If you'd hoped Fox's renewed confidence in Dollhouse meant a better time slot, then we have bad news: it's keeping its current slot, only with a worse lead-in. And Fox execs delivered Sarah Connor's eulogy.
As Graeme predicted on Saturday, Dollhouse will be returning in the 9 PM Friday timeslot. But this time around, it'll have two half-hour sitcoms leading into it: Brothers and 'Til Death. So if Dollhouse did badly when paired with another science fiction show, how well is it going to do with two sitcoms before it?
There is one patch of good news, however: fansite Dollverse says that Fox will air the fabled thirteenth episode of the show's first season sometime this summer. The network realized that the post-apocalyptic episode "Epitaph One" was going to start airing in other countries (including the U.K. and Sweden), so it would quickly wind up being pirated. So we may actually get to see it before it appears on the DVD box set at the end of July.
And meanwhile, Fox entertainment president Kevin Reilly had this to say about Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles at a press conference:
[Sarah Connor] has completed its run. I think it had a nice little run. It was a good show. It was not an either or [with Dollhouse]. We did see it tailing off a bit [in the ratings]. It had a nice creative core, but, ultimately, we made the bet on Dollhouse, so that's it for [Sarah Connor]... We make no apologies. We gave it a lot of support and some consistent scheduling. We tried and thought it was time to move on.
As late as last night, people connected with the show were still insisting its cancellation was a rumor, and nothing official had been announced. Sadly, now it really does seem to be official. We're going to miss that show's robot-fueled existential dilemmas a lot.