As a growing-more-and-more-devoted-by-the-week fan of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse, I read almost religiously the ratings week after week. And they are, frankly, depressing. I still think it’s entirely FOX’s own fault, for over-interfering in the show and for putting it on a bad night and for thinking that photos of Eliza Dushku naked were “clever” marketing, but the ratings are so bad that it’s hard to blame the network for wanting to ax it. The last hope was that Prison Break (which returned this week and therefore preempted an episode of Dollhouse) would provide a better lead-in than Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and bump up Dollhouse‘s numbers.

Whoops. Turns out Prison Break got worse ratings than Dollhouse (which averages between 1.4-1.5 million viewers) and T:TSCC (1.3), zooming in on 1.2 million. While none of these numbers actually means anything, the whole Nielsen viewer measuring system being horribly, horribly outdated and stupid and in desperate need of a revamping, now Dollhouse fans last, great hope is that FOX will realize that Friday’s are an awful night for serialized drama and decide to take a risk on a show that could develop a much larger audience.