Joss Wheedon's latest offering, "Dollhouse", is done. Cancelled after only one-and-a-half seasons. Wheedon fans are asking, "What happened?"
Here's my answer:
In order to be engaging a story needs to have a hero. Not necessarily in the "Conan" sense of the word, but a main character who is interesting to the audience, who we care about. Usually this person is sympathetic, and we want them to "win"--these are symptathetic heros. Sometimes we are more interested in seeing the hero lose (the narrator in _Lolita_ is one example). Some stories have multiple heros (Star Wars IV-VI is a great example of this: I was always a Han fan, other people identify with different characters). Sometimes the multiple hero concept can backfire (Star Wars I: the lack of a primary character (among other problems) led to a disjointed plot that the audience stopped caring about).
Dollhouse was an experiment in the limits of the sympathetic heros. Wheedon sets up his main character (Echo, played by Eliza Dushku) as a mindless shell who we don't sympathize with (although she is HAWT, and he takes the opportunity to dress her in all sorts of fetish gear). This leads to a lack of interest in the story, which leads to lousy ratings, which leads to cancellation. The characterization that Echo does go through later is not enough to bring in significant ratings, and Dushku's cosplay doesn't overcome this flaw.
