It’s that time again: time for another episode of Glee! This week, the group is doing ballads, and Will fills in for a sick student. Is it just me, or does Will really seem like he wants to be back in high school? Of course, with a wife like Terri, I certainly can’t blame him for wanting to indulge in a little escapism. Speaking of which, wasn’t last week’s episode nice without all the fake pregnancy nonsense? It would be peachy if that could continue this week.

Join us at 9 PM EST to see what happens!
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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 »

I have been saying from the very beginning that Artie and Tina needed better storylines, especially Artie, who I’ve wanted to have more singing from ever since I learned he used to be a member of the most wonderfully cheesetastic boy band ever. And then — this week. Oh, this week!

Sure, there were some other great moments — Puck with his special brownies and devotion to Quinn, Kurt and his dad, and of course, the Diva-Off which was the emotional underscore of the episode. But nothing — nothing! — can take away from Artie, the true star of the week.

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It’s about time for the darn World Series to be over! Didn’t they know that they were screwing up our Glee watching schedule? Sure, you could be like Deb, and let the music carry you over, or you could have enjoyed the cast singing the National Anthem at the start of Game 3. Or you could have been more like me, and just waited very impatiently for the show’s return. “Wheels” will be an episode with some surprising revelations, and a chance to get to know some of the characters — specifically Artie — that we haven’t spent a lot of time with yet.

Be sure to come back to join me, Julia, other CliqueClackers and our friends as we chat live during the Eastern/Central airing of the show Wednesday night.

It was awfully nice of the folks at FOX to send over a copy of Glee’s Volume 1 CD. It probably wasn’t so nice of me not to share it with any of the staffers here at CliqueClack, but this one’s mine, all mine!

These many weeks off from my Glee fix could have been a little difficult (well, aside from the fact that I got to preview Wednesday’s episode already … ahem) without my soundtrack. I’ve gotten Owen addicted to the driving beat of “Bust-a-Move,” learned all the words to “Defying Gravity” (yes, I’m ashamed I didn’t know them before), and embarrassed myself at stoplights singing “Don’t Stop Believin’” at the top of my lungs.

My one disappointment was that the awesome version of one song that you’ll hear in the upcoming episode wasn’t on it, while another song featured in that episode was. I’ll spill it all after the jump, but don’t read on unless you want a spoiler about what song I adore in Wednesday’s upcoming episode.

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We do often get caught up in the big numbers from the big networks. It is, after all, hard to overlook the fact that NCIS is still growing its audience in the 7th season. There are still some very interesting stories happening on the little network, CW. When it was announced that Vampire Diaries would be paired with Supernatural, while Smallville was shuffled off to Friday, many people expected that was the end.

The show wouldn’t be able to come back from a year grinding away on Friday nights. After a few weeks looking at the numbers though, that’s not the case at all. Clark and the gang can celebrate good times, despite taking a hit from the move. In fact, this week Smallville topped new episodes of One Tree Hill, Gossip Girl, 90210, and Melrose Place. It’s far from done. Elsewhere, we had our first sizable crop of repeats this week, which brought some interesting results. Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s column is a tribute to the new sitcoms network television has given us this season. Sure, we’ve still got some hour-longs in there (because you know I’m not going to let one of these posts go up with out some Glee love), but we’re mainly highlighting the the half hour comedies this time around.

Modern Family

“Why is she dressed like the Hamburglar?” — Mitchell, about his baby Lily

“I’ll tell you what’s weird. Our son is not weird. What’s weird is that her kid wears aftershave and dresses like a count.” — Claire, about Manny

“It’s not just the game. It’s the bands, and the drama and the pageantry.” — Mitchell
“Don’t forget about the team mascots.” — Cameron
“They wear ascots?” — Mitchell
“No, mascots, with an ‘m.’ That could have been very embarrassing.” — Cameron

“Claire likes to say you can be part of the problem or part of the solution. I happen to believe that you can be both.” — Phil

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