A Man For All Second Seasons

I don't watch very many new shows: I've sort of gotten bored of Family Guy (although I'll watch it if it's on). I haven't thought South Park was funny in years. I've gotten a little pissed off at Heroes this season (ditto 24, Desperate Housewives, Weeds, etc in previous seasons). I watch The Daily Show, but that's not really in danger of going anywhere, and it's not like it's a regular television program. I'm at least a season behind on House, M.D. and Burn Notice. And now that Battlestar Galactica is over, the only two regular prime time shows I watch as soon as they are available are Castle and Dollhouse.

And I found out this weekend that both are being renewed for second season. Yippee.

Castle, I wasn't worried about, actually. It's mainstream enough (and popular enough) that it was almost a shoe-in for renewal. But we've been a little up-in-the-air about Dollhouse. This is, of course, colored by the fate of Joss Whedon's last series, the short-lived-but-much-beloved Firefly, which died a sad death by cancellation but spawned enough postmortem support to allow for a full-length feature film. Fox cancelled Firefly shortly after cancelling Family Guy, which it has since resurrected. Twice. So there's been a lot of talk about Fox not knowing a hot product when they've got one.

That said, I can't help but wonder if a lot of the Dollhouse renewal was a result of latent Firefly fallout, as if Fox had thrown up their hands and said "if we don't give this show a chance we'll never hear the end of it." Because their numbers have been poor at worst and ambiguous at best. Things going against it:

1. Bad time slot. It airs Friday nights, and it used to air directly opposite Battlestar, in spite of the fact that they share a major cast member.
2. It's not very mainstream. It's a serial drama with some serious sci-fi underpinnings. Not exactly a police procedural.
3. It's a serial drama. It's hard to jump into a show when you have to have seen episodes 3 through 8 to understand what's going on in episode 11. Or if you miss the episode where so-and-so is revealed and then that gets spoiled for you later.
4. No one knows how many people are watching Hulu. I suspect a lot of Whedon's fans watch Dollhouse there (since Dr. Horrible debuted on Hulu), and they don't have reliable numbers. Nielson reported that there were 8.9 million views last month, but someone else counted 42 million. So, there's some guesswork there, ya?
   

But, at the end of the day, both it and Castle are intelligent shows, and I'm glad to see smart fare like that succeeding. Also, since Disney bought into Hulu, it will be moving to Hulu (that is, away from ABC.com's attrocious video player, which I've complained about before).

More good news.

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