Joss and his slow beginnings

[maggie2]

So I made a point of watching Dollhouse last night, having forgotten last week and having to catch it on the web.  Like the first episode, this one was labor to watch.  As in, if it were anything but a Joss show, I'd not have bothered.  That's not to say that I think it lacks promise.  There's lots that is intriguing.  But huge stretches of last night just seemed like the ordinary TV you only watch when you are babysitting and bored out of your mind.  (My days of doing that are some distance in the past, but I still remember them well).  It doesn't spark interesting thoughts in me, and there's nothing about it that makes me want to dive in and find interesting thoughts to think about it.

I'm not planning on giving it up, though.  And no, it's not because I'm going to squint and turn my head sideways and convince myself that it's great because all Jossian things are great.  It's because if I hadn't had a friend I really respected swearing to me on a stack of Bibles that it was worth slogging through 1.5 seasons of Buffy to get to the good  stuff, I'd have stopped with BtVS after episode 4.  Because season 1 of Buffy, for me?  Pure labor.  The metaphors seemed obvious.  The characters too obviously crafted to appeal in certain ways.  And I'm not all about the girl power so that wasn't a motivating factor.  And much as I've come to love Buffy, season one is still mostly labor.  It's even not a great source of interesting meta because the show was obviously still finding its ways and some things really did get shifted around -- so, for example, Darla isn't hardly Darla, and there's no point in doing meta to try to pretend that she is.  Not that you can't find good stuff in season one.  But if that's all there ever was of BtVS, well, it weren't much to write home about.

Has Joss *ever* done a good first season?  Joss's greatness, judging by his one unadulterated success, is unfolding a story across a long period of time, in a way that shifts expectations and undermines assumptions, and develops characters who are nearly as messy and complicated as in real life.  Joss's particular talent, the one I care about, is that he knows what to do with a very big canvass.  And because it's such a big canvass, the first chapter in his story is small potatoes, because it's really just stage-setting for the big drama to come.  Firefly was much better than the first season of Buffy, but I couldn't get invested in it because it  had already been cancelled by the time I watched on DVD, and it was really too painful to see all that set-up knowing we were never going to get to the pay-off.   (And Serenity seemed to me to be what you'd get if you tried to breathlessly tell seasons 2-7 of Buffy in two hours).

Of course, all the tea leaves suggest that Dollhouse is going to get axed at the knees as well.  And even if it survives, the fact that Joss used his big canvass very well once, doesn't mean that his second big canvass project will be great as well.  But it would be nice if it turned out to be.

Oh, yes, about the comics -- I think they really are meant to be a new chapter rather than a simple continuation.  So there's the same demand for patience while the story sets up.  I think that having labelled it as season 8, Joss owes us more connection to BtVS than we've gotten so far.  But I also think he's starting to pay off the slow intro, so this is sort of like sliding into mid-season two of Buffy, where it became clear tha there was more potential there than you might have guessed at the start.   But it'll still be a while before I can decide whether Joss really is a one hit wonder, or a guy with a well of talent for big canvass story telling.

Comments

[sueworld2003.livejournal.com]

"I think that having labelled it as season 8, Joss owes us more connection to BtVS than we've gotten so far. But I also think he's starting to pay off the slow intro, so this is sort of like sliding into mid-season two of Buffy, where it became clear tha there was more potential there than you might have guessed at the start. But it'll still be a while before I can decide whether Joss really is a one hit wonder, or a guy with a well of talent for big canvass story telling."

Yeah, I agree there. I'm afraid I can't shake the feeling that Joss is a wee bit 'yesterdays man' really, but as we've long way to go till season 8 ends and as I won't see Dollahouse for a long, long time to come I won't know that for certain for just yet.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Ack, glad we agree on something comic-related!! Both uncertain, albeit with different degrees of hopefulness.

[next_to_normal]

I was thinking of making a post on Dollhouse, but now I don't have to. :) I just watched last night's ep, and while I think it's getting better, I'm still watching mostly based on potential rather than any particular enjoyment of the episodes aired so far.

Has Joss *ever* done a good first season?

I would say that Angel season 1 is pretty good. It's certainly not on par with some of the later seasons, but compared to Buffy season 1 and Firefly, it feels like a work of brilliance. Maybe because Joss already had a decent mythology and character backstory to build on.

The thing is, even if Buffy season 1 isn't brilliance on its own, you can see the potential there. The witty dialogue, the interest in exploring the deeper meaning (even if the metaphors were too on-the-nose at first), the beginnings of character development. I don't see as much of that in Dollhouse, which is why I'm watching with a more skeptical eye, but for now, there's enough to hold my interest.

The one thing that still gets me, though, is Eliza Dushku's acting. Three episodes in, I'm still not convinced she can pull it off.

But it'll still be a while before I can decide whether Joss really is a one hit wonder, or a guy with a well of talent for big canvass story telling.

I'll be honest, I think Joss gets a lot more credit for being a genius than he actually is. Buffy and Angel were incredible, yes, but they're also both incredibly flawed. I don't like Firefly at all, so I'm far from the "Joss can do no wrong" crowd. The season 8 comics feel like strike 2, and if Dollhouse doesn't step up, I'll be ready to call Joss out.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I agree that Angel season one is the best first season he's done. But if the show had been cancelled after one season, I wouldn't have thought much of it either.

For me, even with the promises of my friend, I distinctly remember being underwhelmed with the first four episodes of Buffy. And the fourth one was actively and appallingly bad. Witty dialogue it had. But I took my sweet time about ordering the second disc from Netflix.

Buffy and Angel are both flawed. But like I said, they have this brilliance with the big canvass that I've never seen before, and I'll put up with a fair amount on account of that. Season 8 won't be strike two for me until we get to the end. There's enough there so far that I can still hope. And since I want that big canvass pay-off, I'm not going to let go until I'm really sure that it's not coming.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

p.s. There are a lot of great icons out there, but yours made me really laugh.

[http://users.livejournal.com/woman_of_/]

Yes Joss is a slow burner, very true! If he gets the chance with Dollhouse is an another question.

I thought Season One of Angel was his best first season. Maybe because he had already set up the characters Angel, Cordelia and even Wesley on BtVS before the start.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I have strong doubts about whether he'll get a chance with Dollhouse. None of the rumblings sound good.

Agree that AtS one was the best, and agree about why. But even so, isn't it *amazing* how far all three of those characters moved beyond where they were to start? (I still can't believe they managed to make Wesley and Cordelia such incredible characters, given what I thought of them at the start).

[http://users.livejournal.com/woman_of_/]

It was amazing the character development for Cordelia and Wesley. He really let them mature. Wesley in particular. One of his best.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

I absolutely agree. Last night's episode was actually my least favorite so far. And yeah, Joss really is a slow burner. I'm waiting for ep 6 when it starts to really get good - or so they say.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I'm also really hoping episode 6 delivers as advertised! It's a good thing we disagreed about Faith/Giles or I'd be worried that we're just clones or something.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

Actually my real name is Ben (yes I've become a dude for this joke)...are you Glory? Do we suspect there's some kind of strange connection between us? :P

[shapinglight]

Don't know when I'll get to see Dollhouse or if I'll bother when given the chance. Joss has largely disappointed me since AtS, since I really dislike Firefly and can't see what all the fuss is about with Dr Horrible, plus don't much like the comic.

However, the combined brilliance of BtVS and AtS does mean he gets more get out of jail free cards than anyone else would. Will be interested to see if you change your mind about DH before the season (and possibly the show itself) is over.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I'll be sure to report if I do see something to get jazzed about! He'd have to fail with a big canvass for me to start hesitating about handing out the cards. Season 8 is going to be the big test case.

[mrs-underhill.livejournal.com]

I think Firefly was a brilliant first season, even though unfinished. It has an absolutely beautiful pilot - I mean, the 2-hr one, Serenity. Especially if you use two deleted scenes to reconstruct the original pilot, before FOX demanded to start it with a big action scene - and that FOX-demanded scene was the one which almost turned me off the whole series.
I think Joss was burned so much by Firefly cancellation for exactly this reason - because he finally hit on something and was delivering his best work right from the start. I'm not sure he's still recovered from that.

But another example, if you can call it a great beginning - Dr.Horrible. But it's a standalone, not a big canvass.

As for Dollhouse - after dismal #1 I enjoyed #2 and 3 pretty much - an intriguing crime drama, good thematical potential. But I don't have any urge to discuss it, write about it - just watch it with interest and move on.
There's no charismatic character to latch on and drive me nuts - and that always happened with other Joss shows. In Firefly I was smitten by Simon and River but really I loved almost the whole lot of them - all were great characters.
In Dollhouse it's all pretty sterile so far - none of characters are compelling and the main appeal is the plot and themes. I guess your enjoyment of the show is proportionate to whethee you are a fan of Eliza Dushku - which I am not. And the rest do not inspire yet, except Amy Acker. She feels the most alive and interesting of all of them.
And after Dr.Horrible I'm officially nuts over Neil Patrick Harris. :)

As for Dollhouse #3 - it was pretty neat, I thought, how they paralleled the singer in her cage, her exploitive dress and sexuality (exploitive by others, I mean), and the situation of Echo and Sierra. And how they would think of freedom from that cage. It's pretty dark and uncomfortable stuff - what can you do to break out of captivity. And it's dark because they don't break out, none of them, but somehow learn to live with it, retain some humanity within it.

In that sense I'd say Buffy #8 and Dollhouse feel similar to me - emotionally sterile but thematically interesting. Maybe that's where Joss is going these days...

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I've only watched Firefly once. I didn't detest it the way Shapinglight does, but I also didn't feel the love that so many feel for it. But I'm also very slow to be drawn in -- and I don't think I even bothered to be all that open to it because I knew that it was always going to be an essentially unfinished project. I do know that my take away impression was that it was a real tragedy Joss didn't get to finish it. And Nate Fillion = not hard to look at.

I liked DH #2 the best. All three episodes have paralleled the "case" with Echo's situation. But I sort of take that as the equivalent of the obvious metaphors of the MOTW in B:1. It's in the layers that Joss gets interesting. Where we find out that things aren't what they seem. (Which was the opening line of this series, BTW). I suppose if we think about this week's assignment, the fact that the singer turns out to be engineering her victimhood foreshadows something about Echo. Though I'd hope that Echo's not engineering out of despair, the way the singer seemed to be. And since that's what seemed to be her story in that opening scene of the series, I'm sure that's exactly what it is not. So, yes, lots of possibilities.

I just found the show quite tedious, is all. And I think it's because the assignment is always at the center of the story, where Buffy's MOTW's were more to the side. And the assignments of themselves just aren't that interesting.

[mrs-underhill.livejournal.com]

I just found the show quite tedious, is all.
It's tedious because it lacks character moments - yet. That's the strongest part of Joss work, IMHO, and that's missing here.
I'm watching it for the plot, which is pretty neat so far. But I agree that the major part of what attracts us to Joss is not there.

And I'd encourage you to give Firefly another shot, if you yearn for more Jossiness but not see it in a Dollhouse. I watched it on DVDs long after it was cancelled, so the worry about cancellation never entered it. It has many layers and best of all - great characters and lots of character moments. I must have rewathched it dozens of times since then, even more than Buffy, as Buffy is so huge.