Angel got told it was cancelled with 11 episodes to go I think. It was right after the episode called 'You're welcome'. It was still pretty crud cos Joss made all the huge changes to the show to revitalize it at the networks request and had assumed he would get one more season after 5 which is why the ending was rushed and forced, and why there were alot of other changes like Illyria that were meant to play out more in season 6. I just watched an episode of Angel season 5 the other day though - it wasn't good. It was cool when I was a kid.
Buffy yeah it got cancelled and then picked up by UPN but Buffy really deserved to be cancelled by season 5 and it only went from intermittently annoying and cheesy to consistently awful after that.
Firely just got messed around, and it was actually a pretty good show which would have probably gotten better with time to develop arcs and stuff. The humour in that show was actually funny and the characters were better cos the Joss stereotypes were applied in more interesting ways
Dollhouse is getting messed around a little, but not as bad as Firefly. I'm pretty sure it got changed time slots and was aired out of order. I've never understood why networks do that other than gross negligence and stupidity.
Yeah, for firefly, the order of airing the episodes was completely messed up, most notably was that the last episode that they aired was the pilot episode if I recall correctly. I don't understand how television stations can think this is a good idea. Its one thing to tweak the show so that I panders to their perceived audience and whatever, but to completely mess up with the order and timing of a show just tells me that they really didn't give a shit about the integrity of the show at all. Joss has really had bad luck with television series, but mostly with FOX, which is why I really don't understand why he let them do dollhouse.