Ein sehr guter, detaillierter Blick auf die Freitags-Entscheidung gibt es beim (wie üblich grandiosen) TV by the Numbers:

I’ve written about buy-in before, and it’s very clear to me that for series television, with rare exception, plots and premises that require a high degree of suspension of disbelief do not become hits. And by “rare exception” I can think of only one show currently still on the air that meets the criteria: LOST. That’s all I have. One show. The premise of Dollhouse in short is that there is a group of people who have had their memories wiped clean and can be imprinted with all kinds of personalities to be use to do…various things in various situations. While there’s no doubt in my mind the premise can and will find an audience, there is significant doubt in my mind that it could be a large audience — regardless of what night it airs.

On Fridays it literally stands no chance of a huge audience. I see little opportunity for it to attract audiences as large as what CBS gets with its procedurals. Could it find 8 million viewers? Sure. Keep them? Not so sure. Could it pull a 2.5 or higher rating among 18-49 year olds? That’s definitely in the realm of possibility. Sure, it’s possible, but the question is, even if it does, given the cost for such shows is Fox better off economically doing that than trying to find some unscripted cheap content that will pull a 1.8 rating among 18-49 year olds?

Ziemlich trocken und nüchtern. Ich sehe allerdings wirklich die Geduld-Frage (Freitag sind niedrigere Erwartungen als sonst) als zentral für die Diskussion, und weise wieder darauf hin, dass jetzt Marketing alles ist.

... macht Fox das einzig richtige, was ihnen noch übrig bleibt: Die Promo-Maschine anwerfen. Denn sogar ein Freitag kann egal sein, wenn sie sich die Mühe machen, Dollhouse tatsächlich zu bewerben. Neben dem neuen Trailer, und der actionreichen Baseball-Promo, gibt es nun offenbar auch bei Promo-Compilations Dollhouse-Material:

the real reason i'm here is that the local fox station just played one of those compilation promos that feature all the fox shows with some kind of rock music in the background, all of them being current playing shows and one of the last scenes was from dollhouse. it featured eliza with two guys standing in front of her pointing guns at her. it made me feel that dollhouse was already on tv.

Sehr gut, sehr gut. Zwar lässt sich weder die Baseball- noch diese hier beschriebene Werbung auf Youtube finden, aber es zeigt sich schon deutlich: Fox verbuddelt das nicht. Sie fangen mit konkretem, produktorientiertem Marketing mehr als 3 Monate vor der Premiere an. Nichts vertreibt böse Berichterstattung über den Timeslot besser, als konkretes Material, über das die Leute reden und staunen können.

Nämlich deutsche Inkompetenz:

Bereits seit Mai 2008 ist die neue Fernsehserie «Dollhouse» für die Midseason angekündigt. Doch zunächst sollte das neue Josh Whedos-Format ab Februar 2009 montags um 20.00 Uhr zu sehen sein.

Okay, "Josh" ist ja wirklich kein seltener Fehler, aber "Josh Whedos"?! Seriously?

...und noch mehr Fragwürdigkeiten hierzu. gossi berichtete z.B. (mittlerweile nicht mehr, um Panik zu verhindern), dass Fox die Timeslot-Entscheidung nicht mal der Crew mitgeteilt hat, sondern via Twitter quasi in die Welt schickte.

Auf der anderen Seiten gibt es hier und hier verdammt gute Argumente, nicht komplett in Panik zu verfallen. Battlestar Galactica kehrt z.B. am Freitag um 10 auf Sci-Fi zurück zu der Zeit. Imagine die vielen Tahmoh-Fans, die ihn in seiner neuen Rolle sehen können am selben Abend und eine Stunde vor den letzten Folgen seiner Breakthroughs. Außerdem ist in der Schlüssel-Demografie gar nicht so schlecht. Worauf das alles hinausläuft mit Terminator, Dollhouse und BSG an einem Abend, ist natürlich: Geek-Night. Vielleicht spekuliert da wer bei Fox tatsächlich auf sowas.

Auf der anderen Seite gibt es solche Hiobsbotschaften:

On Thursday, it became obvious that the problems persist. Production on the seventh episode, which is supposed to begin Monday, is being delayed at least a day because the script was in such bad shape, according to a source who requested anonymity. The script for the sixth episode also had big problems, causing production delays that left the cast and crew very frustrated, the source said. Whedon, who directed the first episode, is hardly seen on set these days, focusing all of his attention to writing.

Und dass diese "inside source" nicht lügt, bestätigt sogar der Panikophobe gossi. Außerdem sagt unser alter Freund Televisionary auch nichts gutes:

Having seen the first two episodes of Dollhouse (and failing to be very impressed despite being a die-hard Whedon-ite), it makes sense that FOX would try to minimize any expectations and put Dollhouse on an evening where ratings are slim to begin with.

Was soll ich bloß denken, liebe Leute?

Freitag, der 13.? Jawoll. Fox ordnet alles um und lässt Terminator und Dollhouse am Freitag ins Rennen. Freitag.

Ich weiß nicht so recht Man beachte bitte diese drei Szenarien:

1)Fox is happy with how well "Fringe" has been doing and doesn't want to push its luck with a second sci-fi show in a plum timeslot adjacent to a hit like "24" or "Idol," particularly when the show has a concept that's much less straightforward than the one on "Fringe."

2)Fox and Joss have been having a lot of creative disagreements about the show (which Joss discussed here and here, and also here with me), and even though the show's new trailer looks all bright and shiny, they don't believe in the concept enough to place it in a piece of valuable real estate. So they're burying it along with "Sarah Connor," which has languished in fourth place in its Monday timeslot pretty much all season.

3)They do believe in the show, but also think it needs a more hard-core sci-fi show like "Sarah Connor" as a lead-in. And they also recognize that both shows are going to have niche audiences at best and are therefore placing them on a night where the bar for success is much lower.

Under any previous Fox administration, I wouldn't even consider Option 3, but Kevin Reilly is both a good guy and a champion of unusual material, so it's at least a possibility. The other two scenarios are much more likely, and either way, I'm not very optimistic for the future of either "Dollhouse" or "Sarah Connor."

Spoiler TV!

Und dieser Name. Ich hoffe in "Echoes" echot Echo "Echo".

End of Show hat sich "Gray Hour" angeschaut und lässt uns wissen worum's geht. Es ist einfach nur grand.

Edit zur Folgenkonfusion: Es ist sicher "Gray Hour", die erste Craft & Fain-Folge, was nicht sicher ist, ist ob "Gray Hour" als zweite oder als vierte Folge ins Rennen gehen wird. Das hier ist btw somit auch ein Review von "Gray Hour", nicht von "Ghost". Was auch heißt: Fox hat nicht den Piloten gescreent in Cannes.

Holt tief Luft Leute, das hier wird... ahem, historical:


(Direktlink)

Und redet über alles, aber auch über Dollhouse:

The more I research you the more I fall into these wormholes. You’re so anti-linearly prolific. How do you know when to pursue an idea and when to let it go?

They kind of decide for themselves. With Dollhouse, it all fell together really quickly. I talked to my wife about it and we were both clear that this was gonna happen. It’s very organic. You just wait for that to be, you wait for the thing that asserts itself. You’re never sure what it’s going to be. I thought I was going to do Wonder Woman for a long time.

Yeah, what happened with that? You’re so good at creating your own superhero woman characters, why would you want to take on one already in existence?

Because it was Wonder Woman. And I was interested in her, once I thought about what makes her tick, and I was interested in making my version of that work. But Warner Brothers was not interested in that work. It’s their ball. She’s a character who’s kind of elusive, she’s an old-fashioned superhero. At first I didn’t know what to do with her and then I realized, oh no, that’s what’s great about her—that she is an old-fashioned superhero and there is no place for her here. Or anyplace.

You write such rich characters that I feel like it’d be hard for some of the actors whom you’ve worked with to get a job and not have someone refer to the people they’ve already played. It’s not them as actors, it’s your strength as a writer. I look at photos of Eliza and go, “Oh, that’s Faith.”

Thanks. I want people to remember that, but at the same time if at the end of the first episode of Dollhouse you’re still saying that, we probably blew it.

It seems Dollhouse is a chance for Eliza to play off the idea that an actor is malleable by a director but fixed by a viewer, but in this role she’s looking for a sense of self.

That’s the whole point of the setting, is her sense of self and her assertion of herself and getting past what people—even me—expect of her... People have already accepted that she can be something else, so she’s already gotten past Faith a little bit. She has been sort of pigeonholed, though.

I wonder if there’s any bigger-picture stuff going on with the show, like some cosmic theory that this life is a Sims life, that there’s a real waking life somewhere else.

You know, um, not really. I don’t think we’re trapped in the Matrix, or trapped in the way that the Matrix actually means, where this isn’t really happening. But I do think that our idea of what life really means and what we are is different than what we’ve become. And how much of us is made up of what’s expected of us, how much of us is made up of our actual free will, is a lot to pin on people, especially in this country.

This show is a lot more of an exploration of the psyche, and the Buffy comic book is sort of the same way. Your stories have always been rooted in the mind but you’re going deep full-blast now.

Well, it’s what interests me. I get less and less subtle. It’s the thing I want to talk about: What are we? Why? And why aren’t we better? In what ways are we being held accountable for things we’re actually OK about, and in what ways are we being let off for things we really should be dealing with? Because we deal with repurposing sex and what people want from each other we see right upfront the scariest parts of us, and some of the nicer parts as well. What those are are not necessarily what you’d expect. And of course, you know, other people might disagree but we have a saying here on the show: There’s no judging in the Dollhouse.

Link

Aber auch der Rest ist fantastisch. Ist übrigens schon das zweite Mal dass "There’s no judging in the Dollhouse." von ihm gesagt wurde, dürfte wohl wirklich das derzeitige Motto am Set sein. Linkin Park nun auch zum zweiten Mal erwähnt. Terminator auch. Und hier als Bonus noch Vice' Beschreibungstext:

Fuck it. It’s time to come out of the closet. We were/are total nerds for Joss Whedon and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And now, in light of that bullshit new vampire series by Alan “Smells Like a” Ball on HBO (fuck you, sir, and fuck Six Feet Under too), we thought we’d talk to Whedon, the fucking OG when it comes to heavy, funny, complex, and even—yes—avant-garde television about vampires. Did you see the silent episode, “Hush”? Did you see the fucking musical episode? Did you see the Lars von Trier-worthy episode when Buffy’s mom died?

Anyway, there will never be another vampire show as intense as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Shit, there’s hardly ANY show as intense as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It consumes our doomed and forsaken souls to this very day. (Also let it here be noted that Joss Whedon’s Serenity is Vice publisher Erik Lavoie’s favorite movie. He’s seen it like a thousand times. What the fuck that is about, we have no idea.)

This past summer we also became obsessed with Whedon’s hilarious online musical Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, in which Neil Patrick “Doogie” Harris plays a novice supervillain desperately trying to get accepted into the Evil League of Evil. (Download it from iTunes for five bucks right now!) And now, now, we are peeing ourselves waiting for Joss’s new TV show, Dollhouse, starring second-string Vampire Slayer Faith—oops, Eliza Dushku—as a human “doll” whose memory can be wiped clean and then imprinted with a new persona to be hired out for different sinister missions. It sounds really weird, which is exactly the direction Whedon says he’s going in. Will it be better than Buffy? Fuck no. But what is? The Wire and The Sopranos are the only things that ever have been, basically.

Variety hat News:

Jack Bauer's long-delayed seventh day finally hits the airwaves with a two-night premiere on Jan. 11 and 12.

Pre-empted last year due to the writer's strike, "24" returns for two hours on both nights before settling into its regular time period on Monday, Jan. 19 at 9 p.m.

Und:

Fox hasn't yet officially confirmed whether the Joss Whedon frosh series "Dollhouse" will bow on Jan. 19 at 8 p.m. As originally announced at its May upfront presentation, "Dollhouse" is expected to be paired with "24" on Monday nights starting in January.

Hier gibt's nen super Bericht, was uns Dollhouseianern natürlich auffällt:

The three Whedon brothers, Maurissa Tancharoen, and a man dressed in black with a pattern of neon lights and a black face mask, took to the stage. The masked man revealed himself to be Nathan Fillion, aka Captain Hammer, Corporate Tool. The crowd went wild. I love Nathan Fillion, he’s hilarious, friendly, and a total ham. He obviously loves the spotlight, so it’s good thing that the spotlight loves him too.

His Firefly/Serenity costar Alan Tudyk was also in the audience, dressed as priest, chatting with one of the actresses from Dollhouse, Olivia Williams.

Olivia Williams wird also offenbar langsam aber sicher in den Whedon-Pool gesogen. Sehr gut, sehr gut!

Edit: Ein Video, wo ich kaum ein Wort verstehe, gibt's hier. Ein weiteres gutes write-up da.

Ich weiß aus Erfahrung dass Future on Fox alle Kommentare moderiert, also erst nach Prüfung freischaltet. Umso verwunderlicher, dass dann sowas tatsächlich durchkommt:

i wonder if the Gay Mafia at fox will take their cock outta Joss’s business and let him do his thing… or will they get that jealous of his talents again and kill the show.

Weirdest-Negativity-of-The-Week-Award!