Joss Whedon's Dollhouse Cancelled, Blogger Sad

Image from source, New York Magazine

Well, I knew this was coming. FOX has finally cancelled Dollhouse. Sigh. I'm an unabashed fan of the show, and of its creator Joss Whedon. . .and frankly, all of the other Whedon creations. I'm also a fan of its star, Eliza Dushku, who has been on the receiving end of far too much negative criticism in this blogger's opinion.

And that's part of the problem. Niche-y genre shows have their passionate followers, but have at least an equal number of detractors. Oddly enough, most of the harshest critics of Dollhouse are also genre fans. It's bizarre. A similar thing happened to the Star Trek franchise. Beginning with Deep Space Nine, and continuing on through Voyager and Enterprise, Trekkers themselves complained and whined about all that was dreadfully wrong with those shows.

Not to say that everything Trek or Whedon is perfect. For every batch of good episodes or movies, there is a clunker. But any episode of Enterprise or Dollhouse is more entertaining than three quarters of everything else on television. I'm convinced that irrational fan resistance is partially to blame for the decline of Trek (until the reboot/remake movie, of course), and the demise of Dollhouse. And of course, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

And there is another wrinkle. Fans of T:TSCC and Dollhouse often saw themselves as adversaries, each wishing doom on the other, hoping that their show would "win." As a fan of both, this was discouraging. And now both shows are dead. Were they perfect? Nope. But they were both a hell of a lot of fun.

My biggest fear is that Whedon will just stop trying, having had now two (counting Firefly) ambitious, character-rich shows cancelled before they had a chance to catch fire. Hopefully, he will find a berth on Syfy, AMC, Showtime, HBO or FX (or hell, even the CW), where low ratings are expected. It's becoming increasingly clear that Americans mostly like their TV dumb.

[Excerpt]

Good-bye, Dollhouse, It’s Been Nice; Hope You Find Your Paradise

To quote Joss Whedon's favorite musical creator, I'm sorry/grateful that Dollhouse was canceled. (Basically, my feelings mirror those of our wonderful recapper Joy Press, who tweeted, "It had potential. But like a lot of people, I was too ambivalent about Dollhouse to feel sad about cancellation.")

Read more at: New York Magazine