thirty episodes in one season. Interesting times.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Well. It does feel like a countdown, doesn't it?

I've never been less excited about a show I think might be good.

[montoya.livejournal.com]

The way I figure it, it's 4-6 weeks of watching a hopefully interesting show, and then later I can pick up all 13 episodes on DVD.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Hoping it will be interesting - ! No way to know till I see it.

[seawasp]

What little I've heard about it didn't encourage me to want to see it. I liked Buffy (for the first few seasons) and Firefly, but I'm not sure about this one at all.

[montoya.livejournal.com]

It sounds really really stupid, yeah. About the only stupider premises I can think of are Confederate-era cowboys in space or SoCal teenagers fighting vampires. So, y'know.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Hey, don't dis Lost Boys.

[thette.livejournal.com]

Your icon is brilliant.

[thebitterguy]

Amusingly enough, I had a poll about this last month.

Four weeks, they give it.

[andrewducker]

One on Instant Fanzine today:
http://community.livejournal.com/instant_fanzine/214241.html

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

I note that Fox, true to form, is promoting the back-to-back "Terminator: the Sarah Conner Chronicles" and "Dollhouse" on Friday as: "Hey! Look! Smokin' hot SF babes!"

I still consider myself to be watching T:SCC, where "watching" means "all the episodes from this season are on my Tivo and I really will watch them eventually." I plan to watch "Dollhouse" until Fox kills it or it sucks enough for me to lose interest. I'm betting on Column A.

[affreca.livejournal.com]

"Smokin' hot SF babes" that look identical.

[fsandow.livejournal.com]

I don't understand why Whedon is going this route again when the results seem so obviously foreordained. Ah well.

Riddle me this: Whedon's style seems to me to be a much better match for HBO and its kin than for the networks. Why isn't he developing his concepts as intensively-plotted 6- or 13-episode series and pitching them to HBO?

[montoya.livejournal.com]

More importantly, why is HBO not going after Whedon? He seems like an obvious choice, because he's got this cult following, which may not be enough to meaningfully contribute to the marginal value of a soda pop ad, but certainly is enough potential new subscribers to HBO to make it worthwhile.

[mrteufel.livejournal.com]

I believe Whedon was contracted to do one more show for Fox. Indeed, the idea for Dollhouse came about when discussing this with Eliza Dushku, who was similarly contractually limited. I think he's free after this one.

[sleary.livejournal.com]

Day 1? You are way behind, my friend. People started the deathwatch the day it was announced that Joss had a new show, started the campaign to save it the day it was announced that Fox would air it, and kicked said campaign into high gear when it was announced that it would air on Friday nights.

I wish I were kidding.

I also wish my DVR had not died during Tuesday night's thunderstorm, so I could watch this tonight instead of waiting for Hulu tomorrow.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

The WashPost slammed it.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Hmm, pretty much what I expected.

It was well-executed in spots, but so squirm-inducingly unpleasant in several different ways that I don't think it convinced me to watch any more. And the bumpers and promo spots just made it worse.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Did anyone else wonder when Echo went into her "You Will listen to me because I am the Expert" routine if her shadowy masters wanted their client and daughter wacked for some reason?

[asyouknow-bob.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there was something seriously wrong with the Dollhouse premiere, and I find that I don't care enough to analyze just what the central problem was.