It’s like deja vu all over again. Fox has decided to place the new Whedon show Dollhouse on Fridays at 9pm, Eastern. Fans of Firefly are probably having flashbacks to its own deadly timeslot of Fridays at 9pm. And it’ll be in competition with Clone Wars and whatever lands on that slot on SciFi, once Stargate Atlantis is off the air. But they’re pairing it with The Sarah Connor Chronicles, so hopefully that will help it a little.
i09 is hopeful, though, and thinks this will be Joss’ best show ever. Think those shiny thoughts, people!
i09 is embarrassing itself. Are we so desperate for controversy that we’re now eulogizing a program before it ever airs? Plenty of shows have been hits on Friday nights, too.
Well, the eulogizing is a bit much, but it is more than ironic that they’re putting Joss’ new show at the same time in which his previous one died. All of this after they all swore things would be better this time around…
What I think everyone’s forgetting is that, from a scheduling POV, Fox’s decisions have made perfect sense. Their biggest s/f hit ever, X-Files, started on Fridays and stayed there for years. They wanted to repeat that success with Firefly. They probably want to try again with Dollhouse. As the saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form of television.
Yes, Fox screwed up Firefly’s episode order, and they certain didn’t publicize the show nearly enough. And they showed no support when it wasn’t an immediate hit. But that Fox seems to be a thing of the past. Nowadays, the network has been remarkably patient with s/f shows, even those that don’t get great ratings. (Terminator comes to mind.)
(Also, consider that much of Dollhouse’s target audience are DVR users anyway, so it doesn’t necessarily matter when the show airs. There’s no way Fox hasn’t taken that into account.)
But if fans start criticizing Fox even before Dollhouse airs — before it has the chance to succeed or fail — why should they’re care about what we say later on in the show’s development?