The surprise renewal last season of Joss Whedon’s sci-fi drama ‘Dollhouse’ may end up as only a temporary reprieve. The ratings for Friday’s season premiere are in and they are pretty bad. Though this is certainly disappointing, it’s not exactly surprising given the show’s performance last season.
The Eliza Dushku vehicle only managed to garner 2.5 million viewers. While the show has a terrible timeslot at 9 p.m. Friday, it was also soundly defeated by every other major networks’ offerings. Even the third-highest show, a rerun of ABC’s ‘Modern Family’ racked up 4.28 million viewers.
Though Fox did manage to defeat the CW’s showing of ‘America’s Next Top Model,’ so that’s something to be proud of I suppose.
The ratings don’t include online viewings, however. Hopefully, when those are taken into account it will cast the show in a more favorable light. If not, ‘Dollhouse’ may add to Whedon’s collection of shows that have met an untimely fate of cancellation.
With the heavy weight of a season’s worth of continuity on its back, it is difficult to imagine the show picking up a notable amount of new viewers. Fox may have backed the wrong horse when they decided to axe ‘Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles’ and bring back ‘Dollhouse’ instead.
I thought that “Vows” was a great episode to kick off the season, and I didn’t think it was noticeable at all that they had budget cuts… its really discouraging to see that the ratings suffered again. Hopefully this show just slowly picks up steam, but I think Fox has just dropped the ball in promoting this show, and also has it in a bad time slot. Such a shame.
Also, I was really happy that they played the song “The World” by Earlimart at the end of the episode, just as Paul realizes that Echo is remembering more of her past than she should. Great song, and I thought it fit the scene real well, too. I actually posted a video clip of the scene on YouTube, but it got taken down for copyright violations, which is yet another sign that Fox doesn’t know what they’re doing when it comes to promoting the show – don’t they realize that it’s good for a show’s ratings to have YouTube popularity?
I thought that “Vows” was a great episode to kick off the season, and I didn’t think it was noticeable at all that they had budget cuts… its really discouraging to see that the ratings suffered again. Hopefully this show just slowly picks up steam, but I think Fox has just dropped the ball in promoting this show, and also has it in a bad time slot. Such a shame.
Also, I was really happy that they played the song “The World” by Earlimart at the end of the episode, just as Paul realizes that Echo is remembering more of her past than she should. Great song, and I thought it fit the scene real well, too. I actually posted a video clip of the scene on YouTube, but it got taken down for copyright violations, which is yet another sign that Fox doesn’t know what they’re doing when it comes to promoting the show – don’t they realize that it’s good for a show’s ratings to have YouTube popularity?