As mentioned earlier in the thread, the network has virtually promised to give it 13 episodes even if the ratings suck. They even gave Firefly that much. Seems like it would have to be astonishingly unsuccessful to get canceled before then.
Are you doubting the network's ability to fuck a show over?
I'm just curious as to what they had to promise Joss to get him even speaking to Fox after Firefly. I seem to recall some rather hard feelings after that.
Check the OP. Joss is friends with Eliza, and Eliza has a contract with Fox. The two of them accidentally came up with a concept for a show, and he ended up working with Fox again.
I think the Buffy comic holds up better, but I do agree that the dramatic increase in the scope of Buffy and Angel's adventures make the two comics feel like huge departures from their respective series.
Also, since the characters have severed all ties to mundane life, it's harder to relate to them.
I think this is what really hurt Buffy past like S4. (or even past S3)
She didn't feel like she was living anything close to a normal young persons life at all. She just Slayed, full time. And everyone else helped her. Full time. Real life was incidental.
Angel never really ran into this problem imo cause the whole show was kinda built from the start around these people being isolated from the real world in their weird little bubble.
Holy shit you've hit the nail on the head as to why deep down I love Angel over Buffy.
I think the Buffy comic holds up better, but I do agree that the dramatic increase in the scope of Buffy and Angel's adventures make the two comics feel like huge departures from their respective series.
Also, since the characters have severed all ties to mundane life, it's harder to relate to them.
I think this is what really hurt Buffy past like S4. (or even past S3)
She didn't feel like she was living anything close to a normal young persons life at all. She just Slayed, full time. And everyone else helped her. Full time. Real life was incidental.
Angel never really ran into this problem imo cause the whole show was kinda built from the start around these people being isolated from the real world in their weird little bubble.
Holy shit you've hit the nail on the head as to why deep down I love Angel over Buffy.
Xander, at least, kept working construction. This could be why I liked him to the end.
As mentioned earlier in the thread, the network has virtually promised to give it 13 episodes even if the ratings suck. They even gave Firefly that much. Seems like it would have to be astonishingly unsuccessful to get canceled before then.
Are you doubting the network's ability to fuck a show over?
I'm just curious as to what they had to promise Joss to get him even speaking to Fox after Firefly. I seem to recall some rather hard feelings after that.
Check the OP. Joss is friends with Eliza, and Eliza has a contract with Fox. The two of them accidentally came up with a concept for a show, and he ended up working with Fox again.
And the people in charge of Fox TV definitely changed a bit. Also not mentioned yet in Dollhouse's favor are a slightly easier to market premise and Joss being more cooperative with Fox to make a show that they can sell.
It's still out there, though, and it is in the slot-of-death. It has Terminator as a lead-in but that show's ratings have been slipping, and its move to Friday will probably drop them further.
Anyone know what the production costs look like for Dollhouse?
I think the best thing that could possibly happen to this show, is it gets cancelled by Fox after the initial run, gets picked up by SciFi to fill the BSG void, and everyone lives happily ever after.
And don't give me the "Fox has a deal with Eliza" crap. House is produced by NBC and runs on Fox. No reason Fox can't keep producing Dollhouse and let it run on SciFi.
The interesting thing is that yeah, the people at Fox changed, but also, at the time they signed Dollhouse, science fiction was doing really well on television. Lost, Heroes, and Terminator and BSG were all doing really well in the ratings, and NBC was debuting My Own Worst Enemy and the Knight Rider
But now? Heroes and Terminator have slipped in the ratings, My own worst enemy and Knight Rider have been cancelled, and BSG is ending. Pretty much the only 'sci fi' show that is still doing good is Lost, and that's just because it's a powerhouse. In fact, if you look at the announced new shows for this upcoming season, no one else has a new sci fi/geek show. I think this is what's going to hurt Dollhouse more than anything.
We'll see. I think cancellation after the first season (at least by FOX) is at least likely, but by no means certain. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that it gets renewed or picked up by somebody else.
In the meantime I'm still fairly confident that we'll get the full thirteen-episode season, which hopefully won't end with a cliffhanger. My plan is to just try and enjoy it while I can and tell people about it if I do, and it turns out to be as good as Whedon's other shows.
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And Fox is saying, "Huh, huge devoted fan base who slavers over anything Whedon-y? Yeah, we better make sure they can never figure out when this show is on, or else they might try to watch it."
Seriously, wtf?
TV is full of bitter/power-mad schedulers/executives who engage in petty power plays of 'proving they are right' by fucking around with shows scheduling. In Britain Channel 4 is infamous for yanking semi-popular/cult viewing shows around the timeslots/days before eventually dropping them due to lack of viewership. Homicide: LotS finally ended it's run airing original episodes at 00:30 am, West Wing disappeared later and later on Wednesday nights and most egregiously of all in 200 their Tour de France show, a daily highlights package of what happened today in the tour, what once was a regular 19:30 fixture in it's schedules was brutalised so heavily by random scheduling that the shows presenter both apologised and complained on air about the treatment the programme was getting, the show was not renewed the next year.
EDIT: Just in case you think a road cycling highlights show deserves to die it had a steady viewership of 2m a night, every night. The show had to be killed to justify the large sums that Channel 4 had spent to buy the rights to English cricket which got very disappointing ratings.
All his shows sound stupid when boiled down to their core premise. Blonde valley-girl turns the tables on vampires, and hunts them! Vampire with a soul fights evil lawyers in Los Angeles. Cowboys in space. Musical about a supervillain.
Actually Musical about a super villian sounds awesome boiled down and cowboys in space doesn't sound that bad since most of us have probably seen cowboy bebop. The boild down version of buffy and angel do sound bad but then again I'm biased because I didn't think either show was that great.
My opinion is Whedon can do great things like firefly but he can also put out vapid episodic crap like Buffy. So far it looks like Dollhouse is going more towards Buffy realm than the Firefly realm.
CommunistCow on
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
My opinion is Whedon can do great things like firefly but he can also put out vapid episodic crap like Buffy. So far it looks like Dollhouse is going more towards Buffy realm than the Firefly realm.
You didn't watch much Buffy I take it? It is episodic at first glance but really not in that things change between episodes with quite a bit of frequency. It's like it keeps up the pretension of episodic format while really being a serial.
My opinion is Whedon can do great things like firefly but he can also put out vapid episodic crap like Buffy. So far it looks like Dollhouse is going more towards Buffy realm than the Firefly realm.
You didn't watch much Buffy I take it? It is episodic at first glance but really not in that things change between episodes with quite a bit of frequency. It's like it keeps up the pretension of episodic format while really being a serial.
My guess would be he saw either season 1 or 2. Cause after that, even though you can argue that there's still a monster of the week type of feeling, it really does become serial.
And to call it crap, I just can't take any of your opinions seriously now. Cause I mean, I'm not the biggest Buffy fan in the world(I would probably rank it the lowest of all the things he's done), but shit does it have some tremendous episodes.
The musical one, and the silent one are just fucking inspired.
My opinion is Whedon can do great things like firefly but he can also put out vapid episodic crap like Buffy. So far it looks like Dollhouse is going more towards Buffy realm than the Firefly realm.
It only appears vapid on the surface. I agree that when you hear "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" the title alone makes you cringe... but it's not vapid, whatever appearances may suggest on first glance. If you watch straight through to the end of the third season and still think it's vapid, I'll give you a fucking medal. You might not like what the medal is for, but it'll be a medal, all right.
And Buffy is only partially episodic. Even when doing monster of the week shows, character arcs and other storylines evolve and change, and only some episodes follow the monster of the week formula. Each and every season has an overarching main plot.
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My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
My opinion is Whedon can do great things like firefly but he can also put out vapid episodic crap like Buffy. So far it looks like Dollhouse is going more towards Buffy realm than the Firefly realm.
You didn't watch much Buffy I take it? It is episodic at first glance but really not in that things change between episodes with quite a bit of frequency. It's like it keeps up the pretension of episodic format while really being a serial.
My guess would be he saw either season 1 or 2. Cause after that, even though you can argue that there's still a monster of the week type of feeling, it really does become serial.
And to call it crap, I just can't take any of your opinions seriously now. Cause I mean, I'm not the biggest Buffy fan in the world(I would probably rank it the lowest of all the things he's done), but shit does it have some tremendous episodes.
The musical one, and the silent one are just fucking inspired.
CommunistCow is my roommate and I can assure you he's only seen the first seasons of Buffy (maybe two) and the first season of Angel, which are by far the weakest. I have tried to tell him that he is unfairly judging Buffy and Angel, but he refuses to listen and continues to feel that his extremely limited exposure to Buffy and Angel constitutes a valid opinion about them.
My opinion is Whedon can do great things like firefly but he can also put out vapid episodic crap like Buffy. So far it looks like Dollhouse is going more towards Buffy realm than the Firefly realm.
You didn't watch much Buffy I take it? It is episodic at first glance but really not in that things change between episodes with quite a bit of frequency. It's like it keeps up the pretension of episodic format while really being a serial.
My guess would be he saw either season 1 or 2. Cause after that, even though you can argue that there's still a monster of the week type of feeling, it really does become serial.
And to call it crap, I just can't take any of your opinions seriously now. Cause I mean, I'm not the biggest Buffy fan in the world(I would probably rank it the lowest of all the things he's done), but shit does it have some tremendous episodes.
The musical one, and the silent one are just fucking inspired.
CommunistCow is my roommate and I can assure you he's only seen the first seasons of Buffy (maybe two) and the first season of Angel, which are by far the weakest. I have tried to tell him that he is unfairly judging Buffy and Angel, but he refuses to listen and continues to feel that his extremely limited exposure to Buffy and Angel constitutes a valid opinion about them.
Well it's obvious that you have to kill him, hide his body, and get a new roommate.
My opinion is Whedon can do great things like firefly but he can also put out vapid episodic crap like Buffy. So far it looks like Dollhouse is going more towards Buffy realm than the Firefly realm.
You didn't watch much Buffy I take it? It is episodic at first glance but really not in that things change between episodes with quite a bit of frequency. It's like it keeps up the pretension of episodic format while really being a serial.
My guess would be he saw either season 1 or 2. Cause after that, even though you can argue that there's still a monster of the week type of feeling, it really does become serial.
And to call it crap, I just can't take any of your opinions seriously now. Cause I mean, I'm not the biggest Buffy fan in the world(I would probably rank it the lowest of all the things he's done), but shit does it have some tremendous episodes.
The musical one, and the silent one are just fucking inspired.
CommunistCow is my roommate and I can assure you he's only seen the first seasons of Buffy (maybe two) and the first season of Angel, which are by far the weakest. I have tried to tell him that he is unfairly judging Buffy and Angel, but he refuses to listen and continues to feel that his extremely limited exposure to Buffy and Angel constitutes a valid opinion about them.
Man, that's like judging TNG by the first two seasons. Sometimes shows take time to get their act together.
This should have been fantastic, but the closer it gets to release, the more I start to doubt it.
It just seems like Fox wants to shit on everything awesome.
I'm hoping that if it gets cancelled, Jossfans will throw up such a shitstorm that Firefly gets brought back. I know it's been dead for so long, but every person on Earth loves it now.
I'm happy with Firefly being done, as is. It said everything it had to say, and most important of all, Kaylee didn't die a horrible death. Leave well enough alone, Whedon.
Part of the reason everyone loved Firefly after it was canceled is because it didn't get to say everything it wanted to say
Serenity did, and it turns out? Firefly was gonna suck
What? Serenity was awesome.
Let's not get into a debate over whether or not Serenity was good. Keep in mind, Joss had to hook in people who had never seen the show. So the movie just had an unavoidable different feel to it than the show.
Had Firefly not been cancelled, things would have played out a little different than what we saw in Serenity, so I don't think it's fair to judge "what was to come" based on Serenity.
Aye, Serenity gives us some basic idea of the themes of the show (which you should have known already anyway). It doesn't really show much of the direction the show was headed.
Basically, it wrapped up a few of the shows most glaring mysteries as best it could, and packaged that in an entertaining movie format.
Whether or not Serenity was in line with Firefly on a point by point kind of dealy, it captured the feel of the show, its messages and ultimately summed it up quite well. I dont know how you can argue with the ending, it was beautiful.
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KageraImitating the worst people. Since 2004Registered Userregular
edited February 2009
I remember someone (maybe Ebert) said something like Serenity could be this decade's A New Hope in terms of popularity and such.
The sad part, really, was how he said he had less "cowboys in space" in Serenity because he didn't have as many budget constraints. I like cowboys in space.
I remember someone (maybe Ebert) said something like Serenity could be this decade's A New Hope in terms of popularity and such.
I laughed.
Well it deserves to be, and if someone whos fresh to proceedings made that judgement its a testiment to the quality of the film.
The point is it is something made by JOSS WHEDON.
It's fate was cult status from the start.
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AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
edited February 2009
I'm horrified by the fact that people thought the early seasons of Buffy and Angel were the weakest. I don't object to a darkening of the series in general, but I definitely felt like the introduction of Connor and all that Darla pregnancy crap really torpedoed Angel. For me the elemental conflict in that show was Angel as a champion, vs. Wolfram and Hart, an organization that we had only begun to understand (remember the Wolf, Ram, and Hart books in Lorn's dimension? Didn't see much of that afterwards) when they went all idiotic on us with the betraying and the son/father hatred and the Cordy comas and the Jasmine (Gina Torres is still awesome, thought, no doubt).
So it basically eschewed that conflict between the Powers that Be and Wolfram and Hart for crap. Not to mention the set up for Angel getting his humanity back in the first season is utterly forgotten midway through season 2, then in the last episode, the writers must have been finishing up and then gone "Shit, I forgot that was in there."
I'm sorry, I have this tremendous diatribe about all this, I'll try not to vomit text on the thread again.
So it basically eschewed that conflict between the Powers that Be and Wolfram and Hart for crap. Not to mention the set up for Angel getting his humanity back in the first season is utterly forgotten midway through season 2, then in the last episode, the writers must have been finishing up and then gone "Shit, I forgot that was in there."
Seriously. The end of S4 and his encounters with Jasmine (and the Powers That Be in general) and the thing with that Connor prophecy sets up the whole conflict with Spike in S5 over who is the vampire from prophecy. And in the end, he realises it doesn't matter anyway, which connects all the way back to the end of S2.
Not to mention that the entirety of season 5 was about Angel and gangs conflict with Wolfram and Hart and season 4 was the build-up towards that conflict.
Season 2 may certainly be my favorite Buffy season. It was almost Shakespearian in its tragedy; yes, I went there.
While I love the third and fifth seasons, I agree that Season 4 of Angel was annoying as all hell for a wide variety of reasons.
When Angelus came back didn't he pretty much only kill Lilah, one of the antagonists, and then serve as a handy solution to all their problems with the Beast?
I was so pissed. They de-fanged the whole character. He used to be so awesome.
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Check the OP. Joss is friends with Eliza, and Eliza has a contract with Fox. The two of them accidentally came up with a concept for a show, and he ended up working with Fox again.
Actually, my bad. It's not in the OP, it's in a post on the first page.
It didn't stop Law and Order :P
Holy shit you've hit the nail on the head as to why deep down I love Angel over Buffy.
Xander, at least, kept working construction. This could be why I liked him to the end.
And the people in charge of Fox TV definitely changed a bit. Also not mentioned yet in Dollhouse's favor are a slightly easier to market premise and Joss being more cooperative with Fox to make a show that they can sell.
It's still out there, though, and it is in the slot-of-death. It has Terminator as a lead-in but that show's ratings have been slipping, and its move to Friday will probably drop them further.
Anyone know what the production costs look like for Dollhouse?
And don't give me the "Fox has a deal with Eliza" crap. House is produced by NBC and runs on Fox. No reason Fox can't keep producing Dollhouse and let it run on SciFi.
But now? Heroes and Terminator have slipped in the ratings, My own worst enemy and Knight Rider have been cancelled, and BSG is ending. Pretty much the only 'sci fi' show that is still doing good is Lost, and that's just because it's a powerhouse. In fact, if you look at the announced new shows for this upcoming season, no one else has a new sci fi/geek show. I think this is what's going to hurt Dollhouse more than anything.
In the meantime I'm still fairly confident that we'll get the full thirteen-episode season, which hopefully won't end with a cliffhanger. My plan is to just try and enjoy it while I can and tell people about it if I do, and it turns out to be as good as Whedon's other shows.
TV is full of bitter/power-mad schedulers/executives who engage in petty power plays of 'proving they are right' by fucking around with shows scheduling. In Britain Channel 4 is infamous for yanking semi-popular/cult viewing shows around the timeslots/days before eventually dropping them due to lack of viewership. Homicide: LotS finally ended it's run airing original episodes at 00:30 am, West Wing disappeared later and later on Wednesday nights and most egregiously of all in 200 their Tour de France show, a daily highlights package of what happened today in the tour, what once was a regular 19:30 fixture in it's schedules was brutalised so heavily by random scheduling that the shows presenter both apologised and complained on air about the treatment the programme was getting, the show was not renewed the next year.
EDIT: Just in case you think a road cycling highlights show deserves to die it had a steady viewership of 2m a night, every night. The show had to be killed to justify the large sums that Channel 4 had spent to buy the rights to English cricket which got very disappointing ratings.
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Actually Musical about a super villian sounds awesome boiled down and cowboys in space doesn't sound that bad since most of us have probably seen cowboy bebop. The boild down version of buffy and angel do sound bad but then again I'm biased because I didn't think either show was that great.
My opinion is Whedon can do great things like firefly but he can also put out vapid episodic crap like Buffy. So far it looks like Dollhouse is going more towards Buffy realm than the Firefly realm.
You didn't watch much Buffy I take it? It is episodic at first glance but really not in that things change between episodes with quite a bit of frequency. It's like it keeps up the pretension of episodic format while really being a serial.
My guess would be he saw either season 1 or 2. Cause after that, even though you can argue that there's still a monster of the week type of feeling, it really does become serial.
And to call it crap, I just can't take any of your opinions seriously now. Cause I mean, I'm not the biggest Buffy fan in the world(I would probably rank it the lowest of all the things he's done), but shit does it have some tremendous episodes.
The musical one, and the silent one are just fucking inspired.
It only appears vapid on the surface. I agree that when you hear "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" the title alone makes you cringe... but it's not vapid, whatever appearances may suggest on first glance. If you watch straight through to the end of the third season and still think it's vapid, I'll give you a fucking medal. You might not like what the medal is for, but it'll be a medal, all right.
And Buffy is only partially episodic. Even when doing monster of the week shows, character arcs and other storylines evolve and change, and only some episodes follow the monster of the week formula. Each and every season has an overarching main plot.
CommunistCow is my roommate and I can assure you he's only seen the first seasons of Buffy (maybe two) and the first season of Angel, which are by far the weakest. I have tried to tell him that he is unfairly judging Buffy and Angel, but he refuses to listen and continues to feel that his extremely limited exposure to Buffy and Angel constitutes a valid opinion about them.
Well it's obvious that you have to kill him, hide his body, and get a new roommate.
I was just thinking there's no way he's seen the Angelus arc, and still thinks the show is terrible.
Man, that's like judging TNG by the first two seasons. Sometimes shows take time to get their act together.
It just seems like Fox wants to shit on everything awesome.
I'm hoping that if it gets cancelled, Jossfans will throw up such a shitstorm that Firefly gets brought back. I know it's been dead for so long, but every person on Earth loves it now.
It's what you want too. Admit it.
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Serenity did, and it turns out? Firefly was gonna suck
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What? Serenity was awesome.
Let's not get into a debate over whether or not Serenity was good. Keep in mind, Joss had to hook in people who had never seen the show. So the movie just had an unavoidable different feel to it than the show.
Had Firefly not been cancelled, things would have played out a little different than what we saw in Serenity, so I don't think it's fair to judge "what was to come" based on Serenity.
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Basically, it wrapped up a few of the shows most glaring mysteries as best it could, and packaged that in an entertaining movie format.
I laughed.
Well it deserves to be, and if someone whos fresh to proceedings made that judgement its a testiment to the quality of the film.
The point is it is something made by JOSS WHEDON.
It's fate was cult status from the start.
So it basically eschewed that conflict between the Powers that Be and Wolfram and Hart for crap. Not to mention the set up for Angel getting his humanity back in the first season is utterly forgotten midway through season 2, then in the last episode, the writers must have been finishing up and then gone "Shit, I forgot that was in there."
I'm sorry, I have this tremendous diatribe about all this, I'll try not to vomit text on the thread again.
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Which is why he's a Champion and not just a guy that fights evil.
o_O Did you even watch the last two seasons?
While I love the third and fifth seasons, I agree that Season 4 of Angel was annoying as all hell for a wide variety of reasons.
I was so pissed. They de-fanged the whole character. He used to be so awesome.