New Shows I May Watch This Fall

In the eighties and early nineties, there were a few writer-producers who were well known for creating network hits: Stephen Bochco (Doogie Howser, M.D., L.A. Law), Steven J. Cannell (The A Team, 21 Jump Street), and David E. Kelley (Ally McBeal, The Practice, Boston Legal). However, in the aughties there are some writer-producers who have developed a fan base for themselves, not just their shows. This practically guarantees viewership of any new series they produce--at least for the first episode. Personally, I am interested in checking out three new shows based solely on their creator: True Blood by Alan Ball, Dollhouse by Joss Whedon, and Fringe by J.J. Abrams.

Alan Ball wrote and directed American Beauty, then followed it up with one of my favorite TV shows, Six Feet Under. Who knew that a show about a family of funeral directors could be such a compelling show about life? Each character was exquisitely crafted, endearing and frustrating and familiar. With his new show, True Blood, Ball has adapted the Southern Vampire novel series to the small screen. It has one premise--a new blood substitute has enabled vampires to stop feeding on people and instead live among them.

The last time I saw a sci-fi allegory on integrating minorities was in the early nineties 1989 with Alien Nation which I liked even in its short run. I am a little concerned however--the danger with some sci-fi is that the underlying themes overrun the character development (Star Trek: The Next Generation which I loved at the time, seems so "it's a very special episode" to me these days). Joss Whedon, who broke ground for vampires on TV with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, managed to strike the right balance, so I know it is possible not to let your actors drown in theme. And although sci-fi is new for Ball, if anyone manage to make sure the characters shine through, it's him. The show premiered on HBO last night and since I've disconnected cable, it will be a while before I see this, more than enough time to let the critics weigh in.


Speaking of Joss Whedon, let's move on to his new show Dollhouse. It's not set to air till January 2009 on Fox and in July, it was announced they were filming a new first episode, so I'm a little nervous for it's prospects. The show will be about "mind wiped" operatives who are imprinted with new personalities for every mission.


While Buffy explored themes of teens maturing into adults, Whedon seems to be treading into Battlestar Galactica and Blade Runner territory here--what is the nature of self and a soul if memories can simply be created and transplanted? But if that sounds too deep, also look for much ass-kicking courtesy of star Eliza Dushku, and in a possible ploy to attract BSG viewers, Tahmoh Penikett.

Finally, there is Fringe from J.J. Abrams, also on Fox. I'll be honest: Abrams pisses me off as often as he intrigues me. He doesn't seem to be known for themes so much as for twists, especially on Lost, and when taken to the extreme, it's to the detriment of the series. With Fringe, he heads into X-Files territory. The thing that was frustrating with both Lost and The X-Files was this sense that the writers were leading us on a wild goose chase and had no idea how to resolve all their loose threads. Sure, each episode was interesting, but how were they going to wrap up the story arc? Things have gotten better on Lost since they gave it an end date but during it's third season it was living of the pure good will built up in the first two seasons; many viewers weren't as patient as me and left. Fringe may have even less time to establish itself tomorrow with it's premiere.

The Onion Takes a Dig at Whedon via Sorkin

The Onion recently posted an article,
"Aaron Sorkin Announces New 'West Wing' Animated Series At SorCon" with a cartoon versions of Jimmy Smits, Alan Alda, and Bradley Whitford in a fictional "West Wing: The Santos Administration"

The article is obviously parodying Joss Whedon's comic "Buffy: Season 8" and his pilot for "Buffy: The Animated Series, as well as his following of Whedonites. It's also got a bit of George Lucas thrown in ("The costs of live-action production restricted me to a set only slightly larger than the actual White House and an ensemble cast of under 15 actors. But animation technology will enable us to provide fans with extended 40-minute walk-and-talks, digitally compressed dialogue for faster delivery, and a cast of over 70 main characters. My vision will finally be presented in its truest, most uncompromised form.").

By the way, would you like to see The Santos Years for real? If Obama gets elected, you just might, according to this video from Slate.

I Called It! Dr. Horrible Available on Hulu!!!

Last week Wednesday I did a post on what might be the next step in distribution for Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog after it's limited release on the internet earlier this month. In short, I said it would be a good idea for Whedon to put it on Hulu, at least for a time, so more people could discover it rather than only releasing it on DVD and iTunes. Well, it's up there today as the featured program as soon as you arrive! Here's the best 42-minute web musical about an aspiring super-villain ever created, featuring Neal Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day, with limited commercial interruptions between Acts I, II and III (hit Play, or click to view full screen).



Update: The L.A. Times says this will eventually also be licensed to MySpace, and eventually Yahoo!, AOL and others. And NewTeeVee says it will be available for just four months on Hulu.

How Many Fans Does Dr. Horrible have? L.A. Times Breaks the Story

During the week-long run of Joss Whedon's straight-to-the-internet super villain musical Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, there have been numerous articles about the plot line, but also about whether this could possibly be a new model for original shows. For those in the later category, the big question on everyone's mind was viewership--just how many fans does Whedon have? Blogger Jeff McManus recently speculated on how much the show, which was available free and streaming for only a week, will bring in via iTunes sales and how much star Neil Patrick Harris will make from the venture. His estimates of iTunes downloaders ranged from 100,000 to one million--a pretty wide range-- but we finally have some hard figures.

Reporter David Sarno got the traffic data from Whedon today and published it on his blog at the LA Times. In short:

Act One: 1,149,846 streams (but it was down part of first day, due to heavy traffic)
Act Two: 625,552 streams
Act Three: 427,785 streams

Act One was up for six days, Act Two for four, and Act Three was up for two days. I would say the numbers for act three are the most reflective of the number of unique fans who tuned in (speaking as someone who viewed act one and two a dozen times to pacify myself while waiting for the final act).

In his blog, Sarno compares DHSAB to other YouTube hits this week that have been up for comparable durations. Depending on how you look at it, it's on par, especially if you look at daily average for all three acts. Two of the top three biggest YouTube hits were associated with movies: the College movie trailer and fan reactions to The Dark Knight opening. Sarno believes these examples were successful due to corporate promotion, and is quick to mention that DHSAB's success is more impressive in that it was marketed by word of mouth among the Whedonites.

If that's the case though, I think the most apt comparison is to Smosh, which is definitely not corporate and yet had the third most popular video last week. Smosh consists of two college students, Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox, who amassed a huge following ever since they posted a Pokemon lip-dub to YouTube in 2005 (they had to remove it due to copyright issues, but you can see it here). They have since posted 52 random sketches of themselves and have 440,285 subscriptions as of today, the most of any Comedian's channel on YouTube.

Sarno said Smosh's latest video got 550,000 hits in two days. Given that this was produced by two dudes and that the video was just a trailer for an upcoming video (yes, even their videos have trailers), person for person and buck for buck Smosh has done a lot better than Whedon, who used dozens of cast and crew to produce DHSAB and spent in the low six-figures.

How is it possible that two boys could have more fans than an established player like Whedon? While Whedon may have a couple of hit shows under his belt, what he doesn't have is an established channel like Smosh does on YouTube, with thousands of subscribers that will be alerted to every move he makes--80 percent of the views on Smosh's latest video could be accounted for by those subscriptions. Granted, Whedon does have a dedicated fan base over at Whedonesque, but there is nothing like the convenience of being alerted automatically every time your fave auteur posts a new project. Along those lines, it would have been better if Horrible was a series that could build a subscriber base over time, but the WGA strike is what allowed all these actors and writers to be available, so the point is moot.

Despite similar-sized fanbases, Whedon will probably make more money than Padilla and Hecox, who subsist on Google ads and t-shirt sales. One DHSAB revenue stream is the $3.99 download at iTunes which is the only place you can still (legally) get the entire series since it was pulled off of drhorrible.com Sunday night. I think Jeff McMannus' first figure of 100,000 downloading fans is more accurate than one million, and based on his estimates, Joss has probably at least made his money back. No doubt some of Whedon's fan base will also pony up for the soon-to-be-released DVD, on which he plans to feature "Commentary: The Musical." Smosh's fans may watch free vids online, but I doubt they would ever pay for them.

Might Whedon also re-netcast Dr. Horrible, this time with ads, at a site like Hulu? DHSAB used the Hulu player merely to embed streaming video on their site, but normally Hulu is a destination in and of itself, a video portal for networks like Fox, NBC and major movie studios. As a portal, it has repeat visitors across a number of genres, something that Whedon could use to find new viewers, so I think it would be a wise move to engage Hulu if he's not already thinking about it. His hardcore fans have probably already gone to iTunes and will buy the DVD. Hulu would allow new watchers who would watch some ads rather than pay for it to casually check it out, perhaps as a recommendation after watching a clip of star Neil Patrick Harris in How I Met Your Mother.

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Getcher Dr. Horrible While It's Free!

Why am I still awake? The Dark Knight had me up, then after surfing mindlessly, I realized the third and final act of Dr. Horrible was posted.

In a way, it's a shame it debuted in three parts, because the best songs and humor were in Act II. But how else would it build such buzz?

While you'll be able to buy this on iTunes after Sunday and on DVD, be sure to watch it free this weekend at www.drHorrible.com.

Oh yeah, here's NPR's report on the series with commentary from futurist Paul Saffo.

Once More, with Neil Patrick Harris

Aaaah! Thanks to the Writer's Guild of America going on strike, we have another musical from Joss Whedon, who first showed off his musical comedy chops on a very special episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And you won't need a TV, cable, or a ticket to see it! On July 15, part one of the three-part miniseries Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, starring Neil Patrick Harris as wannabe mad scientist Billy and Nathan Fillion as doltish do-gooder Captain Hammer, debuts at www.drhorrible.com.*

Matt Roush of TV Guide wrote a nice little article about how the internet musical came to be, and Joss himself writes about how he developed this during the WGA strike at the musical website. Billy, aka Dr. Horrible, develops a crush on a girl at the laundromat, only to have her swept away by his stupid interloper nemesis Captain Hammer. Don't you hate it when that happens?

I can't wait!

Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

*Update: At the time that I wrote this, I had no idea who Felicia Day was and did not bother to mention her in this post--big mistake. Day partially inspired Whedon to create a straight-to-the-internet distribution model with her online series The Guild, which she wrote and acted in. The woman is a polymath--went to UT Austin at 16 to major in violin performance, then math. And she can sing!

What Jeopardy Champ Thinks of Joss Whedon's Firefly

Ken Jennings is best remembered as the longest running Jeopardy champ who won $2.52 million in a record 74 games. He also happens to be a darn funny writer (I'd say "d*mn" but I don't want to offend his Mormon sensibilities). Here's a post from his blog on how he was recently introduced to the cult hit Firefly, what he thinks of it, and why he confuses it with Keri Russell's show Felicity.

Incidentally, the leads of Felicity and Firefly have starred together in a movie that came out last year. I know it's not time to play One Degree yet, but does anyone know what movie I'm referring to?