As the Emmy shift fallout is continuing to make waves (#emmysfail was yesterday the second hashtag on the Twitter trend topic list), this little post by theonetruebix on the Whedonesque forum sums it all up nicely with various links leading to other articles talking about the important issues at hand here. Will there be a boycott of the Emmy ceremony when the time comes?
There’s also some new details that have emerged regarding Avatar day (August 21).
Well, it’s actually more about what’s going on in France for Avatar Day but I would assume the same thing is going to go down elsewhere, including the States. Basically, the 3-D 15-minute preview will be shown for free every 30 minutes, starting at 6PM. More info should come out around the 19th.
In the meantime, Time Magazine has a great piece by Richard Corliss on Thirst and how it shows that “Vampires Beat Zombies”.
There’s also a couple of TV announcements with Bryan Singer producing and writing another Syfy mini following The Triangle in 2005. This 6-hour limited series will be about the 2012 myth and the Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world. USA also revealed a huge list of projects, including a lot of cop shows. Good Cop, Bad Cop, Busy Bodies, Gourmet Detective, you name it. There was as well a show entitled Hotel Dix written and produced by…Tom Fontana. Yes. A Tom Fontana show on the USA Network.
The news on everyone’s mind is yesterday’s Emmy nomination list. As some of you saw via my Twitter reactions, I was pretty pissed at some stuff that got on the list.
Let’s begin with Family Guy. Now, I don’t hate the show, actually I watch it religiously. My problem has to do with that it’s Family Guy getting the honors of being the first animated program to be nominated in the Best Comedy category in 50 years or so, instead of The Simpsons. Also, I don’t believe the show is that good. It might have been during the first few seasons but not currently.
I don’t appreciate the various writing noms this year either. And by various, I mean the complete opposite. Four out of five comedy writing noms are for 30 Rock, and four out of five drama writing noms are for Mad Men! Ridiculous.
My third problem is with another nomination, this time Drama-side: Lost. Yet again, I’m a huge Lost fan (remember when I interviewed Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse? I sure do), I’ve been with the show since day one. But this latest season was just atrociously bad, let alone majorly retcon. Long story short, Lost‘s Season Five shouldn’t be worth the nomination. Remember how four out of five drama writing noms were for Mad Men? Well the other one is for, wait for it, Lost‘s The Incident (Season 5 finale). Out of every drama hours from the past year, they chose this one? Not even a tiny Breakind Bad episode?
Lost shouldn’t even be nominated for Best Drama, which brings me to my next problem. With seven contenders this year, I would have expected some outsiders joining the show. Fortunately, Flight of the Conchords was nominated. On the other hand however, Lost getting on meant The Shield‘s final season got the boot. Not cool. I would have liked to see In Treatment in there as well. Hopefully, Breaking Bad will win.
A new category was announced as well, Outstanding Special Class – Short-format Live-Action Entertainment, also known as the ‘Online Stuff’ category. With the exception of the Super-Bowl show, all the other noms are webisodes of some kind. Obviously, Dr. Horrible was nominated. One might wonder if this category was made just for Dr. Horrible. It’s a given it will get the Emmy. Speaking of, Scifi Wire has an interview up with Joss Whedon talking about this nomination, amongst other things.
Another major snub includes Michael Giacchino’s wonderful Lost score being completely ignored from the Outstanding Music Composition category. Instead, such musical classic as Castle, Legend of the Seeker, and even Ghost Whisperer got the nom.
So much to complain about, I must have left out some other things. In any case, yeah, I’m pissed at the 61st Emmy Awards. And they haven’t even started yet.
A few previews have appeared for some interesting upcoming shows.
The first is AMC’s Rubicon starring James Badge Dale and Lili Taylor based on a Jason Horwitch script. Check out this trailer:
FX meanwhile has made a 6-episode order for an animated comedy series named Archer and created by Adam Reed and Matt Thompson who previously worked on Sealab 2021. As for what it is about, see the following extract:
And finally, two other TV tidbits. First, some Station news. The FOX show produced by Ben Stiller’s Red Hour, not a network station. John Goodman has been cast as the co-star alongside Justin Bartha on this series created by Kevin Napier about covert CIA operatives working on installing a new dictatorship in Central America. The pilot will be shot by Role Model‘s David Wain.
Also, NBC has picked-up Persons Unknown, a 13-episode series Christopher McQuarrie, who won an Oscar in 1994 for his Usual Suspects script. The show, produced showrunner Remi Aubuchon, Christopher & Heather McQuarrie, revolves around strangers waking up in a deserted town with no recollection of how they got there. They must now work together to escape by solving puzzles.
As promised, here is my follow-up article to my previous Four Reasons why Dollhouse might be Renewed. Unfortunately, the sad truth is that Whedon’s Dollhouse is going to be gone soon, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Okay, that may not exactly be what is going to happen, but if we’re facing the harsh and bitter reality, FOX, the “notoriously-fickle” network, is often going one-way with shows that are not instant hits.
It’s hard, but here are four reasons why I believe Dollhouse will get cancelled.
Reason 1 : RatingsThe most obvious reason on this list: ratings are bad, real bad. Only 3.6 million viewers tuned in last Friday, the same numbers as for The Sarah Connor Chronicles season (series?) finale. The rest is pretty much straightforward: in the conventional TV world, bad ratings mean no renewal. And if you’re thinking of a pity renewal just there, Dollhouse as of yet still does not have as strong a following as Firefly has, so a pity renewal has yet to be seen regarding fanbase. Though the numbers have been steady, they are, at the end of the day, very weak, and weak is not good.
Reason 2 : Death SlotThis reason is quite self-explanatory. It’s no secret that Friday is also known as the death slot. Movies open on Fridays, people like to go out on Friday nights, almost no one is left to watch some TV. And when you combine Friday night with FOX, you get cancellation. Take a look at the 20 shows that were in this same death slot and were subsequently cancelled in the last 10 years, or just ask Firefly and Wonderfalls. Friday nights on FOX have always been the place where shows go to die in pain. Also, Tim Minear is producing the show, and we all know that Fox and Minear do not compute.
Reason 3 : Slow on the UptaleLast time we were here discussing in length the Dollhouse, I was talking about something I called the “Fourth Media Dilemma”. Picking up for a second season Dollhouse, despite its atrocious ratings and FOX’s precedents regarding the death slot, would mean in some way recognizing the (good) iTunes and Hulu numbers of the show, and therefore officially giving some power to the Internet, or at least acknowledging it. I doubt FOX execs have the balls to give some credit to the Internet just yet and basically vet the Fourth Media in relation to a TV show’s fate. TV execs are known to be “slow on the uptake”, or at the very least having a hard time acknowledging new technologies and new forms of content. This is basically no different, if not greater than that. A renewal would mean showing faith in iTunes sales, and this is a one-way leap of faith. Is FOX really ready to take that step?
Reason 4 : Direct-to-DVDLast Thursday was announced that the “real” first (and only?) season finale of Dollhouse would only be available on DVD and not be shown on FOX, à la Middleman (although there the finale wasn’t actually produced, albeit available only in comic-book format). The official reason behind such a move is because FOX has already fulfilled its 13-episode order via the pilot’s reshooting. Tim Minear explained this better:
Because we scrapped the original pilot — and in fact cannibalized some of its parts for other eps — we really ended up with 12 episodes. But the studio makes DVD and other deals based on the original 13 number. So we created a standalone kind of coda episode. Which is the mythical new episode 13. The network had already paid for 13 episodes, and this included the one they agreed to let us scrap for parts. It does not include the one we made to bring the number back up to 13 for the studio side and its obligations.
If you believe in the show getting renewed, you’re going to show what looks like the best episode of the series and show it to the world as soon as you can.
If you don’t, on the other hand, no point in wasting your precious broadcast time for a dead show walking.
You’ve gotta admit though that FOX not even bothering to broadcast the final episode shows a certain lack of trust in Dollhouse‘s future to say the least.
Ultimately, my previous “renewal” reasons are still valid, and, depending on your dubiousness, you can side either way on Dollhouse‘s fate.
Hope is still not lost, and FOX might still have the balls to renew Dollhouse (and The Sarah Connor Chronicles for that matter).
Like always: Watch, Wait, and See.
