Firefly

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Fox cancels Firefly way too soon: Unlike NBC, which for all its weaknesses will usually give a quality quirky show a decent chance to find its audience, Fox has the reputation of quickly abandoning anything that is not an instant hit. The primary example in recent years was Firefly, the Joss Whedon space opera that might have become a Battlestar Galactica had Fox shown any patience at all. But the program was mishandled by the network in any number of ways and was abandoned halfway through the 2002-03 season. The upshot is that now, even when Fox does give a show a fair shot (such as Whedon’s most recent series, the just canceled Dollhouse), the Firefly example still gets cited as evidence of its bad faith.

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