Surprise! Dollhouse Gets Renewed

Joss Whedon kept the faith (sorry, sorry), and it turns out he was in the right: Preliminary word ahead of Fox's Monday upfronts has the network, in a surprise move, renewing Whedon's high-profile, low-rated drama Dollhouse for a second season. Dollhouse is a show with a lot of unrealized potential, so this is great news.

Despite Whedon's professed optimism and the enthusiasm of the producer's standing fan base, almost nobody in the industry thought this would happen. The show's ratings have been steady but low even for Friday nights, and the May 8 season finale garnered a mere 2.76 million viewers, an all-time low for the series and an 11-percent drop from the previous episode. THR thinks Dollhouse "might very well be the lowest-rated in-season scripted drama to ever get a renewal on a major broadcast network." (Do they get a statue for that? I know Emmy categories have been getting narrower, but this is ridiculous.) Now watch all the pundits say it all makes perfect sense, and of course this was what Fox was going to do all along!

Basically, with Dollhouse's strong DVR records (pumping up viewership around 40%), internet video, and iTunes downloads added into the mix, plus the Whedon name, Fox has apparently decided that the show has a real following and will make money through a combination of multiple revenue streams. (This is sparking yet another round of talk about ye olde Nielsen tyranny.)

Season 2 of Dollhouse will consist of 13 episodes, which is rapidly becoming the norm for sci-fi series, and is expected to stay on Friday nights, Variety says.

Cost was another factor that had counted against the show, but the deal with the studio producing the show, corporate sibling 20th Century Fox, may include delivering a cheaper show alongside Dollhouse to balance the books, TV Week says. The DVD-only 13th episode, produced as a high-quality, low-budget oddity, was also a demonstration of how Dollhouse could be done cheaper. (What's ominous about this is it was cheaper partly because unknowns were used instead of the stars. Will there be cast trims in Dollhouse's future?)

The Dollhouse renewal follows news that another big-buzz sci-fi series on Fox, Fringe, will also be coming back.