If Joss brought back Firefly in 2013....

POSTED BY: OPPYH
UPDATED: Saturday, September 10, 2011 00:54
VIEWED: 19781
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BRUCEPLUTO

Monday, August 8, 2011 2:09 PM

I’d be there in a heartbeat!

Of course I wouldn’t want substitutes for any of the characters. Either the actors that started the characters get back onboard or that individual is written out of the show (Joss can do it). It might be painful at first, like cutting off a testicle but I’d get use to the idea. Still new characters could be written in. Still like to see Badger and Saffron and even Niska make guest appearances( love those guys) I’m willing to superglue my tv knob so that it couldn’t be turned from the station.

Also I’m putting up a new fan-fic shortly that allows the characters of Ron Glass and Alan Tudyk to reappear after what happened to them in the BDM (Damn you Joss, Damn you all to hell!)

Sorry, lost my focus a moment…..anyway check it out. It’s titled “Cowboys & Alliance” and yes I’ve taken liberties to pun the title.

See ya, BPZ

ZEEK

Monday, August 8, 2011 2:28 PM

I'd be excited and worried all at the same time. I guess Dollhouse has me worried that Joss has lost his touch. Maybe he'd go back to Firefly and wouldn't be able to conjure up the same magic. I don't think any new episode could live up to that much hype. Pretty sure it would feel disappointing at first.

BYTEMITE

Monday, August 8, 2011 2:54 PM

Dollhouse was more of an issue with the limitations of the central premise and executive meddling than it was bad writing.

And it did pick up once the myth arc picked up and central characters started to develop personality, which should have happened a lot earlier. But tv networks like their filler episodes.

GWEK

Monday, August 8, 2011 4:27 PM

Apologies for the digression but...

I respectfully disagree re: DOLLHOUSE. At least in part. I agree that a huge part of the problem WAS the limitation of the central premise, but since Joss designed that central premise, he doesn't get off the hook. Joss should have known better. DOLLHOUSE would probably have made in interesting book. But TV series? Mediocre at best.

I think another problem was where DOLLHOUSE fell in Joss's history. This was his return to TV after he had seen his beloved FIREFLY killed. TWICE. And after he had sat around and eaten bon-bons and watched too much BATTELSTAR GALACTICA for too many years. (Honestly, I know that Joss loves BSG, and I know that a lot of you guys do, too, but it's soo unrelentingly grim and un-fun that I think Joss watched so much that it killed his sense of comedic timing for a while. Anyway...).

I have likened BUFFY (and by extension ANGEL) to Joss's first love in the past, and FIREFLY is clearly is true love/soulmate. DOLLHOUSE was his tentative attempt to get back in the dating pool after his true love/soulmate was murdered. Of COURSE it was a wreck.

Y'all can blame the executives and their "meddling" and love of "episodic television" (Huh. What a surprise, that executives in the episodic television industry would want episodes!), but I think it's a mistake to let Joss get away clean.

On the upside, he seems to be in a better place these days... so, here's to the future!

www.stillflying.net: "Here's how it might have been..."

BYTEMITE

Monday, August 8, 2011 4:41 PM

Eh, Joss did Dr. Horrible before Dollhouse, which, ending aside, had a lot of funny parts, so I don't think that was the problem.

As for the central premise of Dollhouse, you know, sometimes an artist makes something that doesn't look so good. Maybe they got the proportions wrong, maybe they made the composition just way too cluttered, or simple. But even in a piece that isn't their best, you can still see elements that suggest their skill as an artist. Like maybe it still has some good shading technique, or wow, look at the detail work on the oil painted velvet and embroidery.

Dollhouse is like that but for writing. If you look at the components of what Joss wrote, there's still good stuff in there, and he's still a good writer. There's character development, some of it good and not out of nowhere, there's humour, with Victor and Sierra there's a bit of the heartwarming and the horrific tragic backstory.

It's not letting Joss get away with anything to be objective. It's easy to look at the whole of something and say, "well, this sucks" for one or two problems. Harder to dig a little deeper and ask what works and what doesn't.

BYTEMITE

Monday, August 8, 2011 4:49 PM

For example, some people really hate that Firefly has so much overt Western themes in it. That's part of the central premise, they'd say Joss made a mistake. But there's good stuff in Firefly, right?

So maybe Firefly fans look at Dollhouse, expecting some of the warmth in Buffy and Dollhouse, and we don't find it right away. That's a mistake, we say, and maybe it is, because Dollhouse had trouble appealing to both Joss' established fanbase, and also to the mainstream.

But maybe he also had his reasons for writing it that way. And that's something I care about almost as much as execution, so long as the choices made for the art have a meaning.

GWEK

Monday, August 8, 2011 6:12 PM

I sort of think you have to put DOCTOR HORRIBLE on the side of the timeline, because it came about in a completely different way. DOCTOR HORRIBLE was basically a vanity project that he did with a bunch of his buddies. I was a HOBBY project. It just happened to be successful and pretty awesome.

BUFFY, ANGEL, FIREFLY, DOLLHOUSE, AVENGERS... those are WORK projects. Different mindset.

In any event, now, don't get me, I'm not saying Joss is a bad writer. But DOLLHOUSE was a TERRIBLE concept from almost every writing angle. Sure, the episodes were better with Joss at the helm than they would have been with someone else, but they were still crap, and Joss ignored not one but MULTIPLE key writing rules:

1) Sympathetic characters (largely missing from DOLLHOUSE, especially the early episodes)

2) Compelling emotional journey (DOLLHOUSE has some interesting stuff, but much of it is intellectual, if not downright philosophical... and that makes for weak tea for a TV or movie)

3) External conflict that can be demonstrated visually and dramatically (Again, virtually absent, especially from the first half of Season One)

I reiterate: the premise would probably have made an interesting book, but a TV show centering around the philosophical issues of identity and humanity, featuring a cast of largely unsympathetic characters paired with a group of non-characters who are plot devices (the dolls themselves), involved in a conflict that is often internal and doesn't really get rolling until late in season one is, frankly, a crap premise.

I agree with you that it would be a mistake for people to dismiss FIREFLY because they didn't like the Western overtones (or, for that matter, dismiss BUFFY because they could take the idea seriously), but in FIREFLY and BUFFY (and even ANGEL), Joss gave us a sympathetic cast of characters we could bond with, and sent them on a heart-wrenching journey of discovery fraught with both external and internal conflict (with the internal often MIRRORED in the external--and that is the true brilliance of BtVS especially).

DOLLHOUSE? Failure on almost every key element.

When I say it failed, I don't mean that it failed because the idea of the Dollhouse wasn't interesting. It failed because the CHARACTERS weren't sympathetic/empathetic. The CONFLICT wasn't interesting. (In both cases, these started to change late in season one, and definitely in season two... but that's too late. If you're show isn't good by, say, the third or fourth episode, you've lost most of your audience and you're not getting them back).

You can take the biggest load of crap on television, but if people care about the characters and the journey, people will tune in.

As the writer and creator, Joss--and not any meddling executives--failed to do that.

www.stillflying.net: "Here's how it might have been..."

OLDGUY

Monday, August 8, 2011 6:15 PM

well, by 2013 the Castle series run should be over and Nathan may be looking for work again.

I hate to think I have to wait that long but if it does come about, there ought to be a sea of fans standing at the gates during the contract signing letting whatever silly execs understand that if they screw with Joss on this go-round that somebody is gonna get their Big damn Azzes kicked.

BYTEMITE

Monday, August 8, 2011 6:30 PM

I don't disagree with the assessment that the characters started out unsympathetic, and that it lacked external conflict early on, but I guess perhaps I don't see those as deal breakers.

It was a difficult premise, and maybe even a bad premise, but I disagree that it failed in EVERY way.

Often times a character will start out as unsympathetic and GAIN sympathy. That's not a sign of bad writing. Choosing to make the whole cast unsympathetic at first is risky ground, but it's actually been done successfully before, like in every crime drama show you might care to name.

As for the external conflict thing, I'd argue that the filler episode problem was the major cause of the external conflict not being introduced sooner (before your Four episode limit was up). I also think that if Joss's original pilot (Epitaph One) might have aired first, whatever flaws it might have had, it was a more intriguing basis for the plot of the show. We see the Apocalypse, and then we open the next few episodes and rest of the series showing how we might have gotten there.

Though to be fair to your argument, I seem to recall that Joss himself chose not to air Epitaph One at the last minute because he got nervous.

Anyway, I think there's been pages of this argument already, and this thread is about firefly, and I'm not looking to rain on anyone's speculative Firefly might come back parade.

ZEEK

Monday, August 8, 2011 8:23 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by GWEK:
BUFFY, ANGEL, FIREFLY, DOLLHOUSE, AVENGERS... those are WORK projects. Different mindset.

Don't forget Cabin in the Woods which has some decent press around it. I'm hopeful that it's going to be a pretty good movie.

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