"Dollhouse" probably cancelled - THX FOX

[Thrall]

Joss has no one but himself to blame. There is no room for genre shows on network television. It's a niche market that only thrives on cable. The first season of Heroes and Lost being the exception. Shows like BSG, Burn Notice, Stargate, Buffy, Angel, Farscape, Smallville and Supernatural all would have cashed and burned in the first few episdoes if they had all been on network TV. Network TV is the forum of the average, American, zombie, moron. It's where Dancing With The Stars and American Idol dominate all others. It's a place were nothing but cop shows, lawyer shows, doctor shows, generic sitcoms, reality shows, and procedureals crime-investigation shows are allowed to thrive. Especially the later. The time of Quantum Leap is long over.

 

[3D Master]

Uhm, Supernatural and Smallville both run on a network.


And for that matter, so does Heroes, Lost, Terminator SCC, and probably a few others I'm not remembering - or watching.

If it's good, it gets watched, it's that simple.

Dollhouse simply wasn't good.

 

[Thrall]

Uhm, Supernatural and Smallville both run on a network.

CW is a network in name only.

And for that matter, so does Heroes, Lost, Terminator SCC, and probably a few others I'm not remembering - or watching.

Heroes and Lost I already addressed. SCC is a bad comparison as it gets similar numbers to Dollhouse.

If it's good, it gets watched, it's that simple.

Tell that to Sports Night.

Dollhouse simply wasn't good.

Neither was the first season of Buffy.

 

[Ptrope]

Why should Joss blame himself? At most, this might come under "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me"; if FOX came to him, eager to have him develop a show for them for which they were going to commit millions of dollars, is it his fault that they then decide to throw those $millions away by canceling the show?

You state the obvious: that there is only a niche market for these shows. It's so obvious that one would expect even FOX to realize it, yet they continue to order genre shows and then act like they had no idea the ratings might be lower than, say, American Idol, even when they program them all on a night that the industry as a whole acknowledges is a ratings black hole. The fault is entirely FOX's - Joss's only fault lies in letting them continue to offer him money to develop shows that they (apparently) will never support. FOX's shareholders should be seriously looking at the incompetence of these people; they either don't know how to program for TV, or they are fraudulently squandering the network's resources.

 

[grabmygoblin]

pthbbbbt. gawddamnit. this doesn't bode well for Terminator, either.

 

[Ptrope]

Uhm, Supernatural and Smallville both run on a network.

A 3rd-tier network with less to lose than FOX; they're doing unexpectedly well with some of their shows, and the niche shows do well enough that they don't lose money for the network. The CW clearly have a better handle on the expectations of genre-based entertainment than TIIC at FOX.

If it's good, it gets watched, it's that simple.

Not necessarily - there's a lot of crap with ludicrously-high ratings.

Dollhouse simply wasn't good.

Your opinion. Could it have been better? Yes. Was it getting better? I think even objectively one could say, "Yes." It was a rather cerebral concept, and I think FOX's insistence that the audience always starts in the thick of a series, rather than laying the groundwork for it and bringing the audience in on the ground floor, is their own undoing. Dollhouse would probably have been better as a mini-series, but it seems that FOX (and most networks, any more) only think of new content for its potential syndication down the line. If they bought a 13-episode mini-series, they wouldn't have to be planning for what to do upon its 'unexpected' demise; they'd simply be buying another mini-series at the same time to follow in its footsteps.

The TV landscape isn't just changing, it has changed - the networks don't seem to be able to understand that.

 

[Eduardo]

http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/wat...29_dollhouse_heres_deal_on_season_finale.html

Fox the television network ordered 13 episodes of Dollhouse. As everybody knows, they scrapped the original pilot, "Echo." So that is 13 less one, which brings us down to 12. The 12th and final episode that Fox the television network ordered and paid for and will air is called "Omega" and was written and directed by Tim Minear (who has told us he "can't wait" for us to see it). Focused on the Alpha storyline, sources say that "Omega" apparently "closes some doors and opens other ones" and was always intended to be and to effectively serve as the season-one finale. ("Omega" logline, if you're into that kind of thing: "Alpha's reign of terror continues as his obsession with Echo endangers Caroline's survival. Ballard must make a life-changing decision, and one Doll is permanently deactivated while another's shocking past is revealed.")

Now, let's go back to the original equation and add in an episode called "Epitaph One." "Echo" the original pilot plus 12 episodes through "Omega" plus "Epitaph One" brings us to a total of 14 episodes.

The 14th episode, "Epitaph One," was produced and paid for by Fox the television studio. It was never ordered, requested or paid for by Fox the television network, and Fox the television network will not be airing "Epitaph One." Working on getting you more details about "Epitaph One," but it's said to be more of a "stand-alone" episode

(Note: Tim Minear just posted on Whedonesque about "Epitaph One" saying, "Because we scrapped the original pilot—and in fact cannibalized some of its parts for other eps—we really ended up with 12 episodes. But the studio makes DVD and other deals based on the original 13 number. So we created a stand-alone kind of coda episode. Which is the mythical new episode 13. The network had already paid for 13 episodes, and this included the one they agreed to let us scrap for parts. It does not include the one we made to bring the number back up to 13 for the studio side and its obligations. We always knew it would be for the DVD for sure, but we also think Fox should air it because it's awesome.")

 

[StCoop]

Why should Joss blame himself?

For the crap premise, the crap scripts and the crap lead actress?

The only mistake Fox made was agreeing to waste millions of dollars making the pile of shit in the first place. But the zealous Whedonites will never admit that their god has feet of clay.

 

[ManOnTheWave]

A pity. This was the only new show on TV I liked and made a point of watching.

 

[OdoWanKenobi]

I wanted to love the show so much, but I couldn't. I won't be sad to see it go. Whedon was great and I'm sure he'll be great again. The sooner the creative failure that was Dollhouse is behind him the better.

 

[doubleohfive]

TV is a business. That's all there is to it.

Sorry for you guys who like the show. I never got in to it myself, but I lament the possible cancellation for you.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

In any discussion of genre shows on network TV, let's not forget Fringe - which has been a notable success. That, and the fact that 2/3rds of all shows, regardless of genre, fail their first season makes me very skeptical of overly simplistic statements that sci fi can't survive on network TV, or that it has a tougher time doing so than all the cop shows, doctor shows, sitcoms and yes reality TV shows that also fail in droves.

I doubt Dollhouse would have faired much better on cable, really. The ratings wouldn't have been the same because the initial audience isn't as large - the ratings would have been far lower, probably below survival levels on cable.

Cable isn't really the province of sci fi. The successful shows are artsy, rule-breaking and strongly character based - The Sopranos, Dexter, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Damages. There's no reason a sci fi series couldn't fit the mold, but Dollhouse certainly wasn't it. The characters would have had to have been much more sharply drawn and the lead actress would have to had been stronger. And it really didn't have that grown-up feel that the best cable shows have. It definitely had a pandering aspect to it.

 

[Praetor]

And so the pro-Whedon, anti-Whedon aftermath infighting begns...

In all seriousness, I'm sorry for the show's fans. It never managed to catch my interest, but it finally seemed to be going somewhere at least.

 

[amdmiami]

Geeze this sucks! Fox can't commit to jack shit.

And as many people have said, this show was just getting good! It definitely would have found its footing in the second season, and possibly by the third, it would be just as good as Buffy or Angel.

 

[Hermiod]

Felicia Day is now saying the show isn't canceled.

There's confusion with the episode numbers that caused this. Although Day is appearing in the 13th episode filmed, it will be the 12th episode to air because Fox's 13 episode order includes the pilot episode that they dumped. All 12 "proper" episodes will air.

There is, however, a 13th/14th episode that Fox (the Studio) paid for but Fox (the TV network) didn't ask for which they may or may not air but which has no effect on whether or not the show comes back.

 

[Captain Craig]

I think the show has been getting better and I'm only up to episode #5. Things, imo, started to improve in ep.3 as i see it. A friend who watches as well and as seen them all to date is really pumped about it. She won't like this news.

 

[StCoop]

Geeze this sucks! Fox can't commit to jack shit.

And as many people have said, this show was just getting good! It definitely would have found its footing in the second season, and possibly by the third, it would be just as good as Buffy or Angel.

Do you think they're a fucking charity?

Almost nobody was watching the show, almost nobody wanted to watch the show and you want them to keep making the show for another two years by which point it'd probably be cheaper to come round to the six people still watching's homes and do a live performance of the script?

 

[FreezeC77]

Maybe the only thing that would have gotten to me to watch another episode of Dollhouse this year was hearing that Felicia Day was guesting in an episode of it.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

Maybe the only thing that would have gotten to me to watch another episode of Dollhouse this year was hearing that Felicia Day was guesting in an episode of it.

Looking at her previous tweets, she is in an episode, not this weeks though.

 

[Gregsmack]

Personally, I thought the show had been improving steadily.

This is the problem right here. Why couldn't the show have been good to begin with? Why should any audience be expected to wait for something to maybe start getting good?

Why couldn't TNG be good for the first 3 seasons? Why did Star Trek fans always have to "wait for 3 season" for the shows to find their feet? Why do networks have to mess with shows and "improve" them?

The "talent" don't make shows in a vacuum they more often than not have to bend to the will of the execs. I'm not saying that's an excuse for poor shows all the time, but there has been a noticable improvement of Dollhouse since they got to the "untampered" episodes.

TNG's first two seasons were among the worst TV ever aired, Star Trek or otherwise. It did not deserve to continue but it did. That's the way it goes. I have no doubt that whether or not Dollhouse was good or not would have made a difference in it being canceled or renewed. All I was referring to was the idea that some fans, for some reason, are willing to invest their time into mediocrity. Network-tampered mediocrity, but mediocrity nonetheless. If something isn't good from the get-go, for whatever reason it may be, and people recognize that it isn't good, then why should it be allowed to run?

Regarding TNG and DS9: I was rather young when their first seasons aired. Going back to watch those episodes on DVD is a serious chore, and I often wonder how (and why) fans stuck it out for that long. On the other hand, Voyager had a great premise, but I jumped ship early because it became pretty garbage rather quick. I don't care about the behind-the-scenes politics or network interference. If it ain't good, it ain't good.

This is just me though. I have some serious high standards nowadays.

That being said, I feel bad for all the Whedon fans who were hoping for a great series. As a rabid BSG fan, I am really looking forward to Ron Moore's Virtuality while also hoping it can survive on the shitshow otherwise known as FOX.