After the opening credits, Bones' King of Kong-inspired murder mystery was interrupted by three of its characters, Dr. Sweets, Dr. Hodgins, and morbid intern Colin Fisher, talking about seeing Avatar.

Of course, we know that the real reason that Mr. Fisher won these premiere tickets is because 1) Bones is a Fox property, and Fox wants to get Bones fans pumped to see Avatar, and 2) Joel Moore, who plays Colin Fisher, happens to be in Avatar. But the key thing to take away from this scene is that Fisher, science fiction fan extraordinaire, gets it on with a lot with lots of ladies.

And Sweets feels a bit of that Avatar love magic when he waits in line at the premiere (amidst tons of eager folks in blue makeup), in the form of a punky, flirtatious girl named Paine.

Let this be a lesson to you all. Go see Avatar with your significant other, or else they will flash some random stranger in line, then hook up with his skeezy friend.

But the trio does take some time out from their Avatar seductions to actually talk about the movie, having us watch an Avatar promo in the middle of their Avatar promo.

So there we have it. Avatar is pretty and will make you attractive to the opposite sex. And, lest we forget, Fox has kindly reminded us that the movie comes from the director of Titanic, just in case you care about that sort of thing more than hooking up with cute girls in line.

Fox announced on Wednesday that Human Target - starring Fringe's Mark Valley as Christopher Chance, a bodyguard who takes over the life of his clients in order to save them - will premiere on Sunday, January 17th between a NFC Divisional Playoff game and the two-hour premiere of 24's latest season (wonderfully described by the Hollywood Reporter as "a male-skewing ratings sandwich"), before moving to one of the network's coveted post-American Idol timeslots on Wednesday, January 20th. Given such lead-ins, either Fox is very eager to push what they see as a potential monster hit, or trying to give as much help as possible to something they're not sure will be able to stand on its own.

Talking of Fox failures, it looks like Dollhouse's cancellation may have finally convinced the network that Friday nights aren't good nights for drama: Joss Whedon's mindwipe series is being replaced by a new season of reality show Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares on January 29th.

Fox sets 'Human Target' premiere [Hollywood Reporter

A show insider tells io9 that the network will definitely not be ordering any more episodes after the current 13, but the show remains in production for now. (They're making episode 11 at the moment.) The 13th. episode will serve as the series finale, and this gives Joss Whedon a chance to wrap up the show in a "significant" way.

And the insider told us this is the schedule for airing the remaining episodes:

Dec. 4 - 8:00PM-10:00PM ET/PT (Episodes 5 & 6)
Dec. 11 - 8:00PM-10:00PM ET/PT (Episodes 7 & 8)
Dec. 18 - 8:00PM-10:00PM ET/PT (Episodes 9 & 10)

Jan. 8 - 9:00PM-10:00PM ET/PT (Episode 11)
Jan. 15 - 9:00PM-10:00PM ET/PT (Episode 12)
Jan. 22 - 9:00PM-10:00PM ET/PT (Episode 13 / Series Finale)

Dollhouse has had a troubled run and some uneven episodes, but I persist in believing that one day we'll realize what we had here. When you sit down and watch the DVD box sets of seasons one and two, a year or a decade from now, things will fall into place and you'll suddenly realize quite how daring and mind-expanding this show was.

You'll find yourself waking up at three in the morning, your mind stuck on one of the show's candy-coated images of glamorous slavery. You'll be daydreaming at work, fantasizing about being someone else, or having the perfect person love you just the perfect way — and then you'll flash on one of Dollhouse's many episodes about how your fantasies can become a prison for other people who get trapped in them. Other shows offered escapism — Dollhouse gave us a commentary on how escapism can help create prisons for other people.

Still, if a few million extra people were to tune in to watch a two-hour dose of Summer Glau on the 4th., then you never know, right?

Update: Joss Whedon posted this comment over at Whedonesque (thanks for the heads up, Bonnie!):

mm. Apparently my news is not news.

I don't have a lot to say. I'm extremely proud of the people I've worked with: my star, my staff, my cast, my crew. I feel the show is getting better pretty much every week, and I think you'll agree in the coming months. I'm grateful that we got to put it on, and then come back and put it on again.

I'm off to pursue internet ventures/binge drinking. Possibly that relaxation thing I've read so much about. By the time the last episode airs, you'll know what my next project is. But for now there's a lot of work still to be done, and disappointment to bear.

Thank you all for your support, your patience, your excellent adverts. See you again. -j.

[The Hollywood Reporter]

Talking to Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello, Abrams said,

The mood on set and in the writer's room is as good as the ratings are bad, which is to say, wonderful. Luckily, Fox has been insanely supportive, for which we are deeply grateful... [G]iven that we're on one of the hardest [nights] on television, we're just focusing on making the best show we possibly can. What else can we do?

Here's an idea of how Fox can be more supportive: Move the show to another night, already; the Thursday gambit is clearly not working.

J.J. Abrams on 'bad' ratings, good vibes, and the show's future [Entertainment Weekly]

Fox scheduling chief Preston Beckman tells The Hollywood Reporter that even though Fox isn't happy with Dollhouse's ratings, the network plans to air all 13 episodes — although during November sweeps, Fox might have to air something else, to goose up its numbers. Fox won't make a decision about giving Dollhouse the other nine episodes of season two until after the first 13 episodes finishes airing — which means the show still has a chance. But it also means the show will have to shut down production after it finishes shooting episode 13, and then ramp back up if it gets another order.

Joss Whedon tells THR he's currently shooting episode eight, and he'll make sure the script for episode 13 gives fans a degree of closure, in case the show does not come back after that:

We'll definitely have closure, but will leave some doors open. When we got our first numbers, which were bad, the first thing [Fox president of entertainment] Kevin Reilly said was, 'You'll have all 13,' which was great. They're not going to pull the rug out from under us.

Beckman says he didn't want to face the wrath of Whedon's fans for yanking Dollhouse before the end of its current block of 13 episodes, given the fact that he's already pissed off the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles fans:

If you cancel it, you're an asshole; if you renew it and then don't put it back on, you're an asshole. I'm still paying for 'Terminator.' 'Dollhouse' has a small rabid fan base that in the world of social media seems bigger than it is. We gave them another season knowing full well we were going to burn in hell if we pulled it.

It really may not be too late to save Dollhouse — last week's episode, "Belle Chose," did see a nice uptick in ratings, and luckily all of those people saw a much better episode than the first two of the season. If the show keeps improving in both ratings and storytelling, we might just see a second miracle. On the other hand, it's nice to know the show's not planning on leaving us totally unsatisfied. (And I'm betting that closure includes another glimpse of the "Epitaph One" future.)

Only two episodes in, the Dollverse fansite is already reporting that the new season is in trouble:

Dollhouse is at real, serious risk of being pulled off air within the next few weeks due to low ratings. I have my own thoughts about the low ratings – I don't think they're down to the show but due to other factors – but the problem is it doesn't matter what I think. What matters is the numbers are way down on the networks projections. As a result, I've heard from multiple people over the weekend the show may get pulled off air. And I don't mean ‘Internet ratings experts'.

How bad are the ratings? Bad enough that the Hollywood Reporter's James Hibbard is describing them as "punch[ing] through it's previous rock bottom Friday night to discover a Fox ratings netherworld":

The show dropped 20% from last week's premiere, which was already an all-time-low for the show. I'm betting the debut of Syfy's "Stargate: Universe" zapped some viewers (cable ratings aren't available yet), but even so — this is too low for a Fox show.

More worrying, TV By The Numbers compared the profitability of the series with a possible replacement - reruns of medical drama House - and found them wanting:

The simple conclusion based on the assumptions of this model is House reruns are more profitable, even when baking in the ancillary revenue streams that exist for Dollhouse that do not exist for a House rerun. House reruns are more profitable assuming at least a 1.2 rating, even if Dollhouse has ancillary revenue and even if it only costs $650,000 per episode. If Dollhouse costs a million per episode, rather than $650,000, the House rerun is a lot more profitable.

With this sort of information available, combined with the perception that the show is once again in ratings freefall, it's no wonder that rumors have an early retirement for the show being planned, especially when many critics are echoing the thoughts of TV Guide Magazine's Matt Roush:

I know the loyal Whedon-ites will blame Fox for whatever doomsday scenario may occur, but I find the show to be at least as much at fault as the regrettable scheduling. While I find the premise provocative, I can't say the first episodes of this season have blown me away. It's not jelling for me, and besides ginormous plot holes I find hard to shrug off — I liked the twist that Ballard was the client in the season opener, but how was the target manipulated to fall in love and marry Echo, that sort of thing — it's all coming off so far as dismayingly flat, with wildly uneven performances. I know I should care about the implications of Topher being able to manipulate the Actives on a "glandular" basis, but it's hard when you feel so little for the actual Actives. (When the best work so far has been turned in by Amy Acker, who sadly isn't even a series regular, it's not a great sign.) Anyone who's read me for any length of time knows it pains me to be this critical of anything coming from the Whedon camp, and I'm still hoping some of the upcoming episodes (if they are allowed to air) will come closer to hitting the mark as several did toward the end of the first season (though none so audaciously as "Epitaph One"). I'm certainly not encouraging Fox to "put a fork" in it, given the investment so far. But I am disappointed, discouraged and not terribly hopeful.

The question may be, if Fox ends Dollhouse now, how many people will have a Firefly-esque reaction, and how many will view it as a mercy killing?

The Toronto Star, of all places, reports that negotiations between Fox and the cast have finally ended with the studio agreeing to offer more money than was originally on the table, and the cast taking less than they originally demanded, meaning that both sides can move forward begrudgingly into production for the new 26-episode season ordered by Comedy Central. We eagerly look forward to the episode that makes fun of the negotiation, deal and publicity surrounding both. You know it's coming.

Futurama cast signs new deal with Fox [Toronto Star]

Fox announced the move via press release (which also revealed that Joss Whedon would be writing and directing the season premiere, although I'm not sure many people didn't expect that), leading to some speculation that the move was due to more production problems or Fox interference. The Hollywood Reporter's Live Feed blog, however, suggests a much more benign reason:

With production starting in late July, the network pushed back the start date to ensure that episodes would run consecutively.

Equally likely to influence Fox's decision is the fact that the move also allows them the chance to give the much-buzzed Glee an encore performance in Dollhouse's place in the original timeslot.

Even if many people may be secretly hoping for more Dollhouse disaster (Hey, it makes for good headlines!), we may be in for a surprisingly stable year for the show — especially with Tim Minear coming on board as an Executive Producer and the network getting a clear demonstration of the audience goodwill it's engendered. Could this be the chance the show needed to truly shine?

Past Life, airing spring 2010 on Fox, seems to be trying to piggyback on the success of Medium, a show I haven't actually seen. You have a kind of procedural crime-solving aspect to each episode, but there's also a spooky supernatural aspect. And it's all sprinkled with a dash of personal growth. It's very loosely based on an M.J. Rose novel called The Reincarnationist, but I don't think much beyond the idea of reincarnation got carried over.

Fox kindly sent us a DVD of this pilot, and it's got the same rough edges as a lot of other pilots. It's also saddled with the task of selling you on one of the oddest premises I've seen in quite some time. In a nutshell, Dr. Kate McGinn is a psychologist who works at New York City's Talmadge Center For Behavior Health, which is dedicated to studying "the human soul." McGinn specializes in "regression therapy," helping people to confront the stuff that happened in their previous lives which may be affecting them today. McGinn is almost paranormally sunny and cheery, except when she's comforting someone who's grappling with having been murdered.

And because (I guess) these cases often involve ferreting out the details of exactly what happened the last time around, the Talmadge Center hires a detective, Price Whatley, to help McGinn out. Whatley is the Scully to her Mulder — he doesn't believe in all this past life nonsense, but he needs the money since he lost his job at the NYPD. But Whatley harbors a secret pain having to do with his dead wife — and you won't be too shocked to hear that he's secretly hoping all this reincarnation nonsense will lead to some sort of reunion. (I'm picturing Whatley eventually having a very serious relationship processing conversation with a one-year-old, which is how old his reincarnated wife would be now.)

The Talmadge Center, incidentally, is quite swanky, and seems to be able to afford to keep Kate McGinn in classy therapist outfits. The clients we meet in the pilot, whose 14-year-old son is having weird murder-esque flashbacks, seem extremely well heeled. So I'm guessing we're mostly going to be concerning ourselves with the previous lives of the wealthy and troubled here. Besides Kate and Whatley, the Talmadge Center is also home to Dr. Malachi Talmadge, who stands around looking worried and occasionally butts heads with Whatley. And then there's Rishi Karna, the hard-working research assistant who barely pops up in the pilot.

I'm just going to pause here and wonder whose idea it was to call our tough-guy detective character "Price Whatley."

So I'm guessing that not every episode of this show will involve murder, per se. You could have a character who got mugged during the 1920s, and never got over it, and now is still pissed about it thirty years into a new incarnation. Presumably, there has to be some kind of crime every week, though, or Price Whatley won't have much to do.

Judging from the pilot, there'll be two tracks to every episode: the therapeutic track, in which the reincarnated person works through all of their issues under the sympathetic, tight-lipped smile of Kate McGinn. And then the mystery track, where Price Whatley searches through old case files and says things like, "I know it sounds crazy, but I really think we're on to something here." (That's not a quote from the pilot. That's just the sort of thing I can imagine Price Whatley saying.) Price Whatley, of course, is on the outs with his former superiors, but there are still some cops who owe favors to him and will let him research old unsolved crimes on the sly.

And then, at the end of every episode, the two tracks will converge somehow, as the tormented reincarnatee finally discovers the truth of what happened and gets some closure. And Whatley gets his man, or woman, or whatever. A crime is solved, a soul is healed, and the cycle of suffering turns a bit slower. Or something.

If you're thinking "This doesn't sound like my cup of tea," then it's probably not. I went into the pilot feeling somewhat apprehensive, and nothing about it was quite able to change my mind — although there was nothing wrong with any of it. The main thing that jumped out at me, honestly, was that Price Whatley should be a laughing stock. He's a former cop who now runs around chasing leads that come out of vague past-life visions from people who seem a bit mental. Nobody should be taking Whatley seriously at all, and yet somehow he manages to fulfill the same role as every detective on every procedural show ever. And the show invests a lot of energy in showing how professional and serious Kate McGinn and the rest of the Talmadge team are, with their jargon about regression therapy and their great resources.

So why do I feel as though this is some kind of watershed for genre television? Maybe because it feels like an uneasy fusion of a few different genres, into something that I'm not sure is ever going to be as thought-provoking as other Fox shows like Fringe or Dollhouse (or the late lamented Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.) Rather than boldly venturing into speculative territory, this show reflects the gathering consensus that any speculative themes must be subtle, vague, and swaddled in formula.

So you have the "team of experts" model of detective show, not unlike Bones or CSI. (Except that instead of having a laboratory, these people have a therapist's office.) You have the therapeutic, personal-growth type show, where every week someone is going to get past his/her trauma. And then you have the one strand of actual speculative fiction, the past life regression, which doesn't look like it's ever going to evolve into a mythos or ask deeper questions. It's just going to be the McGuffin — and it's going to allow us to have spooky J-horror-esque blurry flashbacks to something vague and terrifying happening in the 1960s or 1970s, which get slightly more detailed every time we see them throughout the episode.

It's a perfectly solid show, and a nice enough cast, but the genre element feels like weak tea. And I'm really not sure how the reincarnation-of-the-week format will pan out week in, week out. It seems like it could suffer from the same problems as Tru Calling, only worse. Still, I have a feeling this show could be a humongous mega-hit, and further drive genre television in the direction of being somewhat apologetic, and vaguely detective-oriented.

Suggesting that Fox execs knew what they were doing by jettisoning the show in the Friday night death slot - or, perhaps, that they created a self-fulfilling prophecy by doing so - the former pilot for Ron Moore's new show turned "two hour movie event" drew only 1.8 million viewers and tied with ABC's The Goode Family for the title of least-watched show on network television for the night (By comparison, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was cancelled with an audience twice that size).

It'll be interesting to see the DVR numbers for Virtuality in a few weeks - we wouldn't be surprised if it gets a Transformers-related bump, although nowhere near enough to have made the show make sense as an ongoing series.

Fox's 'Virtuality' tanks [THR Live Feed]

In Virtuality, Siena Guillory plays Rika Goddard, the ship's exobiologist who's trapped in a passionless marraige with Roger, the ship's psychologist and producer of the fake reality TV program the ship's crew stars in. And Clea DuVall (Carnivale) plays Sue Parsons, the ship's brash pilot who's already drawing comparisons to Starbuck. Both actors went on a conference call with reporters today and talked about how they approached their characters in this TV movie (which could spawn an ongoing series). Virtuality airs this Friday night at 8 PM on Fox.

I hadn't realized, until listening to both actors, just how much of Virtuality was improvised. Apparently Peter Berg (Hancock), who directed the pilot, is a huge believer in letting actors run with their scenes and create their own interpretations of their characters.

One of the coolest parts of the pilot is Sue Parsons' relationship with some of the other female characters, especially the computer scientist and reality-TV show host Billie Kashmiri. Sue is constantly sniping at the naive, privileged Billie, but then after Billie suffers an extreme trauma inside the virtual-reality world (which feels real even though it's just VR) Sue and Billie suddenly share a moment of closeness, and they have a really intense scene together, which feels like it could be the foundation of a really interesting friendship. You don't see such complex relationships between two women in science fiction all that often.

So I asked DuVall what she thought was going on between the two women, and whether it was in the script, or improvised:

It was in the script, and also improvised. It was a combination of the two... I thought a lot about my character, because she's kind of a hardass and kind of a jerk, and a handful to deal with..and I really tried hard to understand her and why she was so guarded and so protective of herself. And [I tried to think] what it was about this girl that really ticked me off... I sort of went inside myself and tried to find the parts of myself that I don't think are there, the jealousy and the competitiveness, and I used that, I used my own personal shortcomings, to fuel this character. But then understand, but then being able to see her as human and seeing the parts of Billie that were like me.

So was Sue angry at Billie because she saw Billie as a younger version of herself? DuVall explained:

[Billie was] somebody that was given the position they were given, because they had certain advantages that I wasn't given, and that jealousy of being born into good stock. Versus having to fight tooth and nail to get there, because my character was put through the ringer so much to be there even though she was one of the most qualified.

Meanwhile, Siena Guillory says Rika Goddard "hates having her privacy invaded" (in the reality TV show) but "she's also desperate for adventure." Rika is an "introvert but oversexed," she adds. "The fact that we're geeks doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to be handling our emotions, so we're all prone to exploding emotionally."

Both actors raved about the creative freedom they were given during the shooting of this pilot. "Of course I said everything that was in the script, but being able to build on it and find things that were in there [was terrific]," says DuVall. "Them trusting us so much also gave us the confidence to trust ourselves."

"They were so brave and didn't assume that the audience was stupid," adds Guillory. "They lent us that bravery and allowed us to inhabit the roles."

And even though Virtuality is about being trapped inside a cramped spaceship, and trapped in the not-quite-real performance of reality TV, and even trapped inside virtual-reality modules that turn into a horror show, Guillory says the show, in the end, is about limitless possibilities:

It's all about the fact that the possibilities are endless, and that's what the whole show is about. There are no limitations, and everything we grew up with here on Earth, in terms of "This is your life, and this is who you are, and you will die [isn't necessarily true]. And you can be anywhere and be anyone, and anything is possible and it's incredibly dangerous and exciting.

As I mentioned, Virtuality airs this Friday at 8 PM on Fox.

Reviewing the pilot for Bleeding Cool.com, screenwriter Adi Tantimedh has a less than positive take on what to expect from next fall's "bodyguard who stops at nothing to defend his client, even if it means taking on his life" drama... and he's looking to one of last year's new shows as a reason for his disappointment:

It's obvious Fox didn't want a situation worse than Dollhouse. The problem with Dollhouse was that there was no central character for viewers to identify and root for because the main character literally had no personality and the main actress would play a completely different person every week. If Human Target followed the comics, the hero, in impersonating his client, would end up being played by a different actor every week. So Christopher Chance [the show's lead character, played by Fringe's Mark Valley] merely goes undercover like any bodyguard and joins the staff or household of his client. Here he's a translator, where we're treated to some of the worst Japanese ever spoken by a white guy who only learned those lines a few weeks before production... It's utterly mediocre, composed entirely of clichés and parts cobbled together from other movies and served up in a slick, glib package that looks like it does the job but is only skin-deep. Which means it might actually be a hit for Fox. Who knows?

Other changes to the show include giving Chance a team of backroom back-up, including Pushing Daisies' Chi McBride and Watchmen's Jackie Earl Harley, and dialing back on the comic hero's psychosis from playing so many roles so often. More worryingly, though, is Tantimedh's mention of Tricia Helfer appearing in a geek-bait cameo role in the pilot... What do we have to do to get this woman a permanent gig somewhere that'll rely on her acting talents rather than asking her to show off and pout a lot?

Human Target premieres on Fox this fall.

Saying that the continued success of Firefly on DVD is likely one reason behind Fox's surprise renewal of Dollhouse, the site's Nick C writes,

I think from my talks with the people running FOX that they would bring [Firefly] back under the right circumstances. However, you must understand that right now Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin, Morena Baccarin, and Alan Tudyk (plus he was killed in SERENITY) all have gigs for the foreseeable future. However don't underestimate the power of a movie. FOX could likely be easily talked into a Movie or two for next season. They could air after an NFL game or playoff game. The movies would easily sell on DVD.

The question now falls into rights, but the guys at FOX wouldn't be alone. If Universal is now in possession of future rights to projects, NBC or USA wouldn't mind getting in on the cash opportunity either. A couple movies shot and made for TV and then released on DVD would be profitable for anyone involved. At the same time the cast would still be able to keep doing their normal gigs. Just shoot the movie around their schedules.

Does this mean it's likely? Not really, unless Joss Whedon or somebody else at Mutant Enemy suddenly decides that it's a good idea - and, to be honest, I'd be surprised that this avenue hasn't been explored before by those who wanted the series to continue in the first place. But, then again, I don't have sources at Fox, so there's every possibility that they are ready for some more flights of the Serenity... and if they could work out schedules, a million browncoats might finally be willing to forgive and forget.

Firefly: Would FOX or NBC Be Willing To Bring It Back? [TV By The Numbers]

The request came when Dollverse reported that the series' "missing" episode, "Epitaph One," would probably air this summer after all, something that Fox have not commented on, and asked to be corrected. But the otherwise reasonable (if terse) email to the site, from Fox's publicity director Todd Adair, has a surprisingly harsh ending:

Clearing up your misperceptions of the show has become very time consuming and frankly takes away valuable time that could be spent actively marketing the series in the proper way.

To me, that seems like an overreaction; not to put down Dollverse, but surely fans can tell the difference between fansite-sourced rumors and official network-released news to a degree that it wouldn't take that much longer than, say, writing a press release to correct misinformation? Kevin from the site, of course, sees things in a much more confrontational fashion:

The email was CC'ed into other staff at FOX. I tried replying to everybody to clarify to the issue; however nobody at FOX chose to respond. As far as I am aware, this is the first time a US network has tried to exert specific editorial control over a fan site, and I think deserves a debate. As fans, do we want to hear news FOX wants us or approves us to report about a TV show we watch? ...[W]e'd never demand FOX do... things differently. Because we can't. Because we're viewers. FOX can not also demand we don't cover certain subjects on the site. We might only be fans, but we're also viewers, and that gives us the power to be a fandom.

No-one from Fox has (publicly, at least) responded to the site making the issue public, and officially, "Epitaph One" has not been announced as airing on Fox in the US.

"Epitaph None" - FOX and Dollverse [Dollverse]

Blogging on Fox's official Terminator blog, showrunner Josh Friedman addressed the cancellation and came out much more philosophical, and grateful, than upset:

Good shows are cancelled every year; smart shows, worthy shows, shows which move their viewers to write blogs and have viewing parties and create action figures and bury executives' email accounts under thousands of messages. I miss Deadwood and The Wire and Arrested Development but thank God that I still have Rescue Me and The Office and a recently renewed Party Down written by ex-T:SCC writer John Enbom.

Bad shows are cancelled, too. And certainly there are those who did not like what we did and had their own vision for what a Terminator TV show should be. It's easy to look at low ratings or cancellation as "failure" and for those who believe we've gone about this all wrong I'm sure today's news will only serve to confirm a world view that I would never try to change. We've written the show as best we can, executed it to the best of our abilities, and sent it out in the world knowing that we worked out asses off to do something that wouldn't be a waste of anybody's forty-three minutes.

Thanks to a brave and talented cast, a feature crew working on a TV schedule, and everyone else who I could list but won't because they know who they are. Mostly I'd like to thank those of you who've supported us and fought for us and given up hours of your life to watch our show. At the end of the day, that's what it's about. The watching.

If you're busily preparing a boycott of all Fox shows because of the news, he had a word for you, too:

I know a lot of you are angry about the cancellation and want to find a place to direct your anger and to that I say do yourself a favor and find a way to move past it. Every network wants a big fat hit, especially one with a brand name behind it, and Fox was/is no different. They supported the show, they supported my vision of the show, and they gave it plenty of time to find an audience.

He's a classy man, and here's hoping that he ends up on staff somewhere soon. Joss, need someone to help out with Dollhouse's second season?

One last thing from Josh Friedman [Fox.com]

New drama Human Target stars Mark Valley (Oliva's brain boyfriend from Fringe) as a know-it-all, can do sort of fella for hire. According to the DC comic, the Human Target is supposedly a "master of disguise" and swaps his life with the client he's been paid to protect, thus becoming the "human target." Sadly, this TV persona puts forth zero effort on his disguise and tries to pawn off two minutes of wretchedly-accented Japanese on the audience to seal the deal of his crap cover. So yeah, it's absolutely nothing like the clever comic from which it was adapted. It feels more like a poor person's Burn Notice, but only if the main character was a smarmy dick who fails miserably at being incognito. They even got Tricia Helfer to star in the pilot. The show is being produced by McG — yes, THAT McG — which isn't really a marker of bad TV as the man produced Supernatural (which we all adore). Jackie Earle Haley guests stars, so maybe he can save this action drama. Here is the trailer:

Next up is the paranormal-ish detectives show Past Life. But instead of it being a direct rip off of Medium, this lady can sense your past lives. So either she's going to be talking to a lot of kids, or solving crimes from thirty years ago. Either way, I'm not too sure how this will work for a weekly TV show. Here's the trailer, let me know what you think.

Human Target premieres with a special preview Sunday, Jan. 17 9 PM. Past Life does not have a launch date yet.

Used Guys was originally on track for a 2007 release, but 20th Century Fox scrapped the film in May 2006, largely because the film's budget had spiraled out of control, topping $100 million in combined actors' salaries, effects shots, and the cost of the futuristic sets. (This is the same Fox that felt Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li and Dragonball Evolution were good uses of its money, but I digress.)

The film's premise centered on Carrey and Stiller's characters, two past-their-prime pleasure clones in a world controlled by women, who seek out the masculine paradise known only as Mantopia. Jay Roach, director of the Austin Powers and Meet the Parents movies, had originally signed on to direct.

In its new incarnation, Used Guys will be more of a romantic comedy that focuses on Stiller, who is currently in talks to rejoin the project. Reese Witherspoon has reportedly been asked to play Stiller's love interest. Little Miss Sunshine directors Valentine Faris and Jonathan Dayton are the leading candidates to direct the movie.

I've got to admit, I'm a little dubious about either version of this film. If a movie is going to feature something called "Mantopia" and still be even halfway decent, I'd have to think you need more of a satirical edge than what you'd expect from the guys behind Meet the Fockers. As for the romantic comedy version that might actually happen, I can't get away from the fact that the only recent Ben Stiller movies that have been remotely watchable (be they Tropic Thunder or...do I seriously have to reach back to Dodgeball for another watchable Ben Stiller movie?) have been decidedly non-romantic in nature. And, as always, we're talking about Fox here, who aren't known as the greatest arbiters of quality.

Still, hope springs eternal, and there's something so wonderfully, horribly appropriate about a movie industry dominated by sequels and remakes having a second try at making a movie about clones. With a formula like that, Used Guys will probably make a hundred billion dollars.

[Sci Fi Wire]

TV Guide puts it best:

Fox executives are holding out a glimmer of hope for the show, noting its loyal core and its strong DVR numbers.

In the show's favor, the fact that everything else they've run on Fridays has had a similar lack of success... and the show's buzz, even if a lot of that centers around whether or not it's going to make it to a second season. Creator Joss Whedon goes between being pessimistic to cautiously hopeful about the opportunity, but perhaps both he and Fox should consider the idea suggested by Time Magazine's James Poniewozik:

At its best moments, it's had the feeling of events rushing forward toward an imminent climax. Which makes me think that, in a perfect world, Dollhouse would have been not a series but a miniseries.

I wonder if the ideal, then, would be for Fox to return Dollhouse, for a limited and final second season, to resolve its story without the burden of stretching it out with one-off episodes.

On the face of it, it seems like a no-lose situation; Whedon gets to bring his story to some kind of conclusion, Fox gets the goodwill from bringing back a show that it'd be well within its rights to cancel (and the chance to promote it as a "special mini-series event", and the fans get another, if shorter, season of the show. Which, of course, means that it will never happen. But we can always hope...

First, the question is what exactly was the crime committed? A person or group of people got an early version of the movie Wolverine - pre-effects, and according to FOX pre-final edits. (Harry Knowles at Ain't It Cool News spoke to a producer on the film who confirmed that the leaked version was several months old.) Then our thieves put a digital file of it up online, where it promptly got circulated out into the public BitTorrent sites.

We also know that the leak was almost certainly an inside job, coming from somebody working at Fox or one of their partners. Industry insiders say it's the only big budget film that's ever been leaked this early online.

So what's the punishment for a crime like this?

According to the US Criminal Code, a person like our thief:

Shall be imprisoned not more than 3 years, or fined in the amount set forth in this title, or both, if the offense consists of the reproduction or distribution of 10 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of $2,500 or more.

So far nobody has been brought up on charges, though Fox columnist Roger Friedman may have been fired for reviewing the leaked version. Still no official word on whether he's been fired, or just reprimanded severely.

Though Fox officials said initially that it would be easy to catch the people behind the heist, no arrests so far. Reports have come in that a recent raid on a Dallas data center may have been related to the FBI's investigation of the Wolverine leak. (UPDATE: The FBI has revealed the raid was not related to the Wolverine case.)

What's likely to happen when our culprit is caught? If the 2003 case involving a leaked rough copy of the Hulk movie is any guide, our lawbreaker could get jail time. The Ang Lee Hulk movie was leaked to file-sharing networks in 2003 about two weeks before the movie hit screens. Advance press was incredibly bad, and studio exes claimed that the leak hurt their box office returns. Eventually Feds tracked the leak down to New Jersey man Kerry Gonzalez, who pled guilty to felony charges of copyright infringement. He was ultimately sentenced to 6 months home confinement, 3 years probation, and about $7 thousand in fines.

I'm guessing that our Wolverine thieves may not get such lenient treatment, partly because so many more people are using file-sharing networks these days. In 2003, releasing Hulk online meant hitting a small audience, but in 2009 it means hitting most of the world. Audiences across the globe are now spoiled for the film. I think Fox (rightfully) believes that audiences who download the Wolverine movie might choose not to go see it in theaters because the extremely rough print seems so flawed. So money will be lost.

But an interesting counterpoint to this scenario was the leak of Fiona Apple's unfinished album Extraordinary Machine in 2005. The singer's record company had mothballed the 2003 album because it wasn't considered commercially viable, but when a few songs from it leaked onto the internet it became a cult sensation - finally making it onto mainstream radio. It also received a huge groundswell of support, and eventual commercial release, though many critics pointed out that the studio was ultimately correct that the album could not achieve the same commercial success her previous albums had. (Indeed the album sold fewer copies than her previous albums by several hundreds of thousands.)

Regardless of whether the Wolverine leak will lead to the resounding failure of the film ala the Hulk scenario, or will ironically buoy the film's fanbase ala the Fiona Apple one, there is no denying that the crime committed here is one of the gravest in the sections of the criminal code devoted to copyright infringement. The only way for the crime to become more serious would be if the thieves had tried to sell the movie or if it were not the first time they had committed such a crime.

As we wait for the Feds and MPAA to track down the person or people behind this heist, there's no doubt that we're looking at one of the biggest Hollywood crimes of the decade.