One thing that Dollhouse's cancellation brought up for me was the question of how long television shows should be given to develop creatively before they face the ax. Perhaps this is because I am not particularly offended or upset by Dollhouse's death, but I actually think that the 13-episode standard first order (give or take) is relatively fair. Dollhouse didn't start with a weak first episode; it started with an extraordinarily weak first five episodes. Buffy certainly wasn't fully formed by the end of the first season, but by the third episode, "The Witch," Whedon was sowing the seeds of plotlines that would come to fruition five seasons later, and the characters began to establish solid rhythms. Firefly was extraordinary from the first episode, but that's rare. PostBourgie's G.D. and I were talking about this, and he said that premium cable shows like The Wire and Mad Men have an advantage in that there's less pressure that they'll be cancelled halfway through a season. It's true, but the first season of The Wire is only thirteen episodes long, and it had both its artistic rhythm and audience before those episodes were up.
It's true that astonishing shows don't always find their audiences, and sometimes get cancelled before they can. But if shows are critically acclaimed enough, networks do seem to try to find a way to keep them alive. In NBC's case, 30 Rock's audience was minimal for the first two seasons, but the network did fight to build that audience, even if it led to an over-reliance on guest hosts that I sort of see as the beginning of the Solomonic agreement that has kept a compromised 30 Rock on the air today. But Dollhouse died not because it was unfairly maligned, or because it had critical approbation but failed to find an audience. Rather, Dollhouse failed to find an audience because it was wildly inconsistent, and its best didn't put it even close to greatness. FOX shouldn't be blamed for maltreating Joss Whedon here. If anything, they gave the show perhaps more time than it deserved.