I have been watching Dollhouse at a remarkable pace. Halfway into the second season (or 3/4 through what would have been a regular season of another show) I come to a question that has been asked many times before.
Why would Fox keep cancelling Joss Whedon's series?* I have heard the theories. The suits at Fox are idiots, the common theory runs. With Firefly, and then Dollhouse, their increasingly atrophied senses of taste responded to masterful storytelling as the deepest of cave fungi respond to the light of the sun. It was terrible and incomprehensible to them, so they sought to extinguish it.
Well, that theodicy satisfies some geeks, but in my paranoid ramblings I've come to a theory of my own. And I'm going to lay it on you after the jump.
Warning: This is probably going to contain vague spoilers for Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Serenity, and the first season of Dollhouse. But then, if I'm right, it could contain spoilers for everything.
Perhaps it's watching Dollhouse that prompted this epiphany. After all, as the show asks, can you do more good fighting the system or working within it?
Why do people love Whedon's series?* If they are like me (and some are) it is because of the characters he creates: complex, engaging, lovable characters who audiences are willing to stick with through thick and thin, through good plots and bad. (Buffy in particular had some time to demonstrate the thin and the bad in its reasonably long run.)
But obviously someone at Fox loves them too, because Fox picked up three series* by the man. In fact, I will posit that someone at Fox loved all of Joss Whedon's characters more than you ever will. That person is a hero, struggling against the darkness, who will never know the thanks of the ones he or she protects.
What this person remembers, and we foolish sheep always forget, is that Joss Whedon will destroy every character you ever love. All he needs is the time to do it. As we learned over seven seasons of Buffy, he will torture your favorite character to the breaking point, then bring them back, then torture them again, then bring them back, then torture them again, then kill them, then bring them back to torture them some more. **
Someone at Fox had watched this unfold on The WB, and then on UPN (the fools) and swore that Whedon's next cast of characters would not share that fate. He/she convinced Fox to pick up Firefly, and then turned all their effort toward killing the show before Whedon could kill the cast. Nine lovable characters existed for 13 episodes and then stopped, as if frozen in amber--all alive, and in fact mostly in better emotional health than when the series started. And so this person earned the eternal ire of those he/she had meant to protect.
And no doubt our protector wiped his or her brow and thought he/she had won. But then, of course, Serenity happened, and we all cheered, fools that we are... all but the one truest fan, who hung his/her head and knew he/she had been beaten.
But, undaunted, he/she took the same steps to ensure that Dollhouse would not outlive its cast. But anyone who's watched the entire first season will know that Whedon found a way to beat the system. After "Epitaph One," there was no choice but to give him another season in hopes that through the caprices of another thirteen episodes we might avert the inevitable.
I've still got eight or so episodes to go but I think Whedon won this round, too.
I wonder, will ABC be able to save any of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.?
* Series? Serieses? Seeriez?
** I have often held that it is possible--perhaps necessary--to simultaneously be a good writer and an evil god. I offer Mr. Whedon and the hordes of Mutant Enemy as Exhibit A.
This is brilliant.
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