So, I wanted to talk about Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. I know it's been a while since Season 1 ended, and much has been said about it. I did, however, just rewatch much of Season 1 on loverly Blu-Ray, and I want to talk about it... but I don't just want to talk about the show. I want to talk about reactions to the show. So, here we go:
The Show.
I watched Dollhouse first run, week after week. I didn't always get to watch it as it aired (such is the curse of a retail job--blogpost coming about my dissatisfaction with that aspect of life, but I always got to see the episode soon after airing. I must admit that I found it slow at first. It was interesting, and I liked it... but I didn't love it. I did, however, trust Joss Whedon as a storyteller. I felt he was going somewhere with it. My trust paid off in dividends, for around week 3 it started surprising me, and getting my interest. Just a little at first, but the interest was there. By week 6 I was hooked.
You see, it so gradually built the mystery of what lies beneath the Dollhouse's "programmable people" TV high concept, a creepy undercurrent of mystery and intrigue, that I didn't notice how invested I was getting in it. We know what the Dollhouse does right from the start. But we don't know why the Dollhouse does it. We don't know what it's all for. The more we learn about the Rossum corporation and its purposes for running the Dollhouse the more we peel the onion of the show, and the more I became anxious to see the next episode.
The infamous "missing" episode "Epitaph One" holds some clues for where it's going, but I can't help but think that it's at least partially a mislead, showing us a little and trusting we'll make some predictable assumptions... assumptions that can be subverted in time.
Wherever it goes, I'm along for the ride. I trusted Joss Whedon, and Tim Minear, and Steven DeKnight, and Jane Espenson, and everyone involved in that first season once and got something great. So, I'm gonna trust them again. I doubt I'll be burned.
The Reaction:
I've noticed a sort of internet "to cool for the room" attitude developing around Dollhouse in particular and Joss Whedon in general. The more Joss made some popular genre shows like Buffy and Angel, and with the zeal of the Browncoat fans of Firefly/Serenity (if I ever win the lotttery, I will contact Joss Whedon and personally offer to fund a sequel, for thus is the amount I am a Browncoat) some of the net community, those who make a point of going against anything a large amount of people go with, have lashed out against Joss and Dollhouse.
Well, maybe "lashed out" is wrong. It hasn't been so much of a "lashing" as a sort of general "I am so over Joss Whedon" malaise. Which is just strange, frankly. It seems to start with a few of the more vocal "cool person who doesn't follow the common masses" netizens, then it became joined by others who wanted to be just like them (and for whom irony is a vitamin supplement), and then it formed a narrative. The narrative was that Dollhouse was poor, or just ok at best, and that Joss was overrated anyway, and I never knew anyone ever saw in him, and Buffy wasn't that good to start with, and Firefly couldn't have been all that since it was canceled. That narrative then became the opinion of the "in crowd" of the those who didn't follow the crowd.
It's like there was an Alpha "cool person" (no pun intended) and the other "cool person" wannabes followed along to be part of the pack, and simultaneously prove themselves individuals. It's a paradox.
Of course, I could be talking crap. It has been known. I am a strange and sometimes shallow and simple person. So, it could be that I only see a simple view of things, and that I am simply a mindless, brainwashed sheep who has been fooled into enjoying Joss Whedon and crew's work...
...funnily enough, I'm good with that. I think I've got the better bargain.
