…which is the assertion that somehow this show dealt with the morality of the Dollhouse, rather than actually turning smart viewers off because it, in actuality, implied a level of morality that isn’t there. Both Topher and DeWitt got the “They’re actually nice people!” treatment in the show, and the assertion doesn’t make any sense. Topher, we imagine, is really cut up that he was used to help a rapist rape someone. But in all actuality, Sierra’s membership of the Dollhouse as Topher believed it to be before Belonging is not much better: Topher had no problems sending Sierra on dates when he thought she was a mental patient unable to consent. And, naturally, DeWitt was complicit then too, without the need to threaten her with the attic.

In short, this episode had a combination of S2E2′s “newcomers go away, this episode is for fans only” poor opening, and it was one of the few episodes that actually could be perceived as somehow blessing what the Dollhouse is doing, as implying that forcing people to have sex against their will, well, that might be OK after all, the kind of thing honorable if misunderstood people would go along with. And they’d never go along with evil, well, evil people are easy to spot, they’re made of cardboard and have powerful friends.

I’m finding it surpremely ironic that Whedonites and the “I hate Dollhouse because I don’t understand it so it must be pro-rape” contingents have rallied around this one. Whedonites can kind of be forgiven – it was less of a “What makes Dollhouse an interesting commentary on humanity and inhumanity” episode and more of a “Fleshes out some Whedon mythology” type thing – just like the clip-show like Epitaph One which similarly attracted Whedonites despite being barely watchable to anyone else. But the latter? This was the first episode I’ve seen, really, honestly, that could, if taken at face value, be described as objectively pro-rape, or if the word rape is inappropriate, then certainly “pro-use-of-body-for-sex-and-goodness-knows-what-else-without-consent”.

It’s just the episode made a distinction between “Good rape” (renting out a mentally ill woman) and “Bad rape” (Evil moustache-twiddling cardboard cutouts.)

This is not to say, again, that I think the episode was bad, actually I rather like the questions posed by it. I don’t think the episode was intended to be taken at face value. And so I don’t think the episode is pro-any-rape. But I’m amused by those who do take it at face value, see the taking down of a cardboard villain, and think, somehow, this means it served a moral purpose not present in previous episodes. Given the prior episode compared the Dollhouse to a serial killer, I can’t help but feel that we already know what Dollhouse’s makers think about the morality of the eponymous institution they’re describing.

Smallville has lower ratings than last year but if the CW wants to have a show on Friday, I think they will stick with Smallville and give it at least another season. If they don’t want to air anything they will cancel it.

I tried to watch DH FOUR TIMES, 1.01 boring, 1.12 even more boring, Epitaph AWESOME, 2.01 boring and then I simply stopped caring.

To then open up a brilliant 3rd season that only lasted about 3 episodes until the departure of some key actors (Rebecca Romijn, Christopher Gorham, Freddy Rodriguez), the change in writing and change of location to NY ended up hurting the show during that season, and then the writing just became stupid and fell apart and then Ashley Jensen (Christina) also left the show.

Let’s not forget that ABC suspended Ugly Betty last spring to make room for their stupid comedy Thursday which killed Samantha Who and that awful Mothers something Karen Walker sitcom. Ugly Betty was planned to kill the remaining episodes over the summer, and then it was done. Thanks to a sudden decision to reactivate the show in mid-may is that a 4th season came into production. They DO need to give the show a decent closure. Like another poster said earlier, this feature is not supposed to last that long. Betty should be beautiful by now and paired up with her boss. At least that is what happened at the end of the original Betty la Fea.

I watched the Friday episode and I enjoyed it, however it were the same jokes from the 1st season.. the series seems to be going nowhere, like “Scrubs” which is supposed to make us laugh but every episode is different, in UB the writers stopped doing continuation and got rid of all its storylines which makes the show painful to watch now. Don’t see any possibilities for a 5th season. In fact I don’t think it will make it all the way to May. Possibly March, when they have “V” or something else as a new anchor show (Desp. Housewives has lost it too)

Take TAR some people were very surprised how much of a drop TAR took when it moved to Sundays in demo’s. But the fact that its lead in is quite possibly the show with the oldest average audience is going to drag down your demo’s.

Medium is doing worse on Friday than it did on Monday on NBC, but it’s on Fridays.

I agree the bigger story is the drop off for Ghost Whisperer.

Jim you said it….

1. “The show was in a Friday night death-slot.” So what? If your fandom is as ‘mighty’ as it claims to be (and Fox should be as ‘afraid’ of Whedonites, as they claim), you shouldn’t be afraid that it’ll make the numbers necessary to survive. Either your fandom is huge enough to support the show when it needs it, or it doesn’t.

2. “Nobody stays home Friday nights.” Well, the problem with that excuse is the number of excuses that popped up during “special” events that happened during the first season. Either it was “Wolverine” or “Watchmen” or “BSG”. Well, either these were the exceptions to the rule, or it didn’t matter that any of those things were competing for Dollhouse’s audience. Which one is it?

And of course, my favorite:

3. “Whedon shows take TIME to develop.” This one irks me the most. No showrunner is so pampered in the business that they’re allowed to pull this excuse. Whedon’s 3rd generation Hollywood. He knows the game. If he doesn’t know by this point how to pull in an audience and keep them there from the jump, there’s no way the network should be to blame for that. And shame on Whedon for believing his own hype enough not to have taken lessons learned from ‘Firefly’ to heart.

(My favorite variation on this excuse is thus: “You should watch a couple more episodes, it’ll get good by then”. Okay, but you’ve already decided it’s good despite the few episodes YOU’VE seen, but I’m not allowed to judge it as bad by the same number of episodes?)

At this point though it doesn’t matter if they put out good or bad episodes. I know that for myself I’ll try out a show and then if I don’t like it after a few episodes, I just drop it. I expect that is pretty much the same as everyone else. People did tune into Dollhouse in season 1 and many didn’t like what they saw so they tuned back out. I don’t see many of those people tuning back in again.

A show has to do pretty well in grabbing viewers in their first few episodes these days – definitely in their first season and Dollhouse failed to do that. It’s not like years ago when you only had 3 networks and didn’t have the Internet, DVDs, pay per view TV, etc.

What surprises me as a viewer is that Dollhouse had a good final episode and had the summer to retool the series and relaunch it. Instead it seems like they didn’t make much of an effort with the exception of this episode on addressing any of the issues that needed to be addressed.

I do believe that it is a mistake not to make a pilot episode and then have it tested out. It also helps in my opinion to make a miniseries or movie for a new series concept and see first how well it does (like Battlestar Galactica did). I find it interesting that many of your successful series were retooled after the pilot was shot and many of the cast or leads were replaced – example Star Trek (everyone but Leonard Nimoy was recast and the entire show retooled), Gilligan’s Island (I believe all but 2 were recast), Home Improvement, etc.

It also helps to know who your target audience is (who are you trying to), which is something that the makers of Dollhouse don’t seem to understand. The concept of the show is repulsive to women in general in my opinion and this last episode was the only one that has made any effort to address it.

Years ago I attended screenings of pilots for 2 sitcoms. Both had major problems with them and they never made it to the air. From what I’ve read Dollhouse’s original pilot wasn’t good and it didn’t air. Unfortunately, in my opinion, they really needed to have retooled not just some minor things but the concept of the show as well as Eliza Dushku being the main character of the show – both of which they didn’t do.

UB by the end of S3 was doing an average of 2 in the demo, going bellow 2 several times. It would have been dead had not ABC found a deal to keep it on the air until syndication. Why where people not watching? Because it became, and still is, boring.

Samantha Who? was ABC most protected show, and it too was getting all the promo love it could get though S1, and most of S2. When finally they felt confident that it had been long enough protected it behind DWST, they thought that they could give it a promotion, moving it to open a night, to discover it was not able to keep it’s viewers. 2 seasons is long enough protection, time to quit.

WMD club premiered on Fridays with nice total viewers, but dismal ratings in the demo. ABC, that doesn’t care about total viewers, was patient, and after the strike brought it back. Along with Sam Who?, it was the only other new show brought back. It was and given a chance on Tuesdays, after the DWYS results show, and did exactly the same numbers it did on Friday. It proved that the bad Friday numbers were the fault of the bad quality of the show, and not of the time slot. Again it deserved being canceled.

Do you think its possible now that Betty was acquired by the TV Guide Network, that if ABC is officially done with Betty that TV Guide could carry it on?

Does no press release about White Collar point to bad ratings?

Didn’t see this episode.

Dollouse’s problem was never lack of promotion. Fox isn’t promoting it because the show is a lost cause now. Dollhouse started out with 4.2 million viewers for its premiere and now it’s down to 2.1 million. It shed viewers in catastrophic numbers considering its premiere didn’t do particularly well. But Fox was still willing to throw it a lifeline even after the only people left were the hardcore fans. If Dollhouse could have maintained that base at least it might have goten a back nine. But instead it has kept on dropping. Whedon fans have this idea that only dumb people don’t like Dollhouse but in point of fact it’s perfectly possible to be intelligent and still think the show is an uninvolving mess with a contrived, ill-conceived and routinely offensive premise, some weak actors, hardly any chemistry between the cast, characters that are alternately annoying or don’t seem like fully formed people, and boring, plot-hole filled simplistic thriller stories at the same time. Dollhouse is failing because it couldn’t hold onto the audience that *did* tune in, not because it can’t find a new one.

Having said that, I’m glad to see that with last night’s episode, the writers are finally having the courage to face the premise of the show head-on. They finally called a spade a spade. If last night’s episode was episode three of season one the show might not be in the trouble it’s in now. The plotholes were still there of course (this giantly powerful friend of Rossum can just be “disappeared” without anyone suspecting? People are going to assume that after pining for Priya for so long that he’s willing to just run to Mexico without her for no reason at all?), and the fact that this was one of their most successful episodes dramatically and yet it minimized Echo and didn’t show Ballard at all points to the disturbing fact that Tahmoh simply isn’t the slightest bit interesting in this role and even worse, Echo, as currenly conceived, is a drag on the show. (Not Eliza per se–I think if Echo’s character had been conceived differently she might be fine. But I’m not certain–it might just be that she can’t carry a show on her own.)

And having said all *that*, I still wouldn’t be surprised if Fox renewed this show because they seem to be using a Magic 8-Ball to make their Dollhouse decisions. As long as Ghost Whisperer doesn’t get cancelled, I’ll be happy. And if Dollhouse starred Jennifer Love Hewitt I’m pretty sure it would be doing triple the numbers it is now. Some actors can carry a series, and some can’t.

As for the former, well, it really was the best episode that has aired. And as for the comments that it doesn’t garner to newcomers, there’s only so many times you can do episodes like that without seriously annoying your existing fanbase (Season One episodes 1-5, Season Two episodes 1-2… and possibly episode 3, even though I enjoyed it).

If “Dollhouse” is really over this year (which, to be honest, it was probably always going to be its last year) then stuff newcomers. Go out with a mythology-surrounding bang. And why should we still watch even though we know it’s coming to an end? Why miss out on good television just because no more episodes will follow? If I was told the air is gonna get sucked into space in a year’s time, I wouldn’t just stop breathing.

Yeah, I’m sure Michelle Obama is so regular the hospital actually got rid of her job after she quit.

R.G, Heroes more that doubles Ugly Betty… 1.2 versus a 2.5 for Heroes. A 2.5 on NBC makes it one of NBC’s best shows, as long as Heroes doesn’t drop below 2.0 it will get a season 5….