Why Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse" Will Fail

A couple of weeks ago when I did my New and Premiering of 2009 entry, Seamus shot me an email, a little shocked that I had forgotten Dollhouse, the new show from Joss Whedon. As we are both Whedon fan-boys, he figured it would be near the top of the list. However my enthusiasm has been tempered by one fact alone: Dollhouse will fail.

The writing for this is on the wall. It really has nothing to do with the shuffling cast, or the massive rewrites, or even the basic premise. If I were to choose any of those, my case would be generic and reflect just about every other blog entry out there from the blurry eyed geeks who live in their mother’s basement. However, I will offer two main reasons why this show will go down in a brilliant blaze of infamy.

1) Look at the network

Far be it from me to bad mouth FOX, but…..wait a minute, I love bad mouthing FOX. FOX will screw this up. They screw up everything. If they want something to succeed, they give it the American Idol lead-in (House, Fringe, etc). If they want something to fail, they throw it one some random night, show episodes out of order, and move it around the schedule without telling anyone. Sometimes I think a retarded drunken monkey is the Head of Programming for FOX.

Anyway, Dollhouse has been given “the death slot”. Friday nights at 9PM. Yeah, they are really going to pull in the 18-35 demographic there. Not only that, but the lead-in is Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles. The last show that Terminator led-in is now in the trash heap along with all the other also-rans.

Also, have you seen the ads for the show? They are trying to pull off the pulp 50’s feel to the ads, basically highlighting the hot chicks with guns angle. While I give them credit for trying to attract the geeky dateless wonders out there, they were going to watch these two shows anyway. My personal preference would have been to either go with the “woman power” angle to attract female viewers or the “intellectual” angle, in order to attract the percentage of the population who feels the need to counterbalance all the For the Love of Ray J episodes they watched last week.

I don’t care what FOX has said about letting Friday night become a breeding ground for well-written scripted dramas (unlike all those poorly written “unscripted” dramas that pass for reality shows) and that ratings don’t matter. Let me disabuse you of this right now, ratings matter. FOX is trying to catch lightning in a bottle here. They know that sci-fi fans are gun shy when it comes to FOX and Friday nights, so they are putting out this cock and bull story about how ratings don’t matter so they can draw in a large audience. When the ratings remain low, FOX will burn all the fans who thought they were telling the truth.

2) Look at Whedon

Hey, I’m a big fan of Whedon, ever since the first season of Buffy. I watched all seven seasons, plus the five seasons of Angel, and the one season of Firefly. I even went to see the Serenity movie, dragging the Duchess along with me early enough in our relationship where are I could have easily scared her off with my geekiness. So, before we get into this, I needed you to know my bonafides so you don’t rip me to shreds.

Whedon has a tendency to be too cute, which turns average people off. Case in point is the Chinese during Firefly. The basic question was “why are they using Chinese phrases?” It took peoples attention from where it was needed, the plot.

The plot was good. It has all the classics. Civil War, rebels, whores, smuggling, and government black ops mumbo jumbo. You don’t need to confuse people by trying to be cute and showing us how “edgy” you can be. It was a distraction.

While the mindless Whedon fan-boy was like “oh, he’s such a genius” and spending 10 minutes dissecting the various meaning of each phrase, the average TV viewer was sitting there bewildered. If you’re going to confuse the TV public, do it in a good way like Lost.

So, as long as FOX really doesn’t care about ratings and Whedon doesn’t try to out-smart himself, this could very well be a hit. However, do you really expect both of those things to happen? Yeah, me neither. But it won’t stop me from watching.