Despite Dollhouse's seemingly shaky future, Fox has revealed that it will produce and air all 13 ordered episodes of season two. Good network manners such as these must be rewarded and encouraged. Someone send these people cookies!
Her link takes you to "The Live Feed" which reports:
"Dollhouse" fans can breathe easier: Fox will air all 13 episodes.
On the heels of impressive DVR data for last month's "Dollhouse" premiere, network executives say they will run each produced hour of the show's current order despite the Friday drama's modest overall ratings.
"We're going to run all the episodes," Fox scheduling chief Preston Beckman said. "We're not saying we're happy with those numbers, or accept them, but we don't have to overreact. During [November] sweeps we might have to jack up the numbers a little [with other programming], but we plan on completing the order for this show."
As for ordering additional episodes, or a third season, Fox says they will make that decision after the current run.
The news represents a relief to "Dollhouse" fans that the current season won't be cut short, yet also suggests a full-season order is unlikely. Waiting until all 13 episodes have aired before making a decision generally means allowing production on the show to shut down for the season.
Reached by phone, Joss Whedon (who has a terrible-sounding cold -- feel better!) said he's writing the 13th hour to give fans a degree of closure.
"We'll definitely have closure, but will leave some doors open," said Whedon, who's currently shooting the eighth episode. "When we got our first numbers, which were bad, the first thing [Fox president of entertainment] Kevin Reilly said was, 'You'll have all 13,' which was great. They're not going to pull the rug out from under us."
Beckman said DVR results have played a role in the show's fate, though wasn't surprised by today's results.
"It's one of the reasons that we brought it back; we knew it was DVR friendly," Beckman said. "We expected to see this, and hopefully we'll see [the overnight ratings] increase from week to week ... with some shows, you have to look at the bigger picture."
Beckman also humorously characterized deciding the show's fate as a bit of no-win situation when it comes to dealing with Whedon's passionate fans.
"If you cancel it, you're an asshole; if you renew it and then don't put it back on, you're an asshole," he said. "I'm still paying for 'Terminator.' 'Dollhouse' has a small rabid fan base that in the world of social media seems bigger than it is. We gave them another season knowing full well we were going to burn in hell if we pulled it."
(Reprinted from http://www.thrfeed.com/2009/10/fox-we-will-air-all-13-dollhouse-episodes.html)
So what does this mean? We'll get our full season, but that may be it. And we're not getting more than 13 episodes this year. We'll also potentially get another "Epitaph 1" (or maybe an "Epitaph 2?), as Joss promises the 13th episode will provide some closure. It also means our efforts haven't all been for naught. That last paragraph of the article above basically says we're loud, and we're being heard. But we're still recognized as just a loud minority. Is there hope for a Season 3? Probably not, unless the numbers increase significantly or a cable network thinks it profitable enough to pick-up. Maybe we should be lobbying for that? Numbers are of a whole different significance on cable, who is used to courting a loud minority. Cable just likes the "loud" part.
I think we just have to be glad we had our second season, and we have to enjoy it and analyze it as much as we can, because we won't have much more of it. If we're extremely lucky, it will be discovered by the DVD set somewhere down the line, and maybe will be revived as a movie or a miniseries. I also think that we'll see a change in the remaining episodes. I think they've been in kind of a holding patterns themselves, not really having a feeling how many hours they'd have left to write. I think we've seen that in these kind of stand alone episodes. After this announcement, I think they'll be moving toward closure, being that they only have 9 more hours to bring this story to its conclusion. (3 out of 13 episodes have aired; the fourth is already written and in the can.) I think we'll be back to the edge-of-your-seat, can't miss a second, have to watch it twice kind of writing and filming we saw the second half of the season and enjoyed in "Epitaph 1".
While I mourn it's assumed ending, I am also excited by the quality it is sure to bring. Wouldn't be ironic if its reported death was the very thing that elevated the series, finally bringing in the rabid audience it stumbled to find all along?
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