Welcome to the Dollhouse. Now go home.

In case you were one of those people who had something to do on Valentine’s day besides watch TV (and apparently that was most of you), Eliza Dushku’s much ballyhooed return to the small screen in Dollhouse came and went with nary a ripple in the ratings pool.

It wasn’t the worst performer of the night, to be sure — it did beat out the ailing Sarah Connor Chronicles and Howie Do It — but when one recalls that the 2006 Heather Graham vehicle Emily’s Reasons Why Not was pulled after only one episode (with 6.2 million viewers), Dollhouse’s paltry 4.7 million viewers seem to augur a very short run for Eliza’s newest post-Faith effort.

On the other hand, Tru Calling, Eliza’s previous much-hyped, much-ignored show, managed to squeeze out some twenty-five episodes before it was finally laid to rest (after two cancellations). So there’s hope, I suppose, that fans may yet be able to get a season’s worth of Dollhouse before the dolls — and maybe Eliza — are packed in mothballs and put away for good.