Poll: The Best of Whedon's Work

[RJ Dalton]

His stuff was an upward climb till Dr. Horrible. Now anything he touches is horrible.

Don't anybody forget that he also did Alien Resurrection.

But I personally never liked anything by Joss Whedon that I've seen. All his characters are pretty much the same because he has no sense of characterization whatsoever. Especially the female characters.
I've heard Firefly was good from people who agree with me about the rest of his stuff, but I've never taken the time to actually see it. It was canceled long before I heard about it and I've never had the money, or the inclination to get the DVDs. Perhaps that makes me unqualified to make a vote based on all his work, since that seems to be the one everybody says is his best, but my personal experience with Whedon has been one of disappointment and disgust.

 

[darthcendiarygrenade]

Firefly.

It's the best mainly because of Fox, they enforced brevity, so it didn't have time to run out of steam. It's a perverse positive that killing it early made it good, but it did, there was no time for it to get stale, it also meant the story had to resolve itself.

Perhaps that argument could be made...but in the middle of the FIRST GORRAM SEASON!?

 

[darthcendiarygrenade]

Dr. Horrible is perhaps one of my favorite things ever. I consider it Joss' best work.

It is followed closely by Buffy for me. But Buffy has always lost points with me because of season 4 and some of the sillier story lines in the later seasons.

But "Once More, With Feeling!" is one of the most fantastic things in the entire series!

 

[x-machina]

Other than dollhouse they are all pretty damn good. But, without a doubt Firefly was the best.

I love almost everything Joss has made but I still don't have any faith in the avengers movie.

 

[ramboondiea]

firefly is so going to win this poll, i mean people are actually throwing money at people so it can continue

 

[Cheery Lunatic]

I thought Buffy was terrible, but I did enjoy Dr. Horrible and Firefly.
I've yet to see Dollhouse or Angel, so I'll have to reserve judgement on that.

 

[Paddy3115]

Needed to post on this, Firefly's by far my favourite, but dollhouse I've never actually seen, worth watching?

 

[BabySinclair]

Never seen Buffy and only a little of Angel but Dr. Horrible was brilliant, Dollhouse was pretty good, but yeah, Firefly... enough said except that the poll is really for the #2 spot

 

[Mimssy]

Buffy is one of my favorite shows ever.

 

[Catalyst6]

Firefly, followed by Doctor Horrible. I still sing the showtunes from that movie.

 

[PureChaos]

the only ones i've seen are Buffy and Firefly. of those 2, Firefly

 

[fix-the-spade]

Perhaps that argument could be made...but in the middle of the FIRST GORRAM SEASON!?

True, but at least the whole series got filmed.

 

[pandasaw]

Choosing them is trying to choose a favorite child (I chose Angel though). Everything Whedon does is awesome. The Avengers couldn't be in better hands.

 

[pandasaw]

Needed to post on this, Firefly's by far my favourite, but dollhouse I've never actually seen, worth watching?

Yes but it takes a while to get into. The first episode was barely above average. I read from some other source (sorry I that I can't recall it) that Fox screwed with the first episode (not as bad as the way Firefly was screwed but it was still screwed).

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

Dollhouse was more coherent and well paced (but the latter was in part thanks to fox cancelling it instead of letting Whedon ramble on aimlessly and endlessly) and had a single underlying focal point.

While I do like Dollhouse and think it's underappreciated (largely because it already lost most of its audience in the first few episodes before it actually got good), I only partly agree with this. It was very well paced and developed its characters and ideas rather well in an interesting way...but only during the second half of the first season and the first half of the second season.

It struggled a lot through the first five episodes to figure out what it was trying to do with itself, and it was somewhat generic and didn't get most people's attention as a result. It didn't start living up to its potential until after that, but once it got going, it was great. That carried over to the second season, but when it got canceled in the middle of it and they had to abruptly wrap up the plot somehow in the space of a few episodes, it all fell apart again and was ridiculously rushed and unsatisfying at the end (with the exception of Epitaph One/Two, which is great).

When it was good, it was very good, and it was a really interesting idea that they only got to scratch the surface of. I just wish the beginning and end had been as good as the middle. Seeing Enver Gjokaj as Victor as Fran Kranz as Topher was almost enough by itself to justify the entire series, though. I think that's the point where I realized how awesome he is and how many different characters he'd played without them feeling out of place and wished the show had focused more on him.

 

[viranimus]

I dont know, I thought the higher pressure to wrap it all up after knowing the series was canceled yielded a better show. For example , the whole Arcane story arc in season two. Had the show not been cancelled that would have likely been the story arc for an entire season if Whedons previous work is any indication. However with the pressure they condensed it down to basically one episode.

Regardless it is certainly one of his most underappreciated efforts.

 

[darthcendiarygrenade]

[quote="fix-the-spade" post="18.271474.10453210True, but at least the whole series got filmed.[/quote]
Technically, yes...but that statement is true for every single series, lol.
I am, however, confident that Firefly could have done several seasons without stagnating...it certainly would be infinitely better than endless episodes of "The Simpsons." It should also be noted that I consider Firefly to be at LEAST in my top 5 shows of all time, and quite possibly #1...and it only got 11 episodes on air.
Feel my opinions based on the resonance within my heart and tremble at their validity, mortal!

 

[DuctTapeJedi]

Firefly.

On a related note, I was watching The Venture Brothers, and came to a startling epiphany:

The Brown Widow is Nathan Fillion.

The first time I saw this, I swear, I had no idea...

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

Someone's got their facts wrong!

Fox didn't cancel Dollhouse because it was aimless for the first half of series one, they actually told Whedon to make it aimless.

I don't think that's what I said, but if it came across like that, it's not what I meant. Regardless of why it turned out the way it did, I at least think it would've been a better show/story if it'd had a stronger footing at the beginning and took less time to get into developing the interesting parts, and also if the ending had been less rushed/forced. That's all.

Whose "fault" that was, if anyone's specifically, is debatable and probably not so simple and straightforward. I know we're all required to hate Fox for what they did to Firefly, but Joss himself has had some positive things to say about the people he worked with there on Dollhouse, including that their suggestions improved the pilot. Maybe other things harmed it, though. I sometimes feel like there isn't really anything that could've been done that would've made it commercially successful without turning it into a different show from what it was. I'm not sure that even if its weak points had been addressed it would've appealed to enough people to sustain it as it was.

Either way, they unfortunately made the right decision from a business point of view to cancel it when they did, because there weren't enough people watching it at that point and bringing in enough money to justify continuing to fund its production. So it goes.