posted by Matthew Wrather on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 12:01am
Matthew Wrather hosts with Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Joshua McNeil to overthink the Grammys (a little bit), Dollhouse (a lot), agency and rights, knowledge-on-demand, and autotune.
This was our first experiment with livestreaming the podcast recording on Ustream (on the Overthinking It Podcast Page, where it will return next Sunday at 9:15pm ET/6:15pm PT). Though it was admittedly a little distracting and might have gotten in the way of a smooth opening, it seems to be a promising way of making the show more interactive and responsive to its audience.
posted by Guest Writer on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 4:11pm
[To mark tonight's series finale of Dollhouse, we present a guest article by Jon Eric offering a controversial take on the show's cancellation. We've already had a lotto say about the series; see if you agree with Jon about the justification for the cancellation. And come back on Monday to hear the podcast panel's analysis of the final episode and of the series as a whole.]
For real this time.
Today marks the series finale of Joss Whedon’s most recent baby, a sci-fi drama named Dollhouse. It was a rough two years, and perhaps the biggest surprise was the show’s longevity—Whedon’s last attempt at a weekly television show was cancelled after only half a season, so his fans were especially vigilant this time around: “Save Dollhouse” websites had cropped up before the show even premiered.
But in between the appearance of the first “Save Dollhouse” website and the airing of the first Dollhouse episode, Whedon’s fans seem to have turned on him. What happenedx? Maybe it had something to do with the promotional materials – how can you encapsulate such a high-concept science fiction show in a :30 TV spot? – or maybe the perception (justifiable, even if incorrect) that Joss’ Dollhouse was nothing more than a particularly highfalutin whorehouse. In the face of controversial subject matter, Whedon loyalists had a hard time coping, and some lost their faith. After all, it’s difficult to defend, let alone recommend, a show whose first-season advertising was dominated by this:
Look at how they repeat-edited the words “Dominatrix scene!” Like the network was salivating over this one little bone Whedon and Dushku had thrown them: “At last, something we can use to market this nerdy show to the hornballs who actually watch Fox on Friday nights!”
But in fact, the “Dominatrix Scene” in the show is little more than what we see in that trailer – it’s an establishing shot, a throwaway scene. She’s returning from an engagement we never see, for a client we never meet, and why should we? It’s just your standard submissive john. Why would we be interested in some standard dominatrix encounter when there are so many more interesting stories to be told?
Somehow, the die-hards missed the subtext. Whether it was Fox’s failure to communicate the concept, or the netroots feminist movement crying out against Joss’ handling an admittedly delicate subject matter (or both), Whedon’s already-small fan base fragmented itself and Whedon’s self-proclaimed feminism came under fire.
Here’s the problem: when a core audience as small as Whedon’s fragments, the resuling fraction isn’t enough to sustain a show on a major network. Especially when it airs on a Friday night. Dollhouse didn’t have a large advertising budget, Fox didn’t seem that interested in pushing the ads, and it’s not as though the concept were easy to pitch, so the series never really had a chance at an audience any larger than the supposedly-loyal Whedon fanbase. As it happened, they got something quite a bit smaller, and now the show is cancelled due to poor ratings.
It’s easy to blame Fox for all the mishandling. Fox has killed so many worthy series in the past; what’s one more? I don’t deny that Fox’s lack of care with their product helped to ensure an early demise… But some of the blame rests with Whedon, too. I submit that Whedon’s show was terminally flawed from the start, that its premise defied an audience, that its writing team is guilty of fatal sloppiness — in short, that unlike its predecessor, Dollhouse deserved to be cancelled.
posted by perich on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 7:42am
And good morning to you, Overthinkers. Is that a new sweater? You’ve definitely lost some weight, at least. No? Well, enough of these pleasantries.
In happy news, Steve Jobs announced the iPad in a demonstration earlier this week, Apple’s entry into the undercrowded tablet computer market. The demonstration promised slick graphics, fast loading and 3G access. Everyone’s already made all the “tampon” jokes? The “like an iPhone, but bigger, and it can’t make calls” observations? Okay, good; just making sure the low-hanging fruit was plucked.
Question: what would the iPad need for you to buy one (taking as read “a $100 drop in price”)?
The Apple is always a low-hanging fruit.
In less happy news, the world of academia lost two original Overthinkers this week. First, Howard Zinn, the fiery revisionist historian whose People’s History of the United States remains one of the most accessible counter-cultural texts on American history. Then, in short order, J.D. Salinger, reclusive author of Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey and other school reading assignments. Both took the same sort of hypercritical look at established institutions that Overthinking It plays at – Zinn, with his populist interpretations of history; Salinger, infusing suburban family dynamics with Buddhism. They were tremendous influences on our time.
Question: when a prominent author dies, do you go out and read their famous texts immediately? Or do you wait for the furor to die down? Or does it not make much difference on your reading habits?
I got namechecked in Good Will Hunting. How do you like DEM apples?
(Note: download our podcast on Monday for Overthinking It’s final thoughts on the series)
Question: what’s the biggest unanswered question about Dollhouse burning in your mind?
I'm trying so hard to avoid a joke about the mannequins upstaging her. So, so hard.
Not a fan of Apple products, academic literature or Dollhouse? Then as far as marketers are concerned, you don’t exist – but you’re still real to us! Tell us what you’d like to talk about, since this is your … Open Thread.
posted by callot on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 at 7:00am
Joss Whedon is a feminist! His shows feature complicated female characters as the protagonists!
No, Joss Whedon is a misogynist! He revels in torturing and degrading women!
Feminist! By giving female characters the opportunity to suffer like male characters, he makes the audience identify with women!
Misogynist! His female characters are hyper-sexualized objects of the male viewer’s gaze!
Whedon is sex-positive and allows his female characters to express sexual desire without punishing them!
Whedon blah blah blah…
This could go on for a while. Googling “Joss Whedon feminist” brings up more than 50,000 results. The Geek Feminism Wiki lists several articles debating the issue, including interviews with Whedon in which he explicitly self-identifies as a feminist, and even that listing is grossly incomplete. By far, feminism is the principal discourse in the global overthinking of Whedon’s TV shows, and Whedon is the major contemporary pop cultural focus for the debate on feminism in narrative television. This makes sense, as his series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dollhouse (and to a much lesser degree, Firefly) address feminism in their basic premises in a way that no other show on television has.
Strange, then, that the most persistent issue in regards to Whedon’s feminism is its authenticity.
posted by stokes on Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 1:47pm
Community may be the new show that I was most interested in. Glee is the one I was most excited about, but I pretty much knew Glee would be awesome. I hoped Community would be awesome, but I had my doubts. First, while I have always suspected that Soup host and Community star Joel McHale is hilarious, it’s a long way from “suspected” to “known,” just like it’s a long way from making fun of Kim Kardashian to actually, you know, acting. Second, Chevy Chase. Third, Chevy Chase (although let’s be fair: Chase’s lifetime batting average is still somewhere around .42). Fourth, I tend to be a lot more demanding of my comedies than of my dramas, or even my dramedies. I’ve given Dollhouse a full season (and counting) to get its act together, but I watched two episodes of The Big Bang Theory, laughed once, and banished it from my DVR.
So while the premiere of Glee had me feeling excited, I sat down to watch Community feeling anxious. I really wanted it to be good — what if it sucked? Luckily, my fears were unfounded. It turns out that McHale can act, (although we’ve yet to learn whether he can act like a character that isn’t identical to his persona on the Soup). Chase is funny, probably because his character is such an unmitigated jerk. The writing is sharp, so most of the jokes work, and the brisk, almost overcaffeinated pacing ensures that the ones that fall flat don’t overstay their welcome. If I sat down to Community feeling anxious about whether it would be any good, I stood up afterwards feeling anxious about whether they’d pick it up for next year.
Now, what you’ve read so far is pretty much a review. Which would be fine, really, except that if you were privy to the cigar-smoke-filled rooms (uh, email threads) in which the OTI staff plots the future of our website, you would know that Overthinkingit is Not a Review Website. That’s right, we have a “not list” just like Wikipedia! Or to be more accurate, we don’t, but we could. Overthinkingit is Not A Review Website. Overthinkingit is Not Paper. Overthinkingit is Not Managing To Sell Many of These T-shirts, For Some Reason. Wait, where was I going with this?
Oh yeah. This post needs to be something more than a review. The preceding paragraph added a pointless digression, a random pop culture reference, and a bout of self-obsessed naval gazing (all important parts of the formula, to be sure), but I’m still lacking any actual analysis. Let’s see what we can do about that.
posted by stokes on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 1:18pm
Still doomed, quite probably.
It’s been weeks now since I first sounded off about Dollhouse. In my first post, I was pretty hard on the show, claiming that it was unpleasant to watch, and would probably be cancelled no sooner than it deserved. My main complaint was the lack of likable characters who liked each other, which I still maintain is Joss Whedon’s main (only?) strength as a creator. I speculated that the show’s heady premise—a house full of brainwashed supermodels who, for a price, can be programmed with any personality and skill set—would preclude the development of any lasting relationships between characters.
The season finale of Dollhouse aired on Friday, and while the fan base waits eagerly to find out if it’s been canceled or not, I thought it might be nice to revisit the series.
Tell us what you think! Email us or call 20-EAT-LOG-01—that’s (203) 285-6401. If you haven’t yet, take the very short survey! And… spread the overthinking by forwarding this episode to a friend.
posted by stokes on Monday, February 23rd, 2009 at 8:36am
The new Joss Whedon show Dollhouse is doomed. I don’t mean it’s doomed in the sense that it’s going to get cancelled within the month. (Although it almost certainly will. I mean, Friday night, Fox? Really? Really?) I mean it’s doomed in that it’s going to suck.
The thing about Joss Whedon is that his strength as a writer/show-runner doesn’t really involve hot chicks kicking ass, ridiculous high-concept premises, or elaborate mythologies. His more successful shows have featured these, true, but they have succeeded despite them, not because of them. What he does well, above all else, is heartwarming banter: funny little moments that bring out the affection that his characters have for each other. The best episodes obviously have a lot more going on, but banter is his bread and butter, and this, honestly, is what I tune in to see.
Unfortunately, the premise of Dollhouse makes this kind of writing impossible. Problem one: Eliza Dushku basically has to play a new character every week, which means she has no continuing relationship with any of the other characters. Thus, no affection. Thus, no funny little moments. This in itself wouldn’t be a crippling weakness if the other characters were able to make with the sweet bantery goodness…. but this brings us to problem two: all the other characters are flaming assholes. Oh sure, Dushku’s watcher “handler”–played by Harry J. Lennix doing his best Morgan Freeman–seems like a good egg, as does the loose-cannon FBI agent who’s trying to bring the Dollhouse organization down. But for obvious reasons these characters can never even meet, let alone establish that critical Whedonesque rapport.
Could the show surprise me? It certainly could. If nothing else, the Dushku-of-the-week gimmick should allow Whedon to mess around with a wide variety of genres, which is another of his major strengths. (This week was wilderness horror, a little in-joke for fans of the 2003 Dushku vehicle Wrong Turn. Next week looks like a retread of The Bodyguard, which was at least funny when the Simpsons did it.) I plan to keep watching until it’s cancelled… but we’ll see. There’s always the chance that it will suck without getting cancelled, which is the most depressing possibility of all.
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