Tonight marks the end of Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse", a series that flew under the radar of nearly anyone who'd like it best. We've had a lot of excellent speculative fiction television series the past few years and this could have easily turned into a classic. Admittedly, the first five episodes or so were slow, slow, slow and it took several months for the show to find it's voice, but once it did (round about Episode ten I'd say), it did what only the ballsiest speculative fiction does: It explored every last disturbing implication of it's fantastic premise. Sadly, Whedon only had a few episodes, mostly in the second season, to fully explore that premise without having to keep the advertisers and network happy.
The history of this series has been... interesting to say the least. Executive Meddling (take a shot) plagued the first half of the first season, but then Joss was allowed to do his own thing for the second half. Certainly, all the while the traumatic experience of Fox's treatment of "Firefly" was hanging over his head. So he came up with an episode called "Epitaph 1" that could act as an ending for the series as a whole *or* a good cliffhanger for the first season if the series miraculously didn't get canceled. Sure enough, the series miraculously did not get canceled -- but Fox decided not to air "Epitaph 1", opting to end the season on a comparatively cheerier note. So the second season went ahead business as usual as if that episode never existed.
And then Fox decided to cancel "Dollhouse" anyway. That's hubris for you.
So in the past month's worth of episodes or so, Joss Whedon has been doing an excellent job of building towards the events portrayed in "Epitaph 1" so that he can use it as the first half of a two-part final episode arc.
Which would be awesome, except Fox *still* isn't going to air it, so good luck understanding what's going on in the series finale.
By the way, "Dollhouse" gets canceled and yet Seth MacFarlane is apparently getting a fourth Illustrated Radio series. Oh yeah, I went there.
Dammit, is it February 2nd yet?
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In happier news, it is Draw a Dinosaur Day! I am probably drawing one right now and will post it here when I'm finished! Until then, here's the Singing Tyrannosaurus:
EDIT: The Singing Tyrannosaurus stays but here is the link to my entry in the Draw A Dinosaur Day pool. I submitted today's Sketchbook page.
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Feederwatch Friday!
Sharp-shinned Hawk 1 (Just hung out in the neighbor's lilacs. Chickadees were not one bit happy about this.)
Rock Pigeon 4
Mourning Dove 2
Downy Woodpecker 1
Black-capped Chickadee 2
White-breasted Nuthatch 2
House Sparrow 25
Another scary storm on Monday, this time of the soggier variety thanks to unseasonable warmth. I could hardly see the birds, much less count them.
But count them I did. For the science!
