After the dramatic entrance of V last week, there were no similar big splash stories to lead things off this week. Then, as I was perusing the year-ago numbers, something occurred to me. It’s quite possible that FOX could improve both Monday and Thursday at 9:00 if they swapped Fringe and Lie To Me. If you look back to the initial Fringe run, it had a lot of success following House. In fact, while the House numbers are virtually unchanged from Tuesday to Monday, Fringe was holding much more of the House audience on Tuesday than Lie To Me currently is on Monday.

Example:
11/18/08: House (13.03m/5.5), Fringe (9.36m/4.2)
11/09/09: House (13.31m/5.3), Lie To Me (7.41m/3)

And that was against very similar competition. Both faced DWTS on ABC, which was pretty much a wash. NBC was greatly improved against Fringe with Biggest Loser (7.84m/3.3), as opposed to Trauma (5.35m/1.8). And CBS was mixed, with The Mentalist (15.83m/3.5) trailing the Men/Big Bang hour (13.62m/4.6) in the demo.

Now we look at where we are this season. Fringe did manage something of a rebound this week, finishing with (5.91m/2.2) on Thursday. That’s still a distant fourth place, and should find the show on the hot seat at the end of the season. It would, obviously, do better on Monday following House. The question is, would it do better than the (7.41m/3) that Lie To Me is currently offering? I think it would.

On the other side of that coin, while I’m not quite as confident about the move of Lie To Me to Thursday, I do still see the potential for it to outperform the current Fringe numbers. That bar has been set, after all, rather low. It would likely take a  hit in the move, but the end result would be that Thursday at 9:00 is stronger as well. Just something to think about. The usual numbers junk is after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

While I’m not giving refunds to dissatisfied customers, I am asserting my claim that this was quite possibly the best episode of television that Showtime has ever aired.

I mean, just the perfectly executed confluence of events that didn’t play as over-the-top. Each knock at the door could have popped the balloon, but it just kept on rising higher and higher — and there wasn’t even a kid riding in it! In fact, this was not an episode meant for children, especially not Hank’s. Shot that one to hell.

The only downside I see is that less than a million people watch Californication every week (not sure how many airings that accounts for). But we’re going to do something about that. I’m proposing a campaign, ala the “save our show” movements founded by fans. Here’s what to do: buy a gross of condoms, and write the word Californication in permanent marker on each individual wrapper. Then hand them out all over town! At the very least that might land us all in jail … hey, any press is better than none. Read the rest of this entry »

The World Series was the big ratings winner last week, but with New York involved, everyone kind of expected that, right? What nobody expected — most notably ABC — was the success of the V premiere. The numbers weren’t just good. It was the highest rated scripted program on the network, topping the Housewives and Grey’s. Even better, the V demo rating was the highest for a scripted show on any of the networks.  Someone at ABC has to be kicking themselves for only ordering four episodes of V, while they continue to crank out more Hanks than they know what to do with. Read the rest of this entry »

I have seen the future, and it is good. The fine folks at Showtime were kind enough to share screeners of this entire season of Californication, and what seemed a bump in the road for the past two weeks was actually just an anomaly. And if you thought tonight was good, you have no idea what’s coming next week.

With Karen back in the mix, it was expected that Hank would be putting to rest the three quasi-relationships that he’d been building since the season premiere. You’d think that the nature of each coupling was such as to make that an easy assignment. But then I suppose you never pondered the wonder that is Hank Moody. Read the rest of this entry »

What’s going on out there on the West Coast, folks? For two seasons, you carried Californication high on your shoulders, through different plots and different settings, everything gelling together for one great and interesting series.

But now? Ever since entering the realm of the classroom, the show’s failed for me — well, these last two weeks — whenever it’s ventured outside of it (”it” including people, places, and things). Where’s Jill? Why must we enjoy Felicia only as she relates to a mad Karen? Even Jackie was MIA … so is Professor Hank merely a tool for filling in the down-times? Read the rest of this entry »

A combination of baseball and pre-sweeps repeats made for a bit of an odd week. Repeats don’t mean there aren’t numbers of note however. We had Jay Leno’s first shot against CSI: Miami and NY repeats, and a look at what running repeats on Friday does for FOX. That is, nothing good for Dollhouse season 3. Also interesting this week — The Mentalist finally topped CSI in viewers and the demo, and even a repeat Gibbs appearance is worth 16 million viewers. Read the rest of this entry »

I guess, as they say, what goes up must come down. After loving the first four episodes of this season of Californication, I found myself totally and completely disappointed with last night’s outing. In fact, I’m not sure that I saw a single thing that I liked, aside from always enjoying one of David Duchovny’s performances.

I actually wonder if it’s merely coincidence that led Showtime to only include the first four episodes on the screener that they sent out before the season premiere…. Not that I imagine that the rest of the season will suck like last night (I hope not) — it will take a lot more than one bad episode to turn such a terrific start completely around — but last night really sucked. Read the rest of this entry »