Instead of focussing on larger issues, the writers have ignored them. They could have clients pay huge amounts to remain alive after death by having their memories imprinted on Dolls and not just the short term whodunit they did in one episode. To me it would be more believable that people would pay huge amounts of money to keep a relative alive, especially if they were given a young body, than just to have a high priced prostitute. I consider pimps evil so the people who run the Dollhouse I consider the lowest type of scum. Add to that their Dolls have killed quite a few innocent people due solely to their actions and not for a greater cause but solely for greed.

It’s fairly obvious there’s a separation between the office and the Dollhouse, and the office is something you can take clients to.

As far as making it a clone of La Femme Nikita, that’s how it started, and that’s not what’s going to happen because La Femme Nikita’s already been made. At the heart of Dollhouse is an exploration of the implications of a mind programming technology. The Dollhouse itself is a MacGuffin, which is probably why the characters who run it aren’t anything like as evil as Dollhouse’s detractors want them to be.

Well, Carol you might be right and you might be wrong. If word of mouth spreads from Comic-Con that season 2′s premiere episode is good or great, then people might actually tune in just based on the publicity factor coming out of Comic-Con. If the publicity coming out of this years Comic-Con is that the episode stinks, well then the shows ratings will sink even further. But, if word of mouth is positive, Dollhouse might get the back 9 order and maybe a 3rd season.

There have been shows that improved a lot after their first season in my opinion, Star Trek: TNG being one of them. But in that case from what I read that was due to removing Gene Roddenberry’s influence on the show at the end of its 2nd season from the rest of the series, allowing the show to really shine.

Heroes and Lost both had disastrous 2nd seasons that drove away viewers and were written very differently from their 1st season. They also both brought on a bunch of newbie characters that the viewers didn’t care about. I don’t get why when a series is successful the writers in its 2nd season start messing with the formula and changing the things that viewers liked about it. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.

In a series such as Dollhouse which had major problems with it and isn’t successful – not with its bad ratings, then it’s 2nd season needs to be very different from its first season. I just don’t have much confidence that Joss Whedon is able and is willing to dramatically change the series and retool it.

And it’s also much harder to get back viewers who have tuned out than keep those who are watching regularly. In its 2nd season, Dollhouse has to somehow either get new viewers to watch it or get viewers who tuned out to tune back in. TSCC in its 2nd season just had to hold the interest of those who had watched the 1st season, which should have been relatively easy in comparison and they failed miserably.

As far as the character of Alpha goes which seems to be a pivotal part of Dollhouse, Alan Tudyk is starring in the remake of V: The Series. It’ll be airing on ABC and has been picked up for 6 episodes so I don’t see him returning to Dollhouse since that airs on a different network. I don’t know where that leaves Dollhouse but in the finale it seemed like the entire focus of the show would now revolve around chasing down Alpha. And if the actor who played Alpha isn’t available, I have no clue what they’ll do.

Also, Carol is right that they’ve never explained where they get the enormous variety of personality scans that allow them to imprint so many niche skills – even a PAIR of niche personalities like the bounty hunters Dichen and Miracle played in the finale who obviously knew each other.

It only takes a few lines of dialog to cover up plot holes like that. Writers who don’t do it are being sloppy.

It IS true that ninety percent of the audience won’t notice those holes, but still as a professional one should cover them.

Dollhouse DOES have a LOT of problems even if I cut it more slack than I did TSCC. If I do cut it more slack, I’m not sure I do, actually – well, after the horrible TSCC finale I guess I do cut Dollhouse more slack.

And since Alpha is supposed to be a psychopathic murderer, by protecting the Dollhouse, everyone who is murdered after that by Alpha is on him since he could have stopped him at that time. If the Dollhouse was busted a nationwide manhunt could have possibly captured Alpha, the public could have been put on alert. Instead, Ballard goes along with letting a psychopath murderer go his merry way and continue killing.

For me at least, I need to have some characters on a show that are rootworthy and Dollhouse really doesn’t have many at all. I don’t get why Whedon didn’t fashion it somewhat like La Femme Nikita. If he had and the dolls were used to fight terrorists or protect humanity in some way and if they had been murderers who would have been executed but were given a second chance, then to me it would have made the show more palatable. Instead, most of the dolls are used essentially as prostitutes for money so that their clients could amuse themselves. It wasn’t like a spy sleeping with the enemy to get vital information for their country, but just prostitution. Even the head of the local Dollhouse, DeWitt, uses them herself as hookers.

One huge area that the writers totally neglected was about the technology that stored people’s memories, how it worked and how they acquired these different personalities. Did people voluntarily give up their personalities for money or did they steal them from them when they were dying?

The most glaring bit of bad writing though for me is that it seems the clients all have no trouble finding where the dollhouse is or at least contacting it but the cops clueless about it.

Second point: Ballard was sent out to get rid of the FBI. How did he do it? That explains much of his motivation. He told them the truth. What did they do? They turned around and left thinking it was a prank. They don’t trust him, they don’t believe in the dollhouse. He has no chance of getting help from the system. He has to bring dollhouse down from the inside. The smiling proves my point. He did get rid of them, but he did it with the truth. It was a win-win situation for him. If the FBI believed him and raided the building: He wins! If they turn their back on him, the dollhouse people think he got them to leave while he learns just who is on his side (just himself and whomever is in the dollhouse sending him messages).

I saw that whole episode as Ballard temporarily working with the Dollhouse for two very good reasons: Caroline was kidnapped by Alpha (and it was his fault!) and feeling guilt over November and seeing an opportunity to set that right. I also think Ballard may feel a little differently about the Dollhouse having been inside it and having met the people who run it.

I’m confuzzled that it’s all considered bad writing or some kind of out-of-character thing by Ballard. It all made sense to me.

But, hey, I don’t think anybody can be convinced of each other’s point here, so nevermind. If it didn’t do it for you, it didn’t. Nothing wrong about that.

I’d go onto say that it would be out of character for Topher to implant himself in Whiskey but given Topher has no consistent character I can’t, he changes from week to week depending on how he’s needed to advance the plot – another page ripped from the Heroes playbook for the record.

And I also love the way people are trying to twist Ballard’s motivations – ‘he told the FBI’ is BS and you know it. That was set up and played out as a way for him to get rid of the FBI squad so he could go and hunt down Echo, right down to him smiling up at the security camera after the FBI left. That was him helping to cover up for the Dollhouse, the same Dollhouse he spent the entire season trying to expose and bring down.

You can’t define an entire character by one mission and then have him go completely against that mission repeatedly with no explanation, its just bad lazy writing. Like I’ve said a good three times now, the characters are so paper thin that the means for complex motivations don’t exist. Everyone has been so simple (and ever changing) that trying to play off some kind of double play ending doesn’t work.

But whatever, you seem to be determined to discredit the show’s writing at any cost, so you’ll find something to pick about no matter how good the explanations given to you are. You’ll even ignore what you’ve previously said yourself, as I pointed out above.

Also, Nick C is spot on: Ballard saw that bringing down the Dollhouse won’t be easy. So he figures a good way would be to learn as much as possible about it – and there ain’t no better way to do so than being on the inside. As a plus, he also gets to fulfill his fantasy – he gets to protect his precious Caroline on a regular basis.

Which perfectly explains why he helped to hide the Dollhouse, clean up their mess, return Echo to them and then agree to work for them how? His entire motivation throughout this season has been on bringing down the Dollhouse and saving Echo, at no point during this season did they set up any reasoning behind why when he was presented with countless chances to do all of that during the finale he didn’t.

Like I’ve repeatedly said the writing has been so paper thin and poor during Dollhouse that there simply isn’t a character base there for complex character motivations.

And Gusar you completely missed the point I was ridiculing, it wasn’t about why he wanted or expected Saunders to hate him but the idea that fans have from the line ‘you gave me computer skills’ decided that Topher implanted his own personality into Saunders. Of course you’re also ignoring Saunders saying that she didn’t hate Topher whilst making this leap but whatever works for you.

Dollhouse had slightly better ratings than TSCC because:
1. Dollhouse had a sci-fi lead-in, TSCC, which meant TSCC fans stayed to watch Dollhouse.
2. TSCC was competing with Ghostwhisperer, the highest rated show of the night, while Dollhouse was not.

In the second last episode, TSCC matched Dollhouse’s ratings and overtook Dollhouse in the season finale. TSCC also had constantly higher DVR and online viewership rates. Once Prison Break, a well established show of 4 seasons, took the place of TSCC as the Dollhouse lead-in, both shows could not measure up to TSCC’s ratings. In fact, PB beat Dollhouse in viewers several times and Dollhouse reached a series low in its finale!! Come on now, TSCC vs. Dollhouse is no contest.

I agree that the storyline history rewrites on the Dollhouse finale was pretty bad just like what they keep doing on Heroes. I consider it very poor planning and writing. I thought that good writers were supposed to have a “Bible” of where they planned the storyline to go for season. I also agree that while rewrites of history may sometime be necessary, it goes a long way if the writers can actually develop into the storyline a good reason of why a character does a 180 with their actions. With the finale on Dollhouse, I just don’t get the entire Ballard character since his only point before was that he was against the Dollhouse and fighting against it and now he’s no better than any of the others that are part of it and the writers didn’t give me any reason to think otherwise.

I’m not sure what is considered a panel. Is it only industry professionals or are members of the public invited?

I attended years ago a session where they invited people from the public for free (with some free prizes as some inducement) to view prospective pilot shows as well as the commercials that went with it in Baltimore, MD. In my case, it was 2 sitcoms that were pretty bad and never made it to the air. They questioned us after we viewed it at that location and then had someone call us on the phone 1 week later to question us more about our impressions of the shows (and the commercials). I got some later invites for others but I never attended anymore.

To me casting is one of those things that is really tricky and takes a great talent to be able to do it affectively since they’re not deciding necessarily who is a better actor but who fits a particular role the best and who they believe the audience will like best in the role and for lead roles be able to carry the show. There’s also what is called the “IT Factor” where some actors are just more watchable and have more screen presence than others even though their acting skills may be very limited. Over the years it seems to me that some series have had excellent casting directors who seem to excel in not just the casting of the regular characters but the guest star roles and the background actors and extras.

Jon C you’re complaint that I didn’t pay attention to the show is ironic given that you clearly didn’t pay attention to what I wrote, my problem wasn’t with Whiskey/Saunders being able to hack into Topher’s computer but that she was able to do it the week after we were told Alpha couldn’t. The same Alpha who perfected a remote wipe (something Topher told us was impossible) and the same Alpha who built his own chair to programme Echo with all her imprints and the same Alpha who we’ve been told is a genius throughout the season. Its lazy changing the facts to fit the scenario writing that has prolific in Heroes the past two seasons. One week they wanted Alpha to meet Saunders so they made it impossible to hack into Topher’s computer, the following they needed Saunders to hack into Topher’s computer so they threw in a useless ’I have computer skills line’.

The fact that fans are now writing themselves in circles to explain this away – ‘Topher put part of himself in he and he hates himself that’s why he wants her to’ is particularly impressive though. Especially given that they not to subtly suggested that the reason Topher expected Saunders to hate him is because he blames himself for what happened to her.

In regards to Ballard’s motivations like I said had they spent anytime during the season establishing and creating any of these characters and their motivations then his actions during the finale would have been understandable the problem is they didn’t. Everyone and everything is so paper thin and basic that everything they do outside their basic and paper thin existence makes no sense. You can’t build an entire season on someone hunting down the Dollhouse to bring it down and save Echo only to then end that season with that same character helping to cover up the Dollhouse and delivering Echo back to them. It makes zero sense and because you haven’t developed fully formed characters you don’t have in built explanations for it.

On the subject of panels, I sit in the camp that casting is ultimately the only area where you should put any major stock in their predictive abilities because it tends to be the only area where they’re right almost all the time. If someone doesn’t test well then the vast majority of the time the audience at large doesn’t like them either. Panels are incredibly hit and miss bigger picture in terms of a shows success etc. because there’s so many other factors that go hand-in-hand with that but when it comes to the cast and characters they’re usually very reliable. Of course the perceptions of an actor or character can change over time and whether Anna Torv would score as low in panels now I don’t know and whether she would score as low with people who have watched every week is another issue.

There are actors I enjoy watching that I don’t consider more than mediocre actors technically and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. There are actors like Mary McDonnell who I enjoy watching and I also consider a great actor.

I loved Eleventh Hour and am sad to hear that it’s been cancelled. I consider it to have been like The X-Files whereas Fringe I considered to have little in common in quality with the X-Files. Eleventh Hour had good writing, good casting, good acting, and good production values and it truly was very similar to The X-Files concept. However, it just didn’t attract the viewers needed to keep it on the air.

I like Joshua Jackson as an actor but I don’t think that he was a good casting choice on Fringe. Mark Valley seemed a way better fit and actually had chemistry with Anna Torv. John Noble, in my opinion, is the only reason why Fringe wasn’t a huge flop. I hadn’t seen him before but he’s an excellent actor and I believe the key reason that Fringe is still on the air. I hope that they give him a huge bonus because he really deserves it.

J.J. Abrams has devoted fans just like Joss Whedon does only Abrams has more of them and has had mainstream successes. Whedon’s only successes were on minor networks.

It’s always surprising to me what shows become popular and which don’t. It often doesn’t have anything to do with the acting ability of the stars on it, the quality of the writing, or the production values. TV it seems is a flukey industry. You can have bad actors, bad writers and people may love a show or you can good actors, good writers and for whatever reason it just doesn’t click with the viewers. Sometimes you get a show that becomes popular that has great actors, great writing & production values but that in my opinion is rare.

Since TV is a business, the profitability of the show is typically the primary consideration. It seems that the industry is changing and whereas before a show typically couldn’t get syndication rights unless it had at least I believe 88 episodes (preferrably 100) with the sale of DVDs it seems that shows that don’t even last 1 season are able to get extra revenue and are also being purchased to be aired on cable networks – something that never would have happened years ago. I think the only TV shows that had episode appear on VHS tapes were The X-Files, Buffy, and Star Trek franchises – but now it seems every series will be going to DVD usually before 6 months to 1 year after the season has ended.

I’m wondering if one reason that the networks were sometimes willing to take more of a chance on shows used to be that unless they had enough episodes for syndication rights that they typically didn’t make a profit on them. They also used to air repeats of episodes during the viewing season and it now seems that viewers want only 1st run episodes all the time and look down on repeats.

I would expect in an effort to keep down costs that more and more TV series are “out sourced” to other countries. Vancouver now seems to film a huge percentage of TV shows aired in the U.S. And Fox’s new Mental show that should start airing soon was filmed in South America as a cost cutting measure.

Which has yet to be proven

“the ones who like her at around 30% seem to be practically infatuated.”

Ah, the gutter maneuver designed to dismiss opponents, when showing proof isn’t an option.

“your opinion is quite valid to the most important person: you). ”

Much like yours.

“You and RSH attacking people because their opinion is different than yours, is just silly.”

Funny, I thought that was you. I’ve just asked you to show your proof.

Sarah:
“And don’t even talk about good looking. GA is still one of the sexiest women on the planet at 40 years old. Back in her XF days, she was simply devastating.”

Tastes are very different. I never found GA the least bit sexy. When she’s herself she is a very funny and bubbly person, probably great to hang out with, but not sexy (Torv whom I don’t find sexy either comes across as a bit glacially reserved in interviews – perhaps she’s annoyed at the rumor Nick is spreading

I’d say Firefly started very good and went up from there. Some people seem to feel Buffy started weak and became better, though I think that was in hindsight.
But as i said elsewhere, he seems to think of himself as an artist (my impression based on many interviews), and I think he doesn’t want to do mainstream, he doesn’t want to make something which is attractive to the masses, he want the masses to understand he’s a genius
But since he chooses to work in a popular medium he understands that certain compromises are required. Humor has often been a good weapon in that fight, his other shows are funny – and people tend to forgive high handed philosophizing if its funny.
Dollhouse is very much not funny, even if some lines might have been funny with other deliveries (I think the guy who plays Topher is totally unable to deliver Whedonesque lines in the proper manner) its a decidedly unfunny show.
So I can’t really see (or rather I don’t imagine) how Dollhouse would “improve” in the ratings stakes for season 2, I would imagine the he keeps the style and the ratings will keep sliding downwards. Though it’s been suggested Whedon hasn’t been as much involved in the day to day of this show, perhaps that explains some of the zigzag.

His main goal was never to bring it to, he tried to convince himself of that, but he was smitten by Caroline and wanted to find her and “save” her. But he couldn’t save her at the end – who was Caroline? You had a body which had a different mental component, and you had the neural patter which once was Caroline in another body (and on a battered hard drive). He *MIGHT* have been able to abduct a body which wasn’t Caroline of personality, but then what? And he couldn’t force them to restore her – they’d just put him in the attic. If his goals hasn’t changed, his only option was to work for them. No problem there.

I don’t see any similar dynamic with Dollhouse. It’s either going to have respectable (for a science fiction show shown on a Friday) numbers by S2E13, or it’s not. If it’s not (and isn’t cheap enough to be moved to Saturday afternoons to compete with “Stargate 7″ on the WB) then there’s no more reason to give it a full season than there is to give it a full season and a third season.

On a separate note, where’s all this “The finale was bad” stuff coming from? Ballard agreed to help them find and save Echo in exchange for November’s release. I thought it was a believable choice a character who (a) was obsessed with Echo (b) was feeling guilt over “using” November and (c) had endangered the people he was trying to help and (d) was now exposed to the actual people who ran the Dollhouse, who are evidently not archetypes out of “Survivors on the run being chased by evil organization” TV show and were actually no threat to him despite what he’d been told previously, would make. The critics seem to have generally liked the way the season ended, which is why the show suddenly got unexpected renewal calls outside of the science fiction media.

I’m not having a problem with the ending. I actually don’t see any seriously problems with the show’s dynamic at this point, there’s an argument for focussing on one of the other characters, like Ballard, instead of Echo, but I think otherwise they have a lot of room to grow here.

BUT the articles I read explicitly point out that most people can’t perceive them, except possibly subconsciously, although people can be trained to see them.

Like I said, nobody cares. While some people may sense something wrong based on subconscious perception of micro-expressions, the INTERPRETATION of those micro-expressions by any given person is going to be based on their overall perception, conscious or subconscious, of the situation.

I found one company that studies movies and predicts profitability from this stuff, and they say it doesn’t work on horror movies, for instance, because it’s hard to interpret what a negative reaction actually means. Is it the negative reaction intended by the movie, or one which is in reaction to HOW the movie is showing the WHAT, in other words a problem with the movie itself?

In other words, it’s not an exact science. It may be more scientific than lie detectors, but it has the same issues of interpretation. And I do not trust that sort of thing.

Meanwhile, JJ Abrams explicitly has said Torv was a gut pick the same way as Jennifer Garner in Alias or his other actress picks. He’s perfectly happy with her.

So a bunch of people don’t like her. So what? I do and so does a lot of other people.

So forget about it. It’s irrelevant anyway, since she isn’t going anywhere.

Tom Cruise? Is that you?!

I find Joshua engaging and cool but his role is considerably more “tamped down” than the other two leads. He does very well with it but he’s not the stand out actor – or role – on the show, Noble is. Hopefully that will change as his character assumes more importance in season 2 due to the original Peter’s death and possibly we learn more about his background before being recruited by Olivia.

Season 1 of Buffy was quite goofy/cheesy. It wasn’t until season 2 where things exploded into a brilliant series that lasted for 7 seasons. Season 1 was clearly Joss figuring out what he could in the world he created. So the same thing could very well apply to Dollhouse.

@Alex: Claire/Whiskey being able to hack Topher’s computer is quite easy to explain:
Part of Topher is in her. He wanted her to have computer skills, so he did that. It was probably overkill, as Claire herself said, but it’s how it is. And the “Claire hates Topher” thing comes from Topher hating himself. Yeah, on the surface he acts all cool and such, but deep down have might just realize the (im)morality of what he’s doing and he hates himself for it.

I love Dollhouse and am glad its renewed. And on the subject of Fringe…it had one of the best finales i’ve ever seen. I loved every minute of it and the twist was pitch perfect.

The only way fringe fits into this conversation that both Fringe and Dollhouse grew from their pilots into awesome shows…I like fringe more personally though.

And where’s all this hate for Anna Torv coming from?

Thanks for the interesting insight into panels. And wow, over 300 comments.