Blogging Dollhouse

I'm starting to think that, somewhere between Firefly and Arrested Development, I lost the ability to really enjoy a television show without being simultaneously terrified of its imminent cancellation. Veronica Mars, The Middleman-- maybe it's something about the near-certain knowledge that you're watching something too lovely and clever and delicate to last. And, of course, there's that little twist of martyr-flavored satisfaction in knowing that your taste is so tragically better than that of the unwashed hordes.

And now, with Dollhouse, Joss Whedon is back on television. And the premise of his show has a couple of county lines between it and commercial bankability. And there are reshoots and scrapped pilots and network notes and it's scheduled on Friday nights, and I have to start wondering: if the first time history repeats itself is tragedy and the second time is farce, what's the fifth time? The seventh?

So what I want to do here is break myself out of the masochistic cycle of doomed obsession. I'm not going to use this space to track Nielsen ratings or bitch about marketing. I'm not going to proselytize or launch petitions. I'm not even going to chase down spoilers-- there are better places all over the internet for that sort of thing.

What I want to do is to basically ignore Dollhouse as a commercial product and focus on Dollhouse as a story. I'll start with recaps: a synopsis and commentary on the episodes soon after they air. A little snark, a little adoration, a lot of nerdy pop culture references, and probably too many nerdy science and literature references. If all goes well, we'll have a pristine record of the show's early days, untainted by ratings-induced panic and self-pity. Sound like fun?