There are obviously examples of shows that get bad and for whatever reason, do not recover. We all know the tragic stories, the sad shambling corpses of formerly entertaining programs lingering on long past their prime like miserable shark-jumping zombies. Gilmore Girls season seven. Prison Break, Heroes, Alias, Entourage. There are a number of reasons things can go wrong, including changes in the creative staff, pressure from networks, a resistance to imaginative or risky storytelling, a concept that’s meant to be small saddled with the burden of far too much time (oh, Prison Break, you poor bastard). But I would argue that some shows can and do get better, even in the face of some dismally low points.

Friday Night Lights – This is obviously the premiere example of how rough things can get on a show and still come back for an amazing third and fourth season. It’s also a good example of how quickly terrible subplots can completely derail the rest of a show (see also: the Coma Baby plot of Veronica Mars season two). The Landry/Tyra murder plot is so, so awful and was so thoroughly panned as soon as it happened, FNL spent much of the rest of the season trying to get through that damn subplot as quickly as possible and then force everyone involved to forget it ever happened. Not only did the show manage to exit out of that dark hole of implausible violence as gracefully as one could imagine, the show has since had the excellent judgment to avoid anything similarly out of character.

Battlestar Galactica – Sure, sure, it’s great when you can get a science fiction show to speak to topical issues of morality and terrorism in a way that forces people to talk about the intellectual potential of pulp genres. But for the most part, Battlestar’s New Caprica episodes were just treading water until the characters could get back into space (and back into shape, in the infamous case of Tubby Apollo). Even worse, although the explicit references to insurgency, colonialism and prisoners of war brought the show attention for being so politically relevant, it was some of Battlestar’s most heavy-handed thematic work. Those New Caprica episodes were about as subtle as poking out an eye (whoops, sorry Colonel Tigh), but once the show got back into space and Lee Adama lost all that weight, things were back on track.

The West Wing – This one is a complicated example, but worth thinking through. The show suffered one of the worst, most irrevocable changes a show can experience – the departure of its idiosyncratic, driving creative force – and that kind of departure is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s a change any fervent fan will declare to be the End of the World, and when a show then immediately proves to be much worse than it used to be, it’s easy to write off the show entirely. I understand the argument, and I also believe that post-Sorkin West Wing never reached the same heights as it did in the Sorkin years, but I also think season seven of that show was a vast improvement. It could never go back to being a Sorkin show, but it did grow into its new identity as the Santos-Vinick race overtook the final Bartlet years. It would never be as fizzy or fascinatingly idealistic as the first few seasons, but it was still miles better than the dark days of Leo’s heart attack and the overt Macbeth references, and it was entertaining television.

Dollhouse – A different kind of improvement narrative from the previous examples, but one that probably happens more frequently. Shows begin, and they’re bad. Gradually, with practice and hindsight and feedback, they get better, and the change can be so drastic that the show is nearly unrecognizable. Dollhouse falls in this category, though like so many shows, the change came too late. I’d also list Cougar Town here, as well as Parks and Recreation, Community, Fringe, Sons of Anarchy, and of course, the troublesome Chuck.

I’m not trying to argue that Chuck may not be in trouble – from what I’ve seen so far this season, things look dubious. But the beauty of television’s episodic structure is that new beginnings and fresh starts happen all the time, and no matter how serialized or intricate a show may be, the very concept of an episode promises that things can change. It’s a whole new show every week, with different writers and directors, different guest stars and returning characters, new plots and character arcs. It seems to me this is a reason fans hold onto television shows even after they’re long dead (oh Smallville, you keep on keepin’ on), because the distinct separation of each piece of narrative means it’s easier to believe that the start of the next episode is also the start of a different, better version of the same show you’ve been watching for so long.

I don’t want to chide my husband if he doesn’t want to watch Chuck any more. Maybe it won’t get better, and he’ll have saved all of that time for Boardwalk Empire or The Walking Dead or (one day, because he loves me) Veronica Mars. But I do want to explain why I’ll keep watching, and why that choice makes sense to me.

Appropriately, this final episode returned to the post-apocalyptic world Whedon introduced at the end of the first season, which allowed him to carry his characters through to the future we know they’ll encounter and follow the Dollhouse technology to its end. The episode succeeded in bringing all the major characters to fitting ends, most especially Topher, whose sacrifice to undo the mindwipes was really the only imaginable resolution for this particular sociopath/genius/soulless engineer/Bringer of Death. I also loved the conclusion to Adelle’s character. As Alpha so aptly puts it, she’s always been a “class act,” and she’s the only character on this show I’d trust with the responsibility of putting the world back together.

Certainly the best new feature of post-apocalyptic Epitaph Two was Victor and his Mad Max crew of tech heads. They came complete with an armored tank modded from a semi-truck, sweet tattoo-esque data access points affixed to their skulls, and necklaces hung with what looked like teeth salvaged as spoils of war but were actually USB thumb drives loaded with pertinent zombie apocalypse skills. There’s nothing quite like a tiny Asian girl with giant spiked shoulder pads grinning as she shows you the USB stick where she stores her mercy so she has room to load more weapons skills. (At what point, exactly, did giant shoulder pads become the de facto costume of choice for end-of-the-world warriors? I’m not complaining, it’s just an observation.) Victor’s merry band was a great addition to the Epitaph landscape – their use of the technology was unexpected and cool, their motivations were ambiguous and believable, and their conflicts were novel.

Planet earth gets hit with a reset button; everyone who was wiped goes back ten years and everyone who survived without getting wiped remembers the horror of a ten year zombie apocalypse. That would actually be a pretty interesting show, don’t you think? And that’s really my response to Dollhouse, after considering the thing as a whole. It was always going somewhere fascinating, but the process of getting there was never as gripping as the destination. It was never clear to me how high the show’s stakes could be until Epitaph One, and without that crucial knowledge that Echo’s silly prostitution jobs would lead to the end of humanity, every new mission was just another reason to put Eliza Dushku in a tight skirt. Once season two was imbued with that additional sense of significance, the moral quandaries actually became meaningful rather than just absently speculative. By that point, though, the show had lost its audience, its marketing, and its goodwill from casual viewers.

Thus ends Dollhouse, troubled, interesting, and short-lived. I can only hope this experience will move Joss Whedon out of network television and into cable, where he might have an opportunity to make a show with more freedom and actual swear words.

Team challenges are always a complete disaster on any reality show, and Project Runway is particularly good at finding situations that are stressful enough to make lots of contestants break down. Add to this an oddly high budget for materials ($500), a classic eleventh-hour requirement to make a second look, and the dubious condition that they base the new look on another group’s work, and it almost didn’t matter that the challenge itself (essentially: make a really great, fancy outfit) was pretty bland.

Where does that leave us?

Oh dear, Ping. Michael Kors was right – your model does look like she’s the Statue of Liberty, but he neglected to mention that in this incarnation, the Statue of Liberty is being swaddled in the special-order table linens for a Goth wedding. (Or, I suppose, a Halloween party). You were forgiven once, but it is impossible to accept two completely awful, poorly fitting outfits in a row, and even worse when there are actually three awful, poorly fitting outfits. Do you see what that other model, the unexpected eleventh-hour outfit model, is wearing? Her sunglasses are by far the most exciting things about her. The sunglasses, that is, and her smirk of schadenfreude.

Anthony admonishes his partner; their Vice President of McDonalds' dress

Aside from the Farewell to Ping tour, this episode was clearly built as a vehicle for Anthony, whose Southern Belle flamboyance was in full display. You’ve got to love a contestant who’s self-aware enough to mock his own dress as looking like a design made for the “Vice President of McDonald’s,” but my favorite moment was when he chided his partner for bickering in front of Tim Gunn. “Stop actin’ up in front of company, now, come on,” he stage-whispered.

I guess it looks a little like a butterfly. Or a superhero cape?

While I will admit that the top of Anthony’s dress does resemble chicken feathers, it seems no more “costumey” than the look that won, Mila’s oddly fitting penguin coat. It is cool, and graphic, and certainly looks more carefully made than anything else on the runway, but perhaps I just lack sufficient understanding of how you could wear it and not look like a Wacky Art Teacher Who Usually Wears Kaftans But Has Traded Them In For A More Menswear Look.

In any event, at least we can all be reassured that while Ping may be leaving, we won’t be left with a complete dearth of innovation (read: craziness) in her absence.

****

Just as a reminder, the last episode of Dollhouse is airing tonight. Despite my mixed feelings about the show, it is reliably fascinating, and as I am especially looking forward to tonight’s episode, there will definitely be a Dollhouse post on Monday.

****

And just because it’s Friday, here’s what famed detective Hercule Poirot looks like when re-imagined as a character in a Japanese animated Miss Marple/Poirot crossover television show. You’re welcome.

The other fabulous thing about these recent episodes is that finally (finally!) Echo is a character I’m actually interested in understanding. It took way too long to get here, but now that Echo is a sentient being capable of controlling all her alternate personalities and making decisions for herself, there are so many issues that become fascinating. Where did Echo come from? How does an identity leap into existence? What if, as Bennett remembers, Caroline’s not actually a great person? Does this body belong to Caroline or to Echo? It’s also lovely to watch her stride around the Dollhouse and actually wonder what her plans could be – Echo as a blank slate never provided enough resistance against the Rossum Corporation, and for a long time, Paul Ballard was too dopey and out of the loop to make it seem as though anyone was actually coming close to the problem. Now, though, we at last get to see that Echo is as special as everyone has been trying to tell us for a season and a half. This show actually gets a protagonist, one who can remember who she is from one day to the next.

The recent episodes have also been a great showcase for Adele, whose self-preservation instincts overpower her shaky, ambiguous morality in a way that managed to be both believable and evil. I’m still having a rough time with exactly what motivates Alpha, whose unpredictability and dangerousness are undercut by what appears to be a simple and non-scary love/jealousy issue. On the whole, though, Echo’s growing personhood has been nicely buoyed by an equally interesting supporting cast of characters, and Topher has to be the favorite. He’s managed to go from a complete jerk to a sympathetic and funny human being, and his trust in Adele, shown by handing over his freaky “Epitaph One” technology, was even more effective when she turns around and betrays him. It’s a relief to feel comfortable laughing at his joke lines and not wonder if I should actually be condemning him for his sociopathic actions. (Best line of this week was certainly: “I am obsolete. This must be what old people feel like. And Blockbuster.”)

The most recent episode, “A Love Supreme,” was also pleasantly self-aware, and managed to pull of a winking joke on itself while still being tense and suspenseful. The dolls have always been boring and empty, which has added to the difficulty of empathizing with them. When Alpha signals them all to become mindless killing machines, the subsequent zombie lines were both accurate descriptions of the dolls and also a pretty hilarious way of laughing about how dead they’ve always been. (Another Topher classic: “Did they eat my brains?!”) Dollhouse is now the thoughtful, funny, disturbing show it always deserved to be. Of course it is – it was cancelled a few weeks ago.

Sierra's tell-tale dark and twisty artwork

Yes, I’ve been writing fairly frequently about Dollhouse because even when it’s not doing so well, I think it still deserves attention. And even though there are episodes that fall flat or otherwise fail to satisfy, sometimes (too rarely, but sometimes) there are episodes like last week’s “Belonging.” It worked on so many important levels – first and foremost, “Belonging” developed the mythology of the show rather than introducing a new creepy Dollhouse client whose engagement (spoiler!) will inevitably go awry. The show began to deal with what happens when someone becomes a doll against her will, and that allowed the writers to finally present the Dollhouse from a sociopathic, deeply evil perspective. Unlike so many previous installments, where we listen to Paul Ballard rail against the cruelty of dollhood but then also watch Adele Dewitt calmly justify the Dollhouse as a willing, consensual service, there was no mistaking the underlying immorality here.

Topher: from mad scientist to something resembling a human

Topher was really the key to the moral core of “Belonging.” For so long, he’s been an obnoxious, one-note asshole who can’t even hit his evil laughter in a believable register, and suddenly, “Belonging” transformed him into a fully formed human being. Once he discovered that Sierra had been drugged into insanity and entered the Dollhouse against her will, Topher stopped drinking the Kool-Aid. Watching him develop from evil mad scientist into a guy retching as he saws apart a body was thrilling, and moving, and it felt just. Topher deserves to deal with the consequences of his thoughtlessness, and this episode was a good start.

When they learn to read, you know you're in trouble

The thing about “Belonging” that pushed it over the edge for me, though, was that all of the parts were really working. If the episode had just dealt with Sierra’s past and Topher’s dawning humanity without any of the many smaller moments that surrounded and contexualized that plotline, it would still have been a good episode. Enhancing the action with Echo’s growing personhood (through my all time favorite signal of rebellion – she reads!), Victor’s incredibly endearing loving gestures, and The Awesomeness of Boyd made the whole hour excellent, not just the main plotline. The Awesomeness of Boyd, by the way, includes discovering Echo’s hidden book, slipping her the access card, and most of all, his Sopranos-esque body removal skills. (“Look, I’m gonna need da Goose, is he around? Yeah, I need someone…disappeared.”)

The word around the internets is that the next episode is just as good if not better. Too bad it won’t air until December.

So that’s a shame. Dollhouse is interesting television, far more ambitious than anything else on right now, and I would love nothing more than to keep watching it and see how it develops. At the same time, even a relatively successful episode like last week’s still signals to me that there are problems the show has yet to overcome. The premise of last week’s identity-of-the-week was more complex than in the past – a client pays the Dollhouse to transfer a comatose man’s identity into a new body, but Dollhouse employees realize the man is likely a serial killer and end up waking him up so that they can interrogate him about the location of his victims. In the plot hole of the week, somehow the serial killer’s uncle manages to sneak him out without anyone noticing, but the blip allows for some remote identity wipe snafus and result in the serial killer identity getting swapped into Echo.

Now now, Aunt Sheila, don't run away... (AAAAAHHH!)

Long story short, Echo wakes up and tries keep the killer identity at bay long enough to save his victims, and meanwhile Victor lets loose on the dance floor after getting transplanted with Echo’s naughty student/Wife of Bath personality. The best parts of the episode were the creepiest: the show opened with scenes of the serial killer manipulating his victims, women he stole and paralyzed so he could dress them up, rename them, and play with them. This is the sort of image that sells the show’s underlying eeriness. There’s a man playing with live women as though they were dolls, stuck in life-sized body holders used mannequins or stands to hold up your Barbie. Disgust, revulsion, gross gross gross. And then we cut to the Dollhouse, and we get it. Ugh.

The problem here is that the classic Joss Whedon show is never just that deep, scary serial killer reality. Buffy and Firefly and Dr. Horrible are amazing because they link strong emotional plotlines about death, fear and morality with humor. They use silly quips and goofy nerd humor, and sometimes they don’t take themselves all that seriously. Unlike many previous episodes of Dollhouse, Belle Chose strove to inject that kind of humor several times, primarily through Echo’s professor fantasy subplot. First there’s Paul Ballard waiting while Echo gets all tarted up, then we get the many scenes of good Chaucery sexy fun time, and finally the wacky gender swapping that leads to Victor on the dance floor and Paul Ballard’s defensive “You got a problem?” These scenes are meant to be funny, and several of them were – Tahmoh Penikett’s performance was strong, and sure, I’m always going to find Canterbury Tales jokes funny, because, you know, obviously. Ultimately, though, the humor was never able to puncture the overwhelming sense of creepiness. It’s too uncomfortable watching Echo as Kiki flounce into her dressing room and preen in the mirror to feel anything other than nervous laughter. And maybe I’m just too sensitive about anything that suggests gay bashing, but as soon as Victor walked onto the dance floor in his argyle sweater I just started to cringe.

Not so much funny-haha as funny-queasy

It’s great people are watching the show, be it live or on DVR. I just wish Whedon could figure out how to recreate the required balance of gravity and levity given such a weighty starting point.

That’s what Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse is for me – a show with failings both external to its production and inherent in its concept, that I nevertheless find completely fascinating. I’ll back up a bit, because you probably haven’t seen Dollhouse. Nobody has. It airs at 9pm on Fridays, and opened its second season last Friday night to impressively low ratings. The premise of the show is that the Rossum Corporation has produced technology that enables them to imprint a human body with any identity they desire, and they use this technology as a form of prostitution. If you hire Rossum, they will imprint a human with any personality you choose and allow you to have that person for as long as you’re willing to pay. The idea is that the show can split two ways. On the one hand, you’ve got action star main character Echo, played by Eliza Dushku, who can be imprinted with awesome, sexy skills which allow her to hop straight off her motorcycle and into her hostage negotiator/bride/backup singer/art thief gig. On the other hand, you’ve got an incredibly creepy setup to allow you to explore morality and identity, the relationship between the body and the mind, immortality and the construction of avatars, and a new and disturbing technological apocalypse. Awesome, right?

Echo as doll, as eerie doll-bride, and as eerie doll-undercover-FBI-agent

Turns out, that show is not so easy to make. Whedon has been fairly close-lipped about the creative differences that led to making and remaking the first season of the show, but the emphasis ended up more with sexy prostitute ninjas than with creepy moral grey area. Who knows what actually happened, but my guess would be it was mostly a result of network exec input. Unlike the untimely death of Firefly, though, the blame cannot fall entirely on the network. The bigger problem is that for much of the first season, Dollhouse’s audience couldn’t piece apart the show’s intention. Does the show condone the Dollhouse? If so, that’s awful. Assuming the ultimate goal is to condemn the Dollhouse, then you’ve built a show where all the main characters are brain dead dolls or brilliant, sociopathic pimps. Sure, the thought experiment might be intriguing, but watching a show almost completely devoid of sympathetic characters is less than fun. It’s not impossible to build a show around an evil sociopath – case in point, The Sopranos. Where Tony Soprano is terrifying, funny, complicated, sympathetic and motivated, though, the Rossum Corporation is merely greedy and amoral.

And yet, occasionally you can catch glimpses of the show it should be between the bloody fight scenes and shots of dolls wandering around uselessly. In the second season premiere, the Dollhouse’s doctor (because, remember, they are prostitutes in both an unconventional as well a more traditional sense) copes with the discovery that she is also a doll. The Dollhouse still needs her, so instead of wiping her and starting over, she has to deal with the knowledge that she is an artificial construct of a person inhabiting someone else’s body. Dr. Saunders, living in the body of the doll Whiskey, confronts Topher, the brilliant evil nerd programmer who created her. Topher asks why she doesn’t try to restore her original identity, which is stored somewhere in the Dollhouse’s memory banks. “Because I don’t want to die,” she says. “I’m in someone else’s body and I’m afraid to give it up.”

Topher and Whiskey/Dr. Saunders discuss the implications of personhood

See? Disturbing, fascinating, tragic, sympathetic, appealing, frustrating. What should we want, Dr. Saunders to “die” by being erased, or whoever the poor woman really was to continue to be “dead” while someone else uses her body? And then there’s the amazing, unaired thirteenth episode of the first season, which takes place ten years in the post-apocalyptic future where Dollhouse technology has spread and no identity is safe. That’s the Dollhouse worth watching. The show almost certainly won’t be around for very long – no one thought it’d come back for a second season – so who knows if it will ever find its stride. As a symptom of its many failings, I have no emotional attachment to the show, and will not be crushed when it inevitably dies. In the mean time, while it’s still around, the intellectual exercise of piecing together its scattered, excellent fragments turns out to be enough for me to stay interested.

Glee – It could be amazing, or it could crash and burn. FOX made the decision to air a pilot episode last spring, and I was encouraged by its unlikely combination of irreverence and snarky enthusiasm. I also have a particular weakness for catchy song and dance numbers, so this show has the potential to be a personal critical kryptonite. (Case in point: I watched the pilot and thought to myself, “now, how are they possibly going to maintain that tone over an entire season? And the lead guy is really not that great an actor. Also, how silly does the teacher look in this teaser?” And then I watched the final “Don’t Stop Believin’” scene like twenty times, and then downloaded “Don’t Stop Believin’” for Rock Band. Twenty one, I just watched it again on hulu.)

They just look so happy when they sing... I am a sucker.

The Office and 30 Rock – I am perpetually encouraged by The Office’s ability to develop Michael Scott’s character in a way that makes me feel so deliciously ambiguous toward him. He does something completely awful, and you hate him. Then you remember he’s essentially a six-year-old trapped in a grown man’s body, and you’re full of pity. Then suddenly he’s actually a skilled salesman, and you’re impressed. A lot of that is Steve Carrell, of course, but The Office also refuses to fall victim to the general long-lived sitcom trends. Instead of allowing Michael Scott to become a further caricature of himself, he got more complicated and sympathic. Rather than continue to play will-they-won’t-they with Pam and Jim, the writers decided they could still be funny with Jam in a stable, long-term relationship. It’s really impressive, and gives me hope for this season. As for 30 Rock, whenever Liz Lemon says something about Star Wars, I melt. The end.

Dollhouse – Shockingly, this show didn’t get cancelled, and the unaired thirteenth episode they made (starring The Guild’s Felicia Day) was truly ballsy. I am trying to have faith that Joss Whedon will make the most of this adrenaline-fueled, brush-with-death, near-cancellation experience and push Dollhouse beyond the weirdly uncomfortable and well into mind-twistingly disturbing territory.

Private Practice – Hahaha, not really. But last season ended with the practice’s pregnant psychiatrist splayed on the floor of her living room while her psychotic patient tries to cut the baby out in order to steal it for herself. C’mon, tell me you don’t want to see how that ends.

Tim Riggins

Friday Night Lights – I am happy to sing the praises of this show in any place someone might possibly hear me. The new season will only be available on DirecTV until NBC airs it in 2010, but as long as somehow this show continues to exist, I’m tickled pink. Friday Night Lights is up there with Mad Men as most visually appealing television ever produced, and I’m not just talking about Tim Riggins over there. Nothing about me makes it likely that I will find a show about Texas football attractive, but the treatment of landscape alone makes me want to pause the show and just stare. On top of that, Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton create one of the best fictional portrayals of a marriage I’ve ever seen, the writing is smart and emotionally sincere, and as long as we all pretend that crazy murder plot never happened in season two, Friday Night Lights has been consistently excellent.

This show makes Texas look so good

There are more shows to talk about and preview, but for now, let’s all take a moment to celebrate a time in the near future when Secret Life of the American Teenager is no longer the most notable new thing on television.