TV MEGATON: JOSS AND ELISHA DUCKSHOE RETURN TO TV!!!!!

[TVC15]

http://community.tvguide.com/blog-entry/TVGuide-Editors-Blog/Ausiello-Report/Eliza-Dushku-Lures/800026169?rssDate=12345678

1. It's a one-hour drama produced by 20th Century Fox to air on Fox. The first of the seven episodes to which the network has committed could premiere as early as spring.

2. It's called Dollhouse because that's the nickname of the high-tech lab where a group of human chalkboards are kept between assignments.

3. Human chalkboards?! Yes! What else would you call characters like Dushku's Echo who can be given new memories, skills and even personalities, then stripped of them just as quickly, leaving them virtual children.

4. Whedon is the creator, head writer and executive producer, and perhaps in part because Dushku convinced him to do the show, she's getting a producer credit. (Fellow Buffyverse alum Tim Minear is also on board.)

5. I just got off the phone with both of them!

[Howard Alan Treesong]

HUMAN CHALKBOARDS?!

Firefly was v. good but in general Joss Whedon is too smug for me to enjoy liking him. Plus his fanbase makes Nintendo fans look sane.

[Smooth Groove]

Hopefully, it won't suck like Serenity. 

[MrAngryFace]

 

[TVC15]

Joss's shit may be smug, and a lot of Buffy hasn't held up as much as I'd like, but he was the last person to do fun genre TV in the US.  And nobody makes Nintendo fans look sane.  Do I need to link you to some Amirox posts?

[Smooth Groove]

Joss's shit may be smug, and a lot of Buffy hasn't held up as much as I'd like, but he was the last person to do fun genre TV in the US.  And nobody makes Nintendo fans look sane.  Do I need to link you to some Amirox posts?

Yes.  Also, answer the questions I asked you yesterday. 

[TVC15]

[Howard Alan Treesong]

I dunno, who's that guy who makes smug asshole shows that always get cancelled

like Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies. he thinks his shit don't stink and has an annoying fanbase and is making quirky genre TV

[MrAngryFace]

Oh synth

[Smooth Groove]

Patel is a snob about everything.  even ramen

[Howard Alan Treesong]

guys I just had a great idea for a show

it's about a super team of garden gnomes that are really government nanobots, they do secret black ops missions while teaching people important life lessons and wisecracking

I call it GNOMERCY

:vomit :vomit

[TVC15]

I dunno, who's that guy who makes smug asshole shows that always get cancelled

like Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies. he thinks his shit don't stink and has an annoying fanbase and is making quirky genre TV

Bryan Fuller.  Both those shows are pretty good, though.

Tim Minear, who also worked on Wonderfalls and the Buffy shows, is also on board for this new show.

Drew Greenberg, another Buffyverse heavyweight, is currently one of the main writers on Dexter.

[Howard Alan Treesong]

if you liked wonderfalls and pushing daisies you would love this book:

[TVC15]

if you liked wonderfalls and pushing daisies you would love this book:

(Image removed from quote.)

And if you love that book, you will love this game



So hop to it Patel.

[Howard Alan Treesong]

And if you love that book, you will love this game

(Image removed from quote.)

So hop to it Patel.

Well if you love that game, you will love this album!!

[TVC15]

And if you love that book, you will love this game

(Image removed from quote.)

So hop to it Patel.

Well if you love that game, you will love this album!!

(Image removed from quote.)

And if you know of the existence of that album, you have probably tugged to a crudely modified version of this:

[Howard Alan Treesong]

And if you know of the existence of that album, you have probably tugged to a crudely modified version of this:

(Image removed from quote.)

Hey look over there what's TVC drinking?

[Phoenix Dark]

Who?

[TVC15]

And if you know of the existence of that album, you have probably tugged to a crudely modified version of this:

(Image removed from quote.)

Hey look over there what's TVC drinking?

(Image removed from quote.)

Hey, what is that sticking out of Patel's ass?  A Pleasure Cone?

[Howard Alan Treesong]

That pleasure cone is still only 25% as gay as Wonderfalls

[drohne]

oh god it's like a hairbrush combined with some freakish alien eggsac

[warcock]

My idea owns this one. taco.

[TVC15]

That pleasure cone is still only 25% as gay as Wonderfalls

I don't even like Wonderfalls all that much.  I enjoyed the show but I wasn't in like with it.  It was too cutesy for its own good in the end.  And how can you criticize cutesy things when you are addicted to J-POP?  Homojapuals shouldn't be casting the first stone in any sort of quirkiness war.

[Howard Alan Treesong]

are you saying there's something about gackt potentially "not straight"

[border]

Why do these idiots keep giving their shows to friggin' Fox?  Woohoo -- they ordered 7 episodes.  They'll play  it on Friday nights with a shit lead-in and the whole show will be cancelled before half the order is aired.

Whedon directs tomorrow night's episode of The Office, for anyone that cares.

[TVC15]

are you saying there's something about gackt potentially "not straight"

For Christ's sake, he invented the Pleasure Cone!

Who else would hire Whedon except for Fox?  Fox is probably looking for something comparable to Heroes.  Whedon has a good relationship with Fox, Firefly shit aside.  I'm sure even the current administration at Fox doesn't hold that against him, seeing how well all the DVDs have sold in the end.

Also, don't forget that the writer's strike starts like tomorrow.  Anything that gets picked up now has a chance of sticking around for a bit.  Mainly because there will be little else to pick up.

[border]

Who else would hire Whedon except for Fox?

SciFi, F/X, CW?  Somebody with some kind of interest in letting a show percolate?  Fox is notoriously impatient with any show that's not an instant hit, and almost every Whedon project has taken a while to find its audience.

Also, why are people that wrote 500-word loveletters to Blue Dragon even allowed to use the term "homojapual" as a pejorative? 

[TVC15]

Who else would hire Whedon except for Fox?

SciFi, F/X, CW?  Somebody with some kind of interest in letting a show percolate?  Fox is notoriously impatient with any show that's not an instant hit, and almost every Whedon project has taken a while to find its audience.

Also, why are people that wrote 500-word loveletters to Blue Dragon even allowed to use the term "homojapual" as a pejorative? 

Liking jrpgs alone doesn't make one a homojapual.   Don't be so close-minded.

[Howard Alan Treesong]

white man is just j-curious

[TVC15]

white man is just j-curious

I would argue that liking something like Blue Dragon doesn't add to the homojapual quotient at all.  It's not one of the homojap RPGs like the FF series.  There are no homosexual characters in the game, and there is no jpop interlude.  It is pure jrpg, and just jrpg, no faggy animu involved, aside from a bit of Toriyamaism.

[Flannel Boy]

Joss Whedon should be shot for the last fifteen seasons of Buffy. Fox should be pulled off the air for Arrested Dev. TVC15 should be whipped just for the hell of it.

[TVC15]

Joss Whedon should be shot for the last fifteen seasons of Buffy.

Only the last 3!

spoiler (click to show/hide)

or 4

[close]

Fox should be pulled off the air for Arrested Dev.

For killing it or for letting it air for 3 seasons?

TVC15 should be whipped just for the hell of it.

Delivery, please.  And I will fulfill my long-delayed promise of using your face as a toilet--I hope you have some sort of facial hair.

[border]

I guess I can't speak from legitimate experience, but Blue Dragon looked pretty japafruity to me.  For reference, what jrpgs must you love to be pegged as an out-of-the-closet homojapual? 

Also, I am annoyed by this insistence that the first season of Buffy didn't suck.  Applying the same harsh standards that people put on S4-S7, it most certainly did.

[Flannel Boy]

Also, I am annoyed by this insistence that the first season of Buffy didn't suck. 

STEP OUTSIDE

[Madrun Badrun]

(Image removed from quote.)

Your taste in women redeemed for have that gif saved.   

[TVC15]

I guess I can't speak from legitimate experience, but Blue Dragon looked pretty japafruity to me.  For reference, what jrpgs must you love to be pegged as an out-of-the-closet homojapual? 

It's not just RPGs, but an all-out obsession with Japanese culture in general, or at least the most visible elements of it.  By extension, I would have to say that the most homojapual RPGs are those that cannot be separated from their embarassing level of Japafaggotness.  Blue Dragon indeed is unmistakingly Japanese, but it's not, say, Ar Tornelico, nor does it feature frequent half-dressed bishies.

Also, I am annoyed by this insistence that the first season of Buffy didn't suck.  Applying the same harsh standards that people put on S4-S7, it most certainly did.

Oddly enough, I think by my now Buffy ODed standards, season 1 would probably rank very well among what I consider the most watchable seasons.  It's camp, but it knows it's camp.  The elements that made seasons 2 and 3 "deep" and/or "meaningful" for people have always been kind of obvious, overwrought, and silly to the point of not-good camp to me, but they really never grated on me much until today.  

Revisionist History Lesson (and this is going off the top of my head and I may be forgetting especially terrible, or good moments):

Season 1:  Campy, fun, really lightweight.  If I watched this when it originally aired, I probably would not have expected it to make it to season 2.

Season 2: Everything before Buffy and Angel fuck is pretty great, generally an improvement on season 1.  The second half of the season moves into iffier territory, but it's largely cool because Angel and Spike are pretty hilarious, even if Buffy is teh emo.

Season 3: I never dug this one as much as anyone else.  The Faith and the Mayor shit was definitely great, everyone can agree on that; but again, the Angel and Buffy stuff was just so obvious.  It was pretty clear just about how things would work out before it even got close to the end of the season.  After this season, I wouldn't have expected much from the Angel show.

Season 4:  I'll take lumps here, but I like this season a lot.  The bad stuff, the Adam shit, is mainly confined to the last 5 or so episodes, and I could live with the rest of the initiative shit.  It had its soapy moments, but I thought this season was fun overall.

Season 5:  Some good episodes.  I skip most of this season.

Season 6:  I think it has more good episodes than 5 and 7, but it also has the overall worst episodes of the series.  And the degeneration into fanservice for the finale, well, that's when I knew the Golden Age was totally gone.

Season 7:  Shit.  Except for Andrew <3

It's hard for me to do a greater than less than equation for all the seasons.  I have watched this shit so gayly for so many years now that I have it down to a science about what I like and dislike.  Sure, that first half of season 2 may be my favorite portion of the series, but the baggage that season carries would keep me from ranking it number 1.  And really, each season has something cringey that keeps me from putting it on top at this point.

[Flannel Boy]

Shit! I agree with White Man on pretty much everything. Though I really didn't like Faith.

[TVC15]

Shit! I agree with White Man on pretty much everything. Though I really didn't like Faith.

I didn't like her so much when she'd come back to Buffy or Angel.  There's not much fanservice I like, and that's what bringing her back always felt like.

[Flannel Boy]

Honestly I prefer the campiness of season one to the overwrought emotional nonsense the series became known for. Each episode had an angst ridden high school theme, some light comedy, mild horror elements, and Buffy dressed like a street walker. WHAT’S NOT TO LIKE. The first half of season two was gold too.

[TVC15]

Honestly I prefer the campiness of season one to the overwrought emotional nonsense the series became known for. Each episode had an angst ridden high school theme, some light comedy, mild horror elements, and Buffy dressed like a street walker. WHAT’S NOT TO LIKE. The first half of season two was gold too.

When the show was ending and there were lots of retrospectives being rewritten, proclaiming things like Buffy and Angel having sex being a metaphor for how sex changes relationships, I totally rolled my eyes.  I see that as putting a significant amount of effort into coming up with a reading that supports a very juvenile, adolescent concept.  If people see shit like that in Buffy and Angel's relationship, I think it's a sign that more people need to read god damned books, because they've frankly forgotten what depth is.

Any reading that paints the show as some grand metaphor ultimately falls apart when you realize that Sarah Michelle Gellar is the acting equivalent of Synbios, so whatever your brilliant reading happens to be is undermined by the fact that it probably wasn't planned, and it just so happened that SMG stumbled her way through so-and-so scene in such a way that supports your ridiculous theory.

Then again, I have never really felt the need to come up with such ridiculousness to defend my nerdy leanings.  I am obsessed with Doctor Who for chrissakes.

[Flannel Boy]

It probably had more to do with marketing and the debut of Dawson's Creek. Teenage girls love that shite.

I missed most of Synbios' posts. I picked a good time to leave this forum.

[Van Cruncheon]

any marty noxon penned eps are generally bad with a few rare exceptions. on the other hand, tim minnear is consistently good. joss can be hilariously great, or painfully emo.

i loved firefly, but his commentary on the "objects in space" episode is so overwrought and pretentious that i can't watch that ep without rolling my eyes completely out of my skull and into my alien resurrection commemorative mug.

[Flannel Boy]

i can't watch that ep without rolling my eyes completely out of my skull and into my alien resurrection commemorative mug.

Me nine years ago: Joss I saw Alien Resurection...I want my money back

Joss: Many questions but one thing I must reply to first... you want your money back? I want three years of my life back. Which is to say, I sorta gotta
back you up 

[recursivelyenumerable]

When the show was ending and there were lots of retrospectives being rewritten, proclaiming things like Buffy and Angel having sex being a metaphor for how sex changes relationships, I totally rolled my eyes.  I see that as putting a significant amount of effort into coming up with a reading that supports a very juvenile, adolescent concept.  If people see shit like that in Buffy and Angel's relationship, I think it's a sign that more people need to read god damned books, because they've frankly forgotten what depth is.

Any reading that paints the show as some grand metaphor ultimately falls apart when you realize that Sarah Michelle Gellar is the acting equivalent of Synbios, so whatever your brilliant reading happens to be is undermined by the fact that it probably wasn't planned, and it just so happened that SMG stumbled her way through so-and-so scene in such a way that supports your ridiculous theory.

Wait, what?  Did I read you wrong, or are you seriously arguing that Buffy and Angel having sex (and most of the other plot points in the series) aren't meant to be metaphorical at all?  You can claim the use of metaphor is shallow or silly or whatever, fine, but claiming it's not there is ridiculous.  There's no "effort" involved in "coming up with a reading" because it's blatantly obvious.

[TVC15]

Yeah, I think Objects in Space is Joss's favorite episode (pretty sure I read that somewhere), and oddly enough it is the only episode of Firefly I really dislike.  Makes me kind of back up Fox's treatment of Joss.

Joss:  Before you make your decision on killing my show, I want you to watch this one episode, the very best of the series.

<plays Objects in Space>

Executive that has never seen an ep before this:  That sucks, you're fired.

When the show was ending and there were lots of retrospectives being rewritten, proclaiming things like Buffy and Angel having sex being a metaphor for how sex changes relationships, I totally rolled my eyes.  I see that as putting a significant amount of effort into coming up with a reading that supports a very juvenile, adolescent concept.  If people see shit like that in Buffy and Angel's relationship, I think it's a sign that more people need to read god damned books, because they've frankly forgotten what depth is.

Any reading that paints the show as some grand metaphor ultimately falls apart when you realize that Sarah Michelle Gellar is the acting equivalent of Synbios, so whatever your brilliant reading happens to be is undermined by the fact that it probably wasn't planned, and it just so happened that SMG stumbled her way through so-and-so scene in such a way that supports your ridiculous theory.

Wait, what?  Did I read you wrong, or are you seriously arguing that Buffy and Angel having sex (and most of the other plot points in the series) aren't meant to be metaphorical at all?  You can claim the use of metaphor is shallow or silly or whatever, fine, but claiming it's not there is ridiculous.  There's no "effort" involved in "coming up with a reading" because it's blatantly obvious.

Oh, I think it's there, and Joss's background confirms it, but I think people think it has a lot more depth than its obviousness betrays.  The retrospectives I am remembering would often seem close to comparing that tripe to Shakespeare.