Joss' problem stems more from not having pilot episodes that grab you and provide you with the appropriate backstory. What is needed for a tv show of his to succeed is the ability to sit your grandmother down and show her the first episode and she'd be able to understand what's going on.
He also needs a very simple premise. Valley girl fights demons. Vampire in Los Angeles seeks redemption, etc. That's the problem with Dollhouse. You can't condense the premise into one single sentence. And that means it's too complicated. TV shows can't be overly complicated. Yes, I think the premise to Dollhouse is interesting, but I do have my concerns with how it will last as a tv show.
Joss Whedon can write very good shows. The problem is that more often than not you need to see at least 3 episodes to be convinced that it's worth watching, understand what's going on, and decide you like it. For instance, I watched Firefly in order, and it took me 3 episodes to figure out what in all that was holy was going on. Going back, I now totally understand. The first time, though, it didn't help.
Take, for instance, something like the pilot episode for Star Trek: The Next Generation. It's ungodly boring for most Trek fans, but if you'd never seen Trek before, you could watch it and when it was over you would know what was going on! You'd get a feel for the characters and you'd have an idea as to the point of the show. It was very straightforward. Joss has the unfortunate tendency of creating all sorts of plot twists and making it hard to understand. While plot twists work out great once you've gotten hooked, you're still left with needing the hook to catch some fish.
Another example is LOST. (I've only seen the first season and part of the second) It's a fairly straightforward episode, and the gist of it is simple. Survivors of a plane crash get lost on an island and try to survive. Needless to say, plot twists and curve balls do come at you, but it gives you a chance to figure out at least some sense of what's up and what's down.
If Joss can do that, then he can have a tv show that will sell. His other problem is not doing much in way of promoting it. He promotes it amongst his fanbase, sure, and that's well and good. He's got a strong base, and he knows it. However, the growth of his fanbase comes from grassroots, not from on high. He needs to start doing more franchising with it. Star Trek was on the air originally for 3 seasons, and it was cancelled, and off the air for several years before they started making a movie. Yet it's had 3 spin-offs (well, technically four 😛), and now 11 movies! Over 40 years later, it's still popular, and it's popularity is a result of the franchise. There books, games, costumes, t-shirts, action figures, you name it. Conventions were encouraged a *ton* and now Star Trek conventions occur all over the place.
Now, I realise that there are Buffy books and action figures, but they're not in production really right now (at least action figures). And they were never given the media attention that they needed in order for it to do well as a franchise. Take a look at Lord of the Rings for another example of something gaining popularity due to a franchise. They re-created jewelry, props, whatnot and made ungodly amounts of money. It's all in the marketing and the franchise.
Joss has managed to sell Fox into doing 13 episodes of Dollhouse. So he's not bad at sales pitch. What he needs to work on is selling the rest of the world. And internet presence does not equate to the number of viewers. Americans can relate to this in Ron Paul's candidacy for the presidency during the Republican primary. He had a huge following online, but voter turnout did not reflect the numbers of "supporters." It's the same with many other things, and as such viewer turnout cannot be relied upon to be the same as/similar to the online presence.
What Joss really needs to do to get things to work, such as Firefly and Dollhouse which do have promise!, is to work on his marketing and franchising. I can practically guarantee that if he does this, he will see a VAST improvement in sales, viewer turnout, and the like. This is show business. He needs to sell what he's offering to the people who could make up his audience. He can't just leave it up to the fans (and the fans *do* do a good job... look at Firefly dvd sales... they produced a movie, which, granted, did not do that well in the theaters, but the dvd sales from that have risen a ton). Now, I'm not saying Joss doesn't do anything, but I do think he needs to do more, or do things differently.
Wow, that came out a lot longer than I intended. Oh well. Here's to Joss and future productions!
