Joss Whedon: Master of cult TV

From Entertainment Weekly

For the second class in our EW University course on TV Auteurs, Prof. Adam B. Vary offers this overview of the TV career of Joss Whedon, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Dollhouse. Also, check out this photo gallery of our favorite shows by four legendary showrunners.

What Stephen Bochco (Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, NYPD Blue), Norman Lear (All in the Family, The Jeffersons), and Rod Serling (The Twilight Zone) were in the 20th century television, Joss Whedon has become today: Nothing less than a television brand. His name alongside the “Created by” credit during the opening titles guarantees you are about to watch a show that swings for the fences; a show as keenly attuned to its female characters as its male ones; a show that tackles Big Ideas and Big Themes without skimping on Great Entertainment; a show that is unafraid to Go There, from allowing the lead heroine or hero to make some profoundly unlikable choices to killing off a beloved character; a show that is steeped in genre tropes yet also lovingly tweaks them; and a show that has a tone, style, and voice so singular that it’s earned its own adjective: Whedonesque.

And yet Joss Whedon has never been at the helm of a bone fide mainstream hit. From his seminal first series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to his current distaff genre series Dollhouse, Whedon has instead become a master of cult TV, fostering a small(ish) but rabidly loyal fan base for each of his series. A critics’ darling if ever there was one, he has failed, however, to win the respect of Emmy voters, who have — in the unimpeachable opinion of Whedon fans everywhere — unforgivably snubbed his shows, their writers (well, mostly), and their actors. No matter. If all he had done was make Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s first three seasons, Whedon’s place in the TV firmament would be secure. As it stands today, his ongoing body of work is a testament to the heartening truth that unique and uncommonly great network television is still possible in an era dominated by reality TV and endless procedural crime show spin-offs.

read on