Last night, after watching Dollhouse, Annalee Newitz wrote, “I feel like Joss thrives on rejection so much he made his show great the instant he knew it was dead,” to which Jennifer Ouellette commented, “It's a pattern with him. He pulls out all the stops and no longer plays it safe, and the result is sheer brilliance.” Leaving aside for a moment the reasons why these things happen with Joss Whedon, I’ll add my agreement to the description of what is happening with Dollhouse: while during the early part of its run, I was thisclose to writing it off, I’d now say it is arguably the most intriguing show currently running new episodes, primarily, I think, because it spends a lot more time than it used to showing the darker implications of its concept.
But what about the notion that Whedon hits his peak when the going gets hopeless? Buffy, still his best series, ran for seven seasons, relatively free of interference. I didn’t watch Angel, so others will have to speak to that one, but it ran for five seasons and as far as I can tell, the general feeling was it got better over time, while also being mostly free of network meddling. That leaves Firefly and Dollhouse. Firefly was fairly consistent, good at the start, good at the end, good when it expanded into the feature film Serenity. It was also treated by the network like an ugly stepchild, never really given a chance to find an audience. It remains the best example of how network television screws over Joss Whedon, but the show didn’t get great after it got cancelled … Whedon was pulling out the stops from the beginning.
And Dollhouse got pretty much the same treatment, although with the unexpected bonus of a second season. This is the show that most clearly demonstrates the “fuck it, I’m doing what I want” scenario Newitz and Ouellette describe. Whedon did things Fox’s way, it didn’t work, he ended up with more control, even got more episodes to work with, and turned a mediocre series into something memorable, just in time for it to be cancelled.
The way I read all of this is that Joss has created a myth around his work, that he is trying for greatness within a system that doesn’t appreciate him. He has become famous for his struggles with the networks (and his ability, via Dr. Horrible, to demonstrate non-network possibilities) … he is the Sam Peckinpah of television, or perhaps better, its Orson Welles. But I’m not sure the myth reflects reality, which may be why his fans turn to pop psychology to explain Whedon’s work … he “thrives on rejection.”
For all I know, he DOES thrive on rejection. It has always puzzled fans why, after Fox crapped on Firefly, Whedon returned to them for Dollhouse. It certainly seems like he’s a glutton for punishment. He may believe a semi-hostile environment leads him to his finest work. But again, I think only Dollhouse really supports this notion, because it’s the only one of his series so far that got markedly better at around the same time its cancellation seemed inevitable.
It will be interesting to see how Dollhouse’s reputation stands a few years down the road. If future viewers come to the show by starting at the beginning, they may give up after half-a-dozen episodes, wondering what all the fuss was. If, having read that the show took awhile to get going, they start with the unaired-but-now-available “Epitaph One” and then watch Season Two, they’ll experience a series growing into itself and becoming something special, but it may take awhile to get up to speed. My own take is that the difference in quality between the early episodes of the show and the later ones is so great that the viewers of the future will need guidance: watch from the beginning so you get the basic concept, but don’t give up on it, even though it’s not much good, because eventually it will get very, very good indeed. As for why Joss Whedon seems to blossom under difficult working conditions (or, at least, thinks that is the case), others are better equipped than I to figure that one out. I sense a few master’s theses down the road.
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