TVSquad

I'm a big fan of mysteries, but it's hard to watch them on television. I'm talking about the onslaught of serial TV shows that we've seen the past couple of years. For every Lost or Heroes we've had, we've had an infinite number of shows that didn't make it, such as Daybreak and Kidnapped. It's easy to get frustrated and disillusioned when you start to watch a continuing drama and the show doesn't even get past its first 13 episodes. ABC pulled Daybreak after a handful of episodes and then put the rest online. NBC did the same with Kidnapped (it was also on Saturday nights, which didn't work out either).

But I'm going to give Harper's Island a shot.

Does this new TV season seem weird to you? It's almost as if it hasn't "officially" started yet. Ratings for returning shows are down, only one new show seems like a real breakout hit (The Mentalist), and there's an odd feeling to the whole season so far. I think it's a mix of the writers strike, apprehension that shows we like will get canceled too soon, and the new habits of TV viewers (TiVo, iTunes, Hulu, AOL Video, and other online viewing destinations, etc). It's almost as if the new season won't be in full swing until Lost, 24, and American Idol come back.

Another show that a lot of people are looking forward to is Dollhouse, the new FOX show from Joss Whedon. Fans freaked a bit last month when the show's production shut down. But it was only for two weeks, and now Amy Acker explains what happened and why there's nothing to worry about (to summarize, Whedon shut down production so he could change the fourth episode a bit and catch up on scripts).

I have to admit, this made me chuckle.

You know how you latch on to a show that gets so-so ratings (Arrested Development, Jericho, Moonlight, etc.) and then the show is canceled and you're forced to scramble fans together to send nuts or whatever to the network to demonstrate how much you want the show to stick around? Well, why wait until the show is canceled to do that? In fact, why wait until the show even premieres?

Fans of the new FOX/Joss Whedon show Dollhouse (can you be a "fan" if the show hasn't debuted yet?) have already started a "Save Our Show" campaign, because they fear that FOX will cancel the show quickly, like they did another Whedon show, Firefly.