This is a day of bizarre news - Dollhouse has been picked up for a second season, as has Better Off Ted, and also Castle. 3 shows which I love (well, thoroughly enjoy - as with all relationships, I've found it hard to entirely commit when I've been worrying they'll leave me at a moment's notice), all coming back for more. Hurrah!

This is really the sort of short media announcement which belongs on my sister site Reality Avoidance, but I've not written anything here for a few days, so felt I should keep the ball rolling. As such, here's a quick summary of those three shows, together with anything else which occurs to me while I write it.

Dollhouse is Joss Whedon's newest show, creator of Buffy, Angel, and Firefly. Firefly was cancelled prematurely, but subsequently built a decent fanbase on DVD, and was followed by the movie Serenity (which just about made back its budget, but was critically acclaimed and loved by everyone I know who's seen it). Dollhouse started averagely - an interesting premise (short version - a secret facility hosts people who have artificial personalities uploaded into their brains for the use of exclusive clients) was wasted for the first few episodes with generic "assignment of the week" plots, but by episode 5 or 6 a bigger arc developed, with secrets emerging, assumptions being challenged, and things kicked up a gear. The finale tied up a few loose ends but left them plenty of places to go, without an irritating cliffhanger - a suitable end if that was the last ever, but now I'm keen to see how a second series works. Now if only it gets moved from Friday nights it might actually get an audience, which would shut up the naysayers.

Better Off Ted feels reminiscent of Arrested Development, in part at least. That may be due to the presence of Portia de Rossi, but it's also a dry comedy with no laugh track, in a semi-documentary style. Well, ish. It's set in a large corporation, with the main character (Ted) being an upper-middle manager, and Portia De Rossi as his boss. Andrea Anders works in the testing department, and there are also two bickering lab techs. A sample exchange: "We need a mouse that can withstand temperatures up to 195 degrees." "We can do that. Uh, computer mouse or live mouse?" "Computer mouse." "Easier." There are apparently more episodes in existence than the 7 which have aired thus far, but no word yet on when the rest are going out - keep an eye out for them. I'm glad it's coming back - it's a fairly unique comedy at the moment, and hopefully it'll build.

Last but not least, Castle. Well, probably least. On many levels this isn't anything special, which sounds more damning than I mean it to. It's almost a modern update of Murder, She Wrote (which ran until 1996, I recently discovered) - Nathan Fillion plays Frank Castle, a crime writer who in the first episode is called in by the police for advice after a murderer starts using his books as inspiration for killings. After solving that case and enjoying the process, plus taking a shine to the female detective he was working with, he calls in a few favours with the mayor and starts joining in on cases as research for his next book(s). It's basically a generic police procedural, but the chemistry between the two leads is good, with Castle being a likeable womaniser, with a mother and daughter to look after. After Firefly and Drive both being cancelled (the latter after about 4 episodes, which was criminal, given its interesting premise), Nathan Fillion deserves to have a series last longer than a few episodes, so I'm glad he's got that chance.

OK, that's now 3 separate TV shows that have used the device of someone hallucinating, leading to the realisation they're suffering a serious medical condition. Grey's Anatomy led the charge with the Denny/ghost issue (caused by...cancer or something - I tend to only half watch it), then House brought back Amber, induced by his vicodin addiction, and now Bones has given Booth a brain tumour (as in the show, not the character - Emily Deschanel cursing him with magic would be taking it in a new direction). This has led to him hallucinating Stewie from Family Guy - a bit of a stretch already, even before you throw a brain tumour into the mix.

Being generally more clued-up on film goings-on than TV stuff, I'm used to this happening in movie world. Armageddon/Deep Impact, Dante's Peak/Inferno - there are loads of examples of movies covering the same topic at the same time, but I've not really been aware of TV shows doing it until now.

Trouble is that this is a very specific device, rather than just a broad plot - at least with an asteroid, or a volcano, you can approach it from different directions, both literally and figuratively. In the two pairs above, one took a more cerebral approach, with the other being more balls out. Whereas a character hallucinating then discovering a medical condition is pretty one-note. Grey's Anatomy at least built up to it - the Denny thing obviously wasn't real, but there was no indication of a serious brain condition (because of course in TV-land, seeing things can generally be explained away as a story device or a brief mental lapse). As such the realisation that something was seriously wrong with her, followed by her looking into it, telling her friends, and now being treated, carried a decent amount of emotional weight.

House seeing Amber was an interesting digression, for a couple of episodes, but served no real purpose, and the awareness that Grey's Anatomy had already trodden that path upped the annoyance factor. And now Bones, a show which I like a lot, just throws this curveball in towards the end - I'd heard about the Stewie thing in advance, and while it had sounded tiresome, it was apparently going to be stress-induced. Fair enough, I figured.

But to tie it into a medical problem, giving them a way to end the season with a cliffhanger (although not that much of one - chances of Booth dying and being written out are fairly minimal), just seems like a massively lazy plot device. Irritating in itself, even before you factor in the fact that at least two other shows are doing the same thing at the moment. Pah.