Transcript for Dollhouse Renewed? Why not Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles?

I just found out that Dollhouse is being

renewed by Fox for another season.

It’s a Joss Whedon TV show so I wanted to

give it a chance when it first started.

Dollhouse is a show about a bunch of people

who get there brains wiped and then new

personalities and experiences and

memories get put into their heads and they

can exist as that person for X amount of time

and they get hired out by

clients to perform various tasks.

Most of the “engagements” are men

trying to fulfill a fantasy.

Dollhouse is really a glorified brothel.

Dollhouse is really misogynistic

I don’t know what other word to describe it

as. There is a big issue that hasn't

really been raised about whether this is rape

or not. It’s been talked about online a little bit

but the show hasn’t dealt with this issue at all.

So they sign these contracts saying

that they’ll be in Dollhouse for X amount of

years and their conscious mind

isn’t around so they can’t consent to every

single engagement that they go on.

Now if you can’t consent then

that would be rape right?

In Dollhouse we as the viewer are supposed

to condemn the dollhouse, we’re not

supposed to like it, we’re supposed to think

it’s morally and ethically wrong

to do these things to these people yet we

identify with all of the characters

in the dollhouse.

So Boyd the handler, you think he’s pretty

cool because he seems to have issues with

what’s going on, yet

he still continues to work there.

The woman who runs the place

towards the end of the season we start to

get more of an emotional grasp on her

and her character becomes a little more

more entrenched in who she is and not,

you know, not hating her.

Tofur the crazy scientist,

you totally think he’s funny and witty and

smart and goofy

you don’t really take him too seriously.

If we’re not supposed to like dollhouse

which I think we’re not supposed to

then why are we sympathetic with all of the

characters inside of the dollhouse?

Joss Whedon on Whedonesque.com

was quoted as saying that part of the pitch

to renew for a second season was that they

were going to go in the direction of

the season finale.

I think we have enough crazy, serial killing,

murdering men on television that we don’t

need to add to the repertoire with Dollhouse.

The season finale was just blah

cover my ears

cover my eyes

I didn’t want to watch a single other episode

of Dollhouse after that.

It was just so grotesquely violent

it was unnecessary

it’s this crazy maniacal guy who was

damaged by the dollhouse

(which were sympathetic to right?)

doing all these crazy things

so now he becomes the enemy and the

dollhouse is kind of in that grey

middle zone area.

This news is troubling in that I really

didn’t want Terminator: the Sarah Connor

Chronicles to get cancelled.

I thought it was a really good show.

I felt like the story line and the characters

were really complex.

They made complicated relationships

between each other and the characters

evolved in interesting ways that I thought

could grow over another couple of seasons.

Also the show is based on the Terminator

movies which most of us have

probably seen that are kind of big macho

fests about you know

gore and violence and

blowing things up and robots

the whole sci fi chase scene

GRAAA thing

But Sarah Connor, although it had those

elements, was actually really smart.

It fused together the action part of the sci fi

genre but it also brought in character

development was really well done.

The show is also mostly about a woman

she’s an independent, tough, single mom

that’s trying to protect her son.

The other main character on the show

is a representation of a teenage woman

who although she’s a robot

you still see as young female.

She’s empowered, she’s smart

she’s strong

these are all good things to have on

television I think.

I think looking really critically at why a show

like Dollhouse is getting renewed

and the Sarah Connor Chronicles are not

The Sarah Connor Chronicles really took its

time and sometimes it was a little slow

moving because they really did a lot of

character development

and really built up a story line

so you really became attached to what

was going on and really invested.

Where Dollhouse you met a new

character every week.

It wasn’t really super complicated you didn’t

have a lot of character development

There were a few things here and there

where the main character Echo

started to remember her old past

but even then it wasn’t that interesting

and it was kind of the same old same old.

There was a really interesting article

in the Washington Post that talked

about how Dollhouse was produced

by Fox and aired on the Network of Fox

so they have more invested in that

financially and can make more profits.

Where Sarah Connor was produced by

Warner Brothers aired on Fox

there’s not as much financial investment.

I know that Joss Whedon is capable of

writing really good quality television

that’s critical and analytical

and has social commentary while still

being entertaining and fun.

So I don’t know why he can’t do that again.