laceblade

Fox's decision on "Dollhouse" isn't a surprise, as the net had already yanked the show from its Friday slot during November sweeps. Show will return to the sked on Dec. 4 and run the nine remaining episodes in its order for the season. 20th Century Fox TV at present is in production on the Eliza Dushku starrer's 11th episode.

"This gives Joss the opportunity to end in a significant way," the network said in a statement.

I don't have a lot to say. I'm extremely proud of the people I've worked with: my star, my staff, my cast, my crew. I feel the show is getting better pretty much every week, and I think you'll agree in the coming months. I'm grateful that we got to put it on, and then come back and put it on again. I'm off to pursue internet ventures/binge drinking. Possibly that relaxation thing I've read so much about. By the time the last episode airs, you'll know what my next project is. But for now there's a lot of work still to be done, and disappointment to bear.

coffeeandink

It is so hard to write about SCC. I love it so much, and it is so good, and everything I want to say has a thousand hooks or tentacles linking into something else, it is all so complicated and interrelated and I'm still not sure where it's going. I love "Samson and Delilah" and "Allison from Palmdale" and I like other episodes from the first half of Season Two, but I feel like from 2x12 "Alpine Fields" on it's just been completely brilliant. This is one of my favorite seasons of television ever, up there with Buffy Seasons 2 and 3 and Angel Season 4 and the late, lamented Profit. So good! Don't die, Show!

What is equally clear, at least from the pilot, is that Whedon is not presenting the Dollhouse as a good thing. He’s not shying away from the fact that the Dollhouse is a criminal enterprise, and that the handlers, doctors, and administrators are all engaging in several levels of self-denial and rationalization. They know what they’re doing is beyond wrong, but they fool themselves into thinking that what they do serves a necessary function.

Frankly, I’m not surprised that this concept was born out of the writers’ strike, when writers and actors alike were discussing and resisting the demeaning treatment by production companies. As many might remember, Whedon was one of the most outspoken supporters of the strike. One issue was the right to be compensated fairly for one’s own work and the retention of rights to one’s work under new and unforeseen “new media” outlets.

It’s not hard to see the parallels here. Replace the “actives” with the pretty little actors and actresses like Eliza Dushku, the brilliant but conflicted programmer with writers like Joss Whedon, and the handlers and administrators with production studio personnel, and the subtext becomes text. The message is so lacking in subtlety that it’s surprising that FOX even let the show on the air.

....

The “actives” feel like they’ve been designed to express Eliza Dushku’s own reflection on how an audience perceives the actor or actress. They want the actor to play their role as they want it to be played. They resist the full agency of the actress to take on whatever projects she might want. The audience wants Eliza to be sexy, run around in skimpy outfits, and be little more than a doll on a stage. The concept is taken to the extreme in this case, and the metaphor may seem a bit pretentious, but there’s something to it.

But therein lies the problem. The audience is being taken to task, on several levels, while being presented with a show that lists as its main strength the notion that its young and hot lead actress will be taking on a myriad of unexpected roles. It’s subversive to a degree, but perhaps not to the extent that Joss and Eliza would like to think.

coffeeandink

meganbmoore

And...well, honestly. Amnesia. Secret mercenary organizations. Scarred doctor. Sympathetic handlers overly interested in subject. "This person is important and has secrets/goals" hints dropped with the subtlety of a hammer. Rewritten personalities. Scifi organization in apparent modern world. Weird and questionable gender politics with a seeming "fist of the patriarchy" origin used to create an apparently female agent centric series. It's like someone took Gunslinger Girls, Rose Hip Rose and a bit of Claymore, put them in a blender, and downloaded the results into Joss Whedon's brain.

coffeeandink

deadbrowalking

The most powerful character in the show, at least insofar as we can tell from the character descriptions, is a white woman, as is the lead; most of the men (1 of the white men, both of the men of color) are in positions of ambiguous power; all the women of color are dolls, i.e., initially at least powerless.

You could use this setup to talk about negotiating power hierarchies of both race and gender, although given his history, I think it is more likely that Whedon is going to continue to fall into typical traps of "colorblind" racial commentary. My tiny hope on this front comes from my conviction that he has in the past been somewhat responsive to political complaints about his work: i.e., Kennedy was unsatisfactory for many reasons, but she was also clearly an attempt to counteract the Dead Lesbian Cliche for Willow's relationships; the racial makeup of both Firefly and Dollhouse are unsatisfacory, but they both seem like efforts to increase diversity in response to complaints about Buffy and Angel. I'm not saying anyone else should feel satisfied with this kind of marginal improvement (especially giving the exasperatingly obvious problems with Firefly), but yeah, it does make a difference for me, since the careers of many white male producers (e.g., David Kelley) make it clear that they can get away with whitewashing TV as long as they want to.