For those of us who find a Joss Whedon-free TV landscape difficult to face, anything new from his camp is worth celebrating. But this music video for “Remains” — a song by Joss’s brother Jed and wife Maurissa Tancharoen, both long-term members of Whedon’s writing team — is actually well worth watching on its own merits. Fans will recognize the creeping, melancholy track from Dollhouse‘s famously unaired “Epitaph One” episode. And the scenario, which casts Fran Kranz (a.k.a. Dollhouse‘s Topher Brink) as a guy who orders not one but two identical robot girlfriends (Tancharoen), goes surprisingly well with the song. Caitlin Stasey and J.R. Starr also make appearances in this clip, directed by Anton King.
As Whedon fanatics already stumbling through the five stages of grief already know well, Fox has officially pulled the plug on Dollhouse. We could place the blame on everything from overcomplicated plotting to the limited acting talents of star Eliza Dushku… or we could simply lament TV audiences’ contempt for intelligent programming. But we prefer to heal by looking to the future. As PopWatch put it, the cancellation will “free Whedon from a show that, let’s be frank, was never going to climb out of the hole it was in. Dollhouse had too much viewer attrition and too little network support.”
So, what should Joss Whedon’s next project be? We have a few ideas.
