TV News and Reviews

While the TV wasteland is still upon us, it’s a good time to check out the upcoming shows and mark your calendar for anything that sounds intriguing. Enter Joss Whedon, creator of the much-loved and short-lived Firefly as well as the Buffy and Angel franchises. Dollhouse stars Buffy alum Eliza Dushku as part of a special group of DNA-altered humans who have been basically turned into programmable robots–get a new mission, get a new personality and set of skills. After the mission, all those experiences and memories get wiped away again. Of course the hook will be that one of the “dolls” starts to become self-aware…

I’m really not sure about this one. I’m wary of women-as-dolls and something that might end up like Alias, a fun spy show that became all about Jennifer Garner’s hooker “disguises” every week. It’s also a bit worrisome that FOX has only asked for 7 episodes and has scheduled Dollhouse on a Friday, not to mention all the talk of production shut-downs due to the sorry state of the scripts. Apparently a lot of the problems are coming from FOX’s interference while Whedon tries to keep his image of the show alive. A lot of fans are fearing a hugely disappointing Firefly-esque repeat disaster from FOX.

But we’ll see what happens. Perhaps FOX realized their gaffe with Firefly and are willing to give it another go, and Whedon and the cast seem optimistic about Dollhouse, and working the kinks out. As for the concept of the show, I’m willing to reserve judgment. After all, if you say you’re going to make a series about a vampire-hunting cheerleader or a space-age western about noble smugglers, that sounds kinda iffy, too. But look at how popular Buffy and Firefly are. I’m trusting Whedon to find the heart in this and give us some of that quality TV we’ve all been longing for.

Cross your fingers!