ABC's 'Hank' yanked and Fox's 'Dollhouse' cast aside

You know your show is about to be canceled when the network decides it would rather run a second consecutive night of "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" than broadcast your fifth episode, immediately after which the network airs your Thanksgiving episode three weeks early.

Which is to say absolutely no one was surprised when ABC on Wednesday finally put its Kelsey Grammer sitcom "Hank" out of our misery.

On the flip side, Joss Whedon fans appear to be prostrate with grief over news that Fox has put the kibosh on the Whedon-produced, ratings-starved sophomore series "Dollhouse" after this season's extremely charitable 13-episode order, even though all the signs were there, including Fox having yanked the show for the November sweeps ratings derby. Oh, and did we mention its terrible ratings?

By the time ABC finally pulled the plug on "Hank," the producers were working on a 10th episode, and so far we've only suffered through five.

On the bright side, ABC says it has no immediate plans to air the remaining episodes.

In case you missed it -- lucky you -- Grammer played a self-made multimillionaire named Hank Pryor who married a woman named Tilly from Rubesville, Virginia, who came from a family whose members had all been dropped on their heads from a great height. Grammer's character made his fortune building a retail sporting-goods empire -- you betcha -- but then lost everything in this economic downturn so he packed up Tilly and their two revolting sitcom children and moved back to Rubesville so Hank could be a fish out of water.

ABC is going to fill the Tuesday 8 p.m. half hour with holiday specials and reruns of its more successful comedies. A month ago, ABC announced it had picked up the other three comedies of its all-new Wednesday comedy lineup, which had attracted more viewers than "Hank" (which had been averaging under 7 million viewers). Those three series -- "The Middle" starring Patricia Heaton (7.3 million), Christopher Lloyd's "Modern Family" (11 million) and "Cougar Town" starring Courteney Cox (9 million) -- are among the most surprising success stories of this new TV season, what with ABC not being known for developing strong comedies. Remember "According to Jim"?

Now the real fun begins as we wait to see whether Grammer will savage ABC for the cancellation. ABC's the only network Grammer has not nicked in recent months. Over the summer he chastised CBS CEO Leslie Moonves for his handling of "Medium" -- which CBS produces and for which Grammer is one of the executive producers. Grammer also did not appear to think much of NBC suits for the way they treated "Medium" when it ran on that network. And he wasn't too complimentary of Fox execs for dumping his sitcom "Back to You."

Meanwhile, Fox is officially saying it will no longer play with Dolls -- its drama series "Dollhouse" is over after this season's 13 episodes air.

"Only the good die young," mourned one Whedonite on Twitter when the news leaked out Wednesday afternoon.

"my lord, FOX are you trying to be the next NBC???" said another viewer, like he/she meant it to sting.

In case you have not seen "Dollhouse" -- in which case you've missed something -- Eliza Dushku plays a super-hot "doll" named Echo who made the interesting career choice of turning herself over to a nefarious organization with the understanding they would scrub clean her mind -- we're using the latter word loosely. Each week she's been getting reprogrammed to become exactly the right type to execute some high-risk, highly illegal stunt or romantic encounter, in order to help some super-rich person solve his super-nasty problem for a super-lot of money. In return for her services, Echo gets to sleep in a little coffin on the Dollhouse floor and receives a lifetime supply of tight tank tops and yoga pants.