Well, at least it'll get the chance to actually finish. Bummer though.

Fuck Fox.

The second half of season one was mostly excellent, but season two? If it continues like it is, I'm not going to miss it. It just hasn't been very good lately.

Yes Fox sucks. But then Dollhouse had somewhat of a rough start and was retooled in early production so it's not surprising that this was it's fate.

On the other hand, Chuck is coming back early! W00T!

...
............

Hands up if you're surprised?

The series has been way too depressing to the point where I can't bring myself to finish Season one yet, because even the episodes hyped as awesome turning points have been very blah. There is very little that is "fun" in the show, unlike Firefly and Buffy. Also, there isn't a single character on the show I actually care about, considering the main character, literally, has no personality.

I've not watched this terribly craptacular show since S1x07. I heard it "got better." But I think that was a lot like saying Harry Potter got "more adult." Too little, too late, and not enough anyway.

I was sorta hoping that Ray Wise would class the joint up. then I might have been interested to catch-up. It'll never happen for me now.

:applause:

this makes my day :D I can't believe they axed the Terminator series to give that pile of used condoms a chance. seriously folks, the sooner you get over this wheedon shit, the better off you'll be - his 'time' came and went and died and should be buried already.

One of the ad trades (forget which) very recently ran a story about DVR ratings, which are delayed by a few weeks. Dollhouse was pointed out in the article - its ratings jumped up almost 30%, a pretty significant amount. It's possible that this new information might help save the show.

Dave, I'm not sure if the DVR ratings help or not. After all, ratings only matter for advertising dollars, and anyone who DVR's a show is probably just skipping the commercials.

Can SyFy pick it up so that it may continue? Epitaph 1 should be enough to let people know that it's only going to become more and more awesome. Seriously.

look forward to watching the full season, just like I enjoyed watching the full season of firefly and drive after fox choose to cancel those shows.

What, you say they didn't actually air all the episodes of those series even though they promised they would?!?!

That sir is sarcasm which is the only way to approach Fox television...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH

mmm, partially covered boobs.

Honestly I'm wondering how many almost-nude promo posters Summer is going to do

Dammit, Fox did it again. Not that any of us should be surprised.

Fox pulled this same sweeps business with Arrested Development right before they canceled it.

Now, cue the Whedonites making petitions and entering every TV-related blog and thread to whine about how FOX screwed over Joss, and how they really, really loved the show because it was so deep and interesting, and it was "just getting started" and "didn't deserve to be treated that way".

Then Joss will make a shitty movie out of it. Whedonites will flock to theaters and buy multiple tickets to make it a success, while most people avoid it and say, "That sucky TV show? No thanks."

DVD sales of the series and inevitable movie will be high, again mostly because Whedon fanatics will buy multiple copies in an effort to prove Joss is the best writer/producer EVER.

The rest of us will look forward to reruns of "House" in that time slot, and remind Whedonites that we went slightly less crazy when FOX canceled "Terminator: TSCC" just when it was hitting its stride.

Can you blame them for pulling it for sweeps? It draws negligible ratings, and the fact that half its audience are DVR watchers probably does it more harm than good when it comes to setting ad rates.

Anyway, it's not like the show was anything special anyway - the much-vaunted first season turnaround was little more than a small tick upwards, and this year's been just as bad as the first half of season one. The idea really was better suited to a light, episodic format than the dark serialised version that wound up making air.

Plus, it didn't help that Fringe hits many of the same notes that Dollhouse does... and does so in a much better fashion.

@ZeroCorpse

that's because wheedon is what they call the best of the best - he's got his fans god damn it!!!!

you know, this keeps happening to whedon and yet you always blame fox. But maybe you need to look at yourself and the guy your looking up to, maybe if he made a GOOD show it wouldn't get canceled.

@sykishi I forgot how only good shows manage to not get canceled. That explains why Heroes is still on!

Snark aside, I did think Dollhouse could be really hit or miss - but when it hit, it was very, very good. I'm pretty much satisfied with the fact that they're not pulling what ABC did with Pushing Daisies on us, and that the remaining episodes do look like they could be pretty fantastic.

YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!

Take that, Joss Whedon!!

This show has everything in it that I should like, Joss Whendon, Eliza Dushku, ex-Battlestar members, but I just can't get into it.

This show was unfortunately a sinking ship from when it started. Eliza Dushku isn't a good enough actress to carry the show despite the awesome ex-Battlestar supporting cast. Being hot just isn't good enough nowadays (ex: Megan Fox)

Meh.
Cool concept.
Mediocre execution.
Hot leading actress who cannot act worth shit.
No big loss for me.

As for Joss Whedon being some sort of a god, well, I will admit that I really like Firefox/Serenity, and Buffy is still one of my favorite shows ever. And, of course, I think that Dr. Horrible is truly awesome. But, the man did write Aliens 4! I do not think he will ever make up for that giant vat of diarrhetic dinosaur dung!

Suits me fine if this does get cancelled. I'm not a Joss Whedon or an Eliza Dushku fan. I think they are both overrated. My wife loves Dollhouse and Bones.

About the only show on Fox that took me forever to warm up to is Fringe. The beginning was such a hack job as they ripped off every comic book and movie that they could find. But since then, as the story has unfolded, I actually like it.

@Mock26,

In Whedon's defense, his original script for Alien: Resurrection, while not a masterpiece by any means, was pretty decent. Unfortunately, it was subjected to a lot of on-the-fly rewriting by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (who, while a brilliant director, was the absolute wrong choice for an Alien movie). Aside from that, he was working with a set of studio mandates that he had to make the best of (e.g., including Ripley). (I know he talks about some of it in this AV Club interview: http://www.avclub.com/articles/joss-whedon,13730/)

I think the script is floating around on the internet somewhere. I recommend checking it out.

Shoot, I didn't realize it would automatically make a hyperlink. Here's one without the parenthesis:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/joss-whedon,13730/

@ Matt M.

Unfortunately (for me), I have read the script. And while I think it was definitely a lot better than the what ended up being the movie, I still think that it sucked massively. But, that is just my opinion. To each his own.

I don't like the show personally, but it's unfair the way Fox is treating it. I don't know how it's cost-effective to the network to buy all these shows that clearly should have gone to other networks and then screw around with them.

Well maybe now he'll concentrate on Doctor Horrible.

CAN WE HAVE A GOD DAMN "FAITH" SERIES NOW????????

I'm no Whedonite, but damn, that's a shame. It certainly isn't perfect, but Dollhouse has some really great elements at times (Eliza Dushku? Not one of them. I really don't think she's got the chops to headline this thing) that I found actually interesting.

I almost wish Dollhouse had just ended at the first season, actually - I feel like the second half was strong TV, and these new episodes just aren't as good, even with Fran Kranz and Enver Gjokaj.

Am I surprised this pretty much spells the end of Dollhouse? No. Am I disappointed? Yes. I really do like this show. Not as much as any of Joss's previous TV adventures, but more than most anything else that's geared toward sci-fi fans on the boob tube. And, yeah, as has been mentioned ad nauseum (but always bears repeating), the set up the remainder of the series was given in Epitaph One was truly amazing. If the show has a chance to get that far, which is doubtful, it could be one of the best things Joss has ever done.

But, the series always had its weak points. Eliza Dushku being the lead is one, obviously. She makes a decent supporting cast member, but should not be the lead, especially when the lead has no personality of her own (though, that's sloooooooooooooowly, too slowly, changing). Of course, the concept of the dolls is the show's biggest strength and its deepest weakness. The thought expirement the dolls present, and that Joss seems intent to follow through, is one of the coolest ideas I've ever seen, but the path he started to get there can be painful at times because it's always one step forward, two steps back with character development. I really wish he'd made Lennix or the FBI-Agent-turned-handler the main character. They're both interesting, engaging, and at least one had a clear agenda that is worth following.

Oh, and for the love of jeebus, Joss, more Amy Acker! Always MORE Amy Acker!

Wheedon isn't responsible for Alien 4 sucking.

I had a copy of that script years and years before that movie came out. Te original Wheedon script was really, really good. Like Terminator 2, instant classic good (if they'd let me direct it, anyways). What made it on screen was sort of like the original, except worse in every possible way. We're talking heated nerd debates about which was better, Aliens or Alien: Resurrection. Like that good.

The Alien Resurrection rape has been my go to example of hollywood fuckupery since 1996... and I didn't even realize that Wheedon wrote the damn thing until last week, and I actually despise everything he's done except Firefly, so it's not like I'm a fanboi.

And it's not like I can even spell his name.

Not entirely true.

Fox will be airing 2 hour Dollhouse "Movies" after sweeps in an attempt to keep viewers' attention over serialized episodes more focused.

And whoever runs the Dollhouse twitter/facebook fails. They made a post about a half hour ago about how Summer Glau's going to be on the episode on 10/30.

*facepalm*

Dollhouse is the best of the best and we all lvoe it! How can Fox cancel it?! WHos responsible this?!

not suprirsing since day one there was no way fox was going to let doll house live long enough to become the hit it could have been and pulling it from sweeps shows that fox goal with doll house from day one to kill it slowly and be done with it. proving that Joss should not ever do shows for fox.

@walcraeb,
I just got the impression Fox was doing that so they could run through the episodes twice as quickly and replace Dollhouse with repeats of House and Bones sooner.

Let me remind the Whedonites that Joss did an uncredited re-write of "Speed" that he's proud of. He claims the movie had good dialogue and takes credit for it.

Yeah. I'm crazy for "Firefly," but it never ceases to amaze me that it came from the mind of Joss Whedon.

The show actually grew on me after a while and seemed to have a good plan for where to go... even with its flaws. :(

Honestly, the show just isn't very good! How is this a crime? They took all that great stuff in the last several eps of season one and tossed it out the window; in season two it's back to being a mediocre "Alias" clone. Seriously, nothing about it is more than average, and it's often less so.

@Baltimoron

I actually think Ben Edlund's writing is a large part of what made Firefly so great. Buffy and Firefly are the only two Whedon shows I really enjoy (no, I was never even a "Roseanne" fan), and he had lots of good help with both of them. I love how the fanboys act as though any show or film is produced by one person. It's just not so, folks. . . .

I will miss Dollhouse, but I am not surprised that those asshats at Fox canceled it. Seems like every SF show that is good gets canceled while crappy reality shows and moronic sitcoms stay on the air. Even total crap like "American Dad" or "Family Guy" stay on the air because lots of immature men find comics full of gross and lowbrow humor amusing. Sad.

Well, on the bright side, this just means that we'll be seeing another series from Whedon in the next couple years, followed by untimely cancellations.

"not suprirsing since day one there was no way fox was going to let doll house live long enough to become the hit it could have been "

The only way Dollhouse would become a hit would have been for it to be the only show on the airwaves.

As it is, it'll be beaten in the ratings by the Yule log in most markets come December. When you make a show for a niche (who think Whedon's writing style is anything special of a niche (who are going to bother following yet another highly-serialised show) of a niche (sci fi fans), you're asking for failure. Fox probably just brought it back temporarily to hopefully make some money on the DVDs.

Heck, if they were smart, Whedon should've done what Peter Berg did with FNL and brokered a deal with DirecTV.

If by "gave it a chance" you mean "renewed it and then never ran another ad for it ever again" then yeah, they gave it a chance. Fuck that. Most of my friends never even realized that it was coming back on until I told them or they read it on the internet. Fox did their usual dumbass cognitive dissonance bullshit and brought it back while simultaneously giving up on it before the second season even started airing.

I'm just... god, it is such a useless network. Fuck.

It might get resurrected as a comic book where it might actually work, as opposed to episodic TV which has to limited time to actually develop stuff in an episode.

"pulling it early before it became the hit it could have been"

How much money is FOX supposed to lose on this show before they are allowed to cancel it? 3 seasons? 4? 5?

I really enjoy Dollhouse. I am sad it is being canceled. But the ratings aren't there. They gave it time. They promoted it.

Maybe Joss should have been doing talk shows and stuff promoting it instead of writing for FlashForward or whatever the hell else he's been doing instead of working on his show.

He loves to do that. Get a show started and immediately start looking for something else to work on. The guy has ADD.

> I'm just... god, it is such a useless network. Fuck.

Absurd.

It was marketed tons. People knew about it. They just didn't like it.

And Joss was off doing other random crap.

If you want to blame someone, blame Joss. It isn't FOX's job to bail out Joss' ass. They gave him 2 seasons.

This makes me very sad. I really enjoy this show, and while I know that the second season has started off a little slow, the most recent episode (#4, Belonging) was damned good. They only plan on the season being 13 episodes long anyways, why can't they just let them all air as usual instead of showing RERUNS instead? Grr... this sucks. I frickin' hate Fox.

Speaking as a Whedon fan, I can't exactly say I'm sad to hear about this. Fox to its credit gave it more of a chance than it did Firefly. Usually the best of Whedon's shows (e.g. Buffy and Angel) really got going by the end of their first seasons, then retained and built upon that momentum in the second. But here, while there were glimmers of promise, this show still hasn't yet managed to find its legs. I attribute that to the premise having been half-baked from the get-go. And it could have benefited from another year of tweaking. When I think about the other shows that I watch the first chance I get after they've recorded (Fringe, Sons of Anarchy, Family Guy, The Cleveland Show, Heroes, Stargate Universe and even Star Wars: The Clone Wars) I've noticed that Dollhouse manages to be very low on the list of priorities. Cancelling the show now to me feels like euthanasia at this point. :\

It's a shame, because as I've said before, when Joss is good, he's very good. But Michael Hartman was exactly on the nose about him; in the last several years he has developed the annoying tendency to put out a show, then not really go out and publicize or support it anymore after a few months thinking his job is essentially done and he can just do it through his website after that while he gets started on something else. That's not how it works. I think he's been sadly starting to believe his own hype and that anything he does is automatically golden, so he doesn't put in as much effort into projects like he used to, or wastes his time on some vanity project like Doctor Horrible when he does. He's starting to become one of those weird reclusive artists who will put out something, expect the public to "get it" and then complains how no one appreciates or undersrtands his work when they don't. And I wouldn't really be surprised if he does have ADD or Aspergers. When you think about it, there's a lot about Whedon's personal life that we actually don't know (mostly due to his own unwillingness to talk about it, adding further to the whole "reclusive artist" thing).

ZeroCorpse, were you seriously implying that Firefly wasn't a good television show?

Anyway, I'm weird in that I didn't mind the silliness of early season 1 Dollhouse. At some point it became really, really narmy, with horrible lines like "I have 38 brains, not one of them thinks you can sign a contract to be a slave. Especially now that we have a black president". I also found the unaired episode to be one of the most miserable 45 minutes of television I've ever sat through. There was no wit or humor or anything else that made Whedon's other shows worth watching.

Joss Whedon and fox?? anyone seeing a pattern hear?

I'm disappointed...but not very surprised. I was getting into it...but the second season wasn't blowing my skirt up. I consider myself a pretty patient person when it comes to waiting for a series to get good. Sadly, not everyone else is.

@ZeroCorpse Yet I haven't seen any major whine on whine action yet. You Sir, are a very silly man. How can anybody hate Firefly? It was pretty much what I imagine watching Han Solo The Series would be like.

Hahaha, yes, yes, yessssss, weep for me, Wheedonites, your tears are sweet ambrosia!

What PO's me about this is that Fox took Dollhouse over Terminator Sarah Connor, and left us all with a major cliffhanger that will never be resolved.

I'm not surprised this is happening, I was just thinking that Dollhouse, which I thought had potential but was not in the same league with Terminator, jumped the shark this year by Having the Paul Ballard character now working for the Dollhouse (whether or not it was to ultimately destroy it.)

You must not be watching the same show I am, or, with most of the internet, most of you are just bitter people that hate things just to hate things.

The show is great. Whedon or not, the premise is great, the story is great, and its enjoyable. The problem is its on fox.

If it doesn't fit their cookie cutter molds, they forget about it.

And, how is this show getting canceled, when a one episode series like House is still on? Anyone who enjoys that show has to be slow in the fucking head. Unknown disease, Patient nearly dies, witty banter, someone says or does something normal, house saves the day. rinse repeat.