Fans of Joss Whedon rejoice! Whedon, the executive producer and creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly, is coming back to prime time television. Joss recently signed a contract with FOX for a new series called Dollhouse. The show will feature Eliza Dushku, who played the character Faith on Buffy. Due to the recent writer’s strike, FOX has decided to give Joss a contract for seven shows up front without basing everything off of the strength of a pilot episode. This is exciting news for those of us who were sorely disappointed by the cancellation of Firefly.

In Dollhouse, Dushku will play Echo, one of many doll-like people who can be imprinted with memories, personalities and abilities in order to perform various tasks. These dolls can be imprinted with any desired purpose by those who can afford it. After their tasks, the doll’s memories are destroyed, and they are returned to their child-like existence in their home, codenamed the Dollhouse. There is only one problem: Echo is beginning to remember. She is not retaining whole memories of what she has done outside of the Dollhouse, but she is beginning to suspect that she was someone before, and that things are not right.

Due to the strike, production of Dollhouse has been delayed, but it looks like the series will start this coming fall. For more information visit www.dollverse.com.

Andrew Wright

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I don’t like TV. That’s what I tell people. It’s too restrictive. If you find a show you like or a story you want to follow, you are stuck — every Thursday night at nine or some such. Sure, you can wait ‘til it’s on DVD, but who wants to wait? But I really, really like TV shows. There’s a certain pleasure to knowing you are watching the same story as someone else, somewhere else, and that just maybe tomorrow you will both be able to turn that viewing experience into a conversation.

That’s why I like Hulu.com. It streams full episodes of television shows for free, and it gets them up fairly quickly after they air. It doesn’t have everything, but the selection is much better than the assorted clips you can find on YouTube. It’s not limited to new shows or even to TV; it has full movies and a generous selection of older shows.

Of course, all of this doesn’t come without a catch. Hulu.com is legal, which means small commercial interruptions happen during the shows. But they are slight — nothing in comparison to the commercials that accompany live TV. And, when I can watch clips of last week’s SNL without having to sit through the full hour and a half (most of which is never funny), it’s a small price to pay.

Nate Campbell

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Going back to the ’90s for a TV show that didn’t even air a complete season isn’t always the best idea, but in some rare occasions it’s worth it. Freak & Geeks is the reason I came up with that ridiculous sentence in the first place.

Freaks & Geeks is about teen angst and whole lot more. The show centers around Lindsay and Sam Weir, two high school kids who fall into two specific categories in their high school: the freaks and the geeks (yeah, that only happens in high school). Their two parents, Harold and Jean, stereotypically cannot understand either of their kids, yet at times are just what they need (Harold: “She’s hanging with a bad crowd. She’s lying and cheating and next thing you know, she’s Patty Hearst with a gun to our heads”).

The topics range everywhere from friendship to just trying to fit in (Lindsay: “All my new friends think I’m a goody-two-shoe and all my old friends think I’m throwing my life away. What am I supposed to do?”), but no matter what the show covers, there’s bound to be something hilarious in every episode, and something very descriptive about life even beyond the high school years.

The show was canceled for who-knows-what-reason (TV shows I watch have a habit of doing that), but you can pick up the complete first season on DVD from Netflix or from the store.

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So Dilbert, funny comic strip right? Well take that comic strip and instead of making it a crappy cartoon (come on, UPN. That was AWFUL) make it into a sweet, single-camera sitcom. The first two seasons comprised what was quite possibly the funniest and most original sitcom ever (at least in America. Yeah, there was a British The Office first). The third season has descended from the realm of the earth-shattering to just being a solid, better-than-average sitcom. For laughs on a Thursday night (or any time) you could do much worse, and not really any better.

–nc

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