Rating's grim for Dollhouse S2 Premiere

Television, Movies Games and Books Dollhouse
#1

Ever since TSCC ended last season, Dollhouse’s rating saw declines. After TSCCs canceled I also saw a lot of comments about not watching FOX’s shows, including Dollhouse. Some goes as far as blaming Dollhouse for TSCC not getting picked up.

This is sad. Someone made a joke about how otherworldly it is to have waves of geeks angry at Joss Whedon…

Season 2 Premiere is the show’s lowest rating yet, with only 2.56 mil for a network show. That’s pretty grim for a show. Especially TSCC got canceled for only have 4 mil per episode. (yeah, I know WB owns TSCC DVD rights, but still)

Dollhouse brings onboard so many awesome scifi stars, Jamie Bamber, Tahmoh, Mark Sheppard from BSG, Wash from Firefly, and this season there will have Summer Glau.

I think the story is just about to get interesting now Tahmoh is working from inside the Dollhouse, and he obviously has his own agenda. Alpha played by Wash (wikiing his name… Alan Tudyk) is an awesome bad guy.

The season 1 finale two parter where Alan came on was brilliant… and I never thought Wash can scare the crap out of me. It’d be the suck if the rating doesn’t at least return to 3.5 mil…

#2

Remember though, it is much cheaper to do Dollhouse than it is to do Sarah Connor, IYKWIM.

Fox can take the risk of letting Dollhouse build an audience if it low cost (and I understand the show took a budget cut for this new season).

#3

Though Josh Fredman repeatedly said the show doesn’t use as much money as people seems to think. Josh said the fact that people thinks the show is expensive is a tribute to the production value.

If you look at the making of, at lot of the effects are cosmetic. Which Dollhouse has to use a bunch too (Alpha is a bit knife happy). As for CGI, there were a couple in Season 1 of Dollhouse. It’s just the scale isn’t as big as TSCC.

#4

look here’s the deal I love Whedon shows, and everything he’s done. Accept when he killed Tara. we all Loved Tara, he killed her, that soulless bastard… :mad:

but besides silliness here’s the hard truth. We the faithful are in the minority. His work although almost always enjoyable; It can be difficult and subversive. he said it himself in the special features of serenity he “makes things that people love; not that they like.” Me and a good portion of you folk are part of that we love it, but it has always tended to alienate the more general audience some. because he goes places others don’t. He has made arguably the best genre entertainment around for a decade. but his audience although rabid; has always been small compared to the main networks. So yes dollhouse’s ratings are small, and yes DVR’s and downloads will more correctly reflect the actual viewer ship. but the networks cannot monetize that effectively yet. odds are no matter how good they make this show the ratings will stay around the same.

So my cure’

ride this dollhouse train as long as you can… and than once its over. Take breath and realize that prime time network tv is not your real home. Think CW, HBO, showtime; smaller networks gave him the freedom to create great shows, and the needed 8 million viewers per episodes is reduced. to where genre programing can survive and thrive.

Sorry I went off a little… I’m just tired of worrying about my favorite shows being cancelled its tiring.

#5

i hear ya.

Though I don’t think a network show really need 8 mil to stay alive. But less than 3 mil definitely won’t do… The worst season Buffy had was 4.1 mil per episode… granted that was before DVR, itune store and internet streaming, but still…

#6

I blame the ratings partially on Dollhouse’s lead in, Brothers. Sci fi series tend to do better with a compatible lead in, a la SCC to Dollhouse, Chuck to Heroes to Journeyman (although Journeyman didn’t survive sniffles). Anyway, my thought is that anyone who would watch Brothers, prolly won’t stick around for Dollhouse.

The flip side is DH has Smallville as a lead in, but it’s on another channel.

Unfortunately, I foresee them both being cancelled this season.

#7

you mean Smallville and DH?

well, I think time has come for Smallville, even though the story is getting a bit better since last season. It’s hard to beat the horror that was season 6-7 though.

#8

I’d really hate to see Dollhouse cancelled, but I have to admit that S2 isn’t blowing me away. Joss and Eliza told us at ComicCon that they listened to us and things were going to be better. I’m not seeing that yet. Yes, I loved seeing Jamie, but nothing seems different yet. I’ll still watch, because I love the cast and I love Joss, but I don’t have a good feeling about it, especially now that SGU and Sanctuary are starting up on Friday nights at Skiffy.

#9

Dollhouse is the first show in more than 10yrs to be renewed for a friday night slot on Fox, the only reason it was renewed was because despite the relatively low ratings it is very cheap to produce. Warehouse 13 supposedly has a 2mil$ budget per ep, Dollhouse is somewhere between 650k and 1.1mil. Despite the poor showing they still did almost as good as SGU in the same viewing range 18-49 year old men. If the ratings stabilize and grow, Fox wont cancel it, they want to maintain scripted programming for Friday nights. Frankly I dont know why they bother, fridays are the worst night for television, expecially in the demographics these shows target.

#10

At the same time I wasn’t blown away by SGU either…

Between the two, so far I rather watch Dollhouse. I think the biggest change is Echo being able to retain the desire to bring down Dollhouse after each wipe. The first two episodes seems to be focused on driving that point home. That Echo is even more different now. Hopefully that point will amount to more interesting, less episodic stories in the next couple episodes.

#11

Me too. I though the show would be quicker out of the gate. The S2 pilot was great: no wasting time on backstory like Fringe’s pilot had, and Whisky and Topher’s scene had me blown away… but last week’s stand alone was not doing it for me. They really need to move it along with the apocalyptic story arc… otherwise, I’m afraid we’ll get canceled before we ever get to it. This show had so much potential… Joss need to whip it into high gear.