It seems we are about to do the Dollhouse Cancellation Tango again.

Dollhouse is off the air for most of October as Fox airs the baseball post season games, but commercials had promised it would return in November with new episodes.  Well, Michael Ausiello of Entertainment Weekly learned today that the show has been pulled from the November sweeps period, and that it will probably burn off its remaining episodes by showing back-to-back episodes on Friday nights in December.

This does not bode well for the series continuing past its current 13 episode order for the second season.

I think the problem is multi-faceted in what has gone wrong with this show:

Fox messed with season 1 too much

Joss Whedon, creator of the series, told the press prior to season 2 beginning that Fox had promised to remain more removed from the series this season.  It was thanks to them that season 1 turned into a “costume of the week” show, showing Echo, played by series star Eliza Dushku, in as many male fantasy outfits and scenarios as they could conceivably fit in.  (Any one remember the odd segment of her in a Domanatrix outfit as she returned from an engagement?)

This severely delayed development of the over arching plots, and made the show feel like it crawled before it ever took its first tentative steps at moving the bigger story forward.

Nielsen ratings are horribly broken

Nielsen ratings for this season have been abysmal, but they do not take in to account DVR recordings or online viewing.  When the DVR numbers came out, Eliza Dusku mentioned on her Twitter account that the ratings for the season premiere jumped 50%.  That still didn’t make it a hit show, but it certainly looked better than the awful numbers that were initially released.

God bless her, but Eliza Dushku can’t carry a series

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Ms. Dushku, but she does not have the acting chops to carry a primetime series on her acting talents.  She is a supporting actress and isn’t cut out for the lead.  Throw rocks at me if you must, but I am just not impressed by her in this role.  I love the premise of the series, I enjoy a lot of the supporting cast, but she is just not my cup of tea when it comes to a leading lady in a series.

Honestly, I think we should be thankful we got any portion of a second season, but I think this is it this time folks, I think we can put Dollhouse in the history books after December.