“With Michael Ausiello breaking the somewhat expected news that FOX is benching DOLLHOUSE for November Sweeps and in the process, virtually guaranteeing your availability to direct that episode of GLEE, I couldn’t help but wonder….

“Is it not time to take a page from Felicia Day and her GUILD by cutting the network out of the equation?

“After all, If DOLLHOUSE’s consistently low ratings are any indication, you’ve got at the very least, two million loyal fans devouring everything you touch. Which means, should you ever decide to go THE GUILD route and distribute your own series online for a a mere 99¢ per download, one might expect you to net somewhere in the range of 1.5 to 2 million dollars per episode of [say, for argument sake] FIREFLY: THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES. Which, if we’re to believe TV By The Numbers, is a healthy profit considering the average episode of DOLLHOUSE is said to have cost somewhere in the range of 650,000 to 1.3 million per.”

(Read the rest, and Joss’ response, at The TV Addict)

Dear Joss,

Where are you?

I have been looking for you in the Dollhouse lately. I saw you in “Vows” and was confident I’d know where to find you all season. But these past two episodes (“Instinct”, “Belle Chose”), you’ve vanished.

I don’t just mean writing and directing credits. I’m talking about your animating spirit, the confident hand of your creative direction. We fans can feel it on the rudder, and we can tell when it’s been removed. I’m not naive enough to believe that you can handcraft every morsel of a 13-episode series made in enemy territory — and how else can we fans view Fox after season 1′s narrow escape, remembering Firefly as we Browncoats do — but I know you and your team can be awesome, and it’s a mystery to me why you’re not.

And it’s not just about hackneyed plot devices. The last two episodes have been driven mainly by mistakes made by the Dollhouse, which evokes the specter of the malfunctioning holodeck on Star Trek: The Next Generation; yet when your breath is on Dollhouse’s clay, even the cheapest horror-movie tropes (“Epitaph One” had ‘em all) come to vigorous and entertaining life. The same was true of Firefly: “Our Mrs. Reynolds” is riddled with plot holes, but fans don’t (and shouldn’t) care, because it was an excellent episode that drove the characters and series forward. Nihil novum sub sole. It’s not what you and your trusted writers do, it’s how you do it.

For us fans, it’s hard to see you lead with such weak material when Fox is threatening to cancel Dollhouse if the ratings don’t go up (a situation you must by now be able to anticipate). We’ve had two self-contained imprint-of-the-week episodes that keep all the important plates spinning. Why are Ballard and Boyd so docile now? Why aren’t DeWitt and Topher acting on Echo’s composite state, of which they must be aware? Where are Whiskey, November and Sierra, the other amazing women that drive this series?

All these characters seem to be estivating, patiently waiting for the fall — which should have heralded your permanent return — so that they can continue to develop. But it seems as if that’s a few episodes out.

Maybe this is just a bad patch. It’s bad timing for one, but they happen. I hope that the next episodes blow us away, making this letter irrelevant and drowning out the annoying cries of “vanity project”, a phrase I hope never to hear again (and yet it echoes in my ears when I see the Eliza-only intro).

However, I wrote this letter not to hope out loud, but to ask: is everything okay?

I’ll wait for a sign.

Thanks for all you do,

–Dan Shick