Probably not — but maybe! Certainly Dollhouse’s low ratings, Joss Whedon’s troubled history with Fox, and the fact that the network is refusing to air the thirteenth episode of the first season all bode poorly for the show’s renewal prospects. But now that it’s finally rid of the viewership-terminating Sarah Connor Chronicles as a lead-in, can Dollhouse rally? Whedon hopes so!
At Paleyfest yesterday, he acknowledged that the chance of a second season is “not very good†— but there is, technically, a chance!
“I’ve gone from a sort of place of ‘You don’t even care, nobody loves me’ [laughs] to a place of God, I can’t believe I’m saying this … hope. We might actually get the chance to do what we’re dying to do, which is tell more of these stories with these crazy people because we have so many more yet to come … Basically it’s what happens in the next few weeks; we have a new lead-in, we have a few more episodes coming up — whether it’s 12 or 13 — they are fierce … We’re going to go out this season with a bang, and hopefully we’ll get to come back for Season 2.â€
Next week’s episode of Dollhouse will air after Prison Break, which has already been canceled but is returning for six more episodes following a mid-season break. And its ratings this year are slightly better than The Sarah Connor Chronicles’ (5.6 million viewers, on average, compared to SCC’s 4.7 million). Still, we can’t recall the last time that swapping one canceled show for another canceled show saved a third nearly canceled show from cancellation — but it’s certainly kind of weird to hear Joss Whedon using the word “hope,†isn’t it?
Dollhouse — Paleyfest 2009 [HR]
Joss Whedon: Chances of a ‘Dollhouse’ renewal are ‘not very good’ [Show Tracker/LAT]