Joss Whedon is one of my favorite pop culture figures. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Firefly” are two of my top-20 shows of all-time, and I think “Angel” and “Dollhouse” are grossly underrated. (Well, at least season two of “Dollhouse” is.) Serenity, love it. Toy Story and Speed, obviously. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, a classic. I’m as big of a fan of the guy as you can be — but I think it’s time for people like me to shut the f*ck up.
With The Avengers coming out tomorrow, Twitter (and every magazine and website in the world) is abuzz with Joss talk. Most of the time, that’s fine, fascinating even — it’s about Joss’s rejected Batman script or upcoming adaptation of Much Ado about Nothing. But then, for no particular reason, you have a fan who pipes in about Fox canceling “Firefly” or how “Dollhouse” wasn’t given the chance it deserved. Basically, a lot of anti-Fox crap. This is extremely aggravating. Yes, it sucks that “Firefly” didn’t last more than 11 episodes on TV (and three more on DVD) and that it was aired out of order, but LET IT GO, PEOPLE. It’s been a decade. No more of this:
His four shows have aired for a total of 15 seasons (nearly 300 episodes) over the last 15 years. Most showrunners would KILL for that. What’s even more remarkable is that none of them have anything close to a mainstream premise. A show about a blonde teen named Buffy who kills vampires, with a British mentor who she never falls in love with…for seven seasons? That’s amazing. And now that the critically adored Avengers is going to make more cats than Spike could ever dream of (“Buffy” reference), Joss’s hyperventilating fanbase (arguably TV’s most devoted) can’t play the victim card anymore. “If only someone would give Joss a chance,” I’ve heard many a-fan say (me too, at one point). Well, now “someone” has, so let us never discuss how “Firefly” and “Dollhouse” were screwed over ever again (they were never going to be hits), and how Joss never gets a break, and just enjoy the damn shows. Also: Dawn’s not that bad.
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For the life of me I can’t understand why the 3D re-release of a forgettable Uma Thurman-Ralph Fiennes vehicle is getting so much press.
Know why Firefly got cancelled? Cause it sucked ass and no one liked it. Straight white men like to claim it to be “feminist” too, which makes me want to throw up all over this piece of shit’s face.
Canceled has one L, dingus.
Unless you’re british…
Or like to be pretentious. Like a friend of mine who’s never spent more than 3 days in England, but uses the British spelling of words – e.g. “honour” “favour” and “s” instead of “z” in relevant words – in everything he does.
Now THAT’s how to troll!
Yeah, your “friend.” You’re not fooling anyone, Migouel Sanches.
Firefly has a fair amount of race problems that fandom likes to neglect as well. Never liked it and never liked 95% of Whedon’s body of work.
Also, I’m surprised that a) this comment is even here and b) Whedonites haven’t dogpiled on it. +1
You had me up until the “Dawn” part.
A nice rack can compensate for a number of sins.
A skinny 14 year old boy’s rack is nice?
The two paychecks she cashed for her Firefly episodes were just enough to keep Christina Hendricks from doing soft-core work*, and for that I must condemn Joss Whedon. Otherwise, I loved the show.
*Dramatization. May not have happened.
But the Internet was invented so people could complain about anything and everything
Yeah, Dawn’s screams were pretty piercing – but then her legs grew long and she became incredibly hot, so all was forgiven.
I don’t get Whedon, which is weird, because I usually like that sort of thing. Firefly is the exception. I do like it, but the constant bitching about its cancellation kind of ruins it for me. Which is silly, but it is what it is.
Whatever, BRING BACK PUSHING DAISIES.
TERRIERS!!!
ARRESTED DEV….oh yeah.
Full support, Fox has greenlit a lot of the batshit crazy stuff it I like and as it turns out a lot of it wasn’t his.
I’ll go ahead and say it, “Firefly” is grossly overrated by Whedon’s fans. It’s a decent show, but it isn’t that good. And it tends to trip over its own inconsistencies. I can buy into the idea that the outer planets aren’t as sophisticated as the inner planets; what I can’t buy into is the idea that people, in the future, will leave Earth, colonize planets billions of light years away, and then revert to 19th-century American West technology and lifestyles.
It was a good show, not a great one. Much more deserving shows didn’t even get the chance that “Firefly” did. And he even got to make a full-length feature film to wrap it up. Get over it already.
For me, eventually Angel surpassed Buffy, but that’s due to getting better at tightening up storylines and the like. Experience. Dollhouse was good, but Eliza only wore that S&M outfit in one episode, which is an epic mistake. Firefly was very good, cancelled too early, then Serenity kind of redeemed that for me. I mean, seriously, how often does someone get to take a FAILED series and make a movie. The powers that be (not the ones in ANGEL, I mean the big wigs) made up for their lack of foresight with greenlighting the movie. So for me all is forgiven.
Season five of Angel is goddamn perfect. Even (especially?) the puppet episode.
I’m a fan of Whedon mostly through his comics writing, but yeah, I agree with this. Folks, Freaks and Geeks only lasted one season, and Paul Feig and Judd Apatow are still doing pretty well. Whedon will be fine.
Did you seriously say, over the internet, “Stop Complaining”?
Should we stop exaggerating too? Be clean and friendly? Wear pants?
Pffffft.
What the hell is The Avengers?
A popular British Spy Television Series in the 1960′s that incorporated sci-fi and fantasy elements and starred Patrick Macnee as a prim and proper British secret agent with who was partnered with a rotating cast of attractive British Women.
Thanks Evil Twin. Is it available on Netflix?
Yeah, I never got the “Joss Whedon will get his chance!” argument. He freaking helped write Toy Story before Buffy was ever on TV.
Also, agreed with the Dawn comment, but I said before and I’ll say it again, she will always be Nona F. Mecklenberg in my heart.
A small part of me is bummed out that the Avengers is probably going to do well, even though I want to see it. I suppose I can still hold out hope that eventually he does a show for one of the cable channels because I think he’d go an interesting direction without the constraints of network tv. (Avengers doesn’t count, as it’s a superhero movie for a major studio which is the movie equivalent of network tv.)
And I can’t get uppity about the cancellation of Firefly because I didn’t even know it existed when it was on. Can’t help but think lack of marketing had a good bit to do with why it did so poorly. That and it was admittedly fairly weird for network tv.
Dawn is SO that bad.
can we just talk about how good cabin in the woods was?
that tweet pisses me off cause Firefly wasn’t canceled cause it was entertaining and good; it was canceled because no one freaking watched it.
and out of all fanboys, whedon fanboys, are the worst. like britta worst.
Call me an idiot, but what was Whedon’s role with Speed? Never heard of it previously and don’t see it on IMDB, holder of all crucial information.
He’s uncredited, but supposedly, he spruced up the dialogue. Think how bad it must have been before he got to it…