Again! Again, The Vampire Diaries kills off a main character. Now, before you go getting your panties all in a bunch about me putting a spoiler before the jump in my post, just relax. I won’t say another word about it until it’s safe.

A ton happened in this episode, which kind of sucks because we’re not going to see any movement on any of it until January 21. That’s a super-long hiatus, and I’m bored already.

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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 »

“Aren’t you going to let me in?” – Logan to Jenna, on her doorstep

Sometimes it’s entertaining to make fun of The Vampire Diaries. Between Stefan’s brooding and Damon’s Dr. Evil impersonations, it can sometime elicit eye-rolls. And don’t even get me started on how some weak, teenage girl cries in every episode. But when you get right down to it, the show is all good fun and quite well done. I’m pretty hooked, and even as I try to look away, I just keep coming back for more. Oh, my eyes! Here’s why:

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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 missed the Supernatural boat. Everyone tells me what a great show it is, but I’ve never taken the time. If this week’s lead quote is any indication, I sure am missing out. The week before the start of November Sweeps also brings us some good quotes from Modern Family and Community. Next week, however, I promise the return of Glee!

Supernatural

“You gotta calm down.” — Sam
“Calm down? I’m wearing sunglasses at night!! You know who does that? No talent douche bags! I hate this game! I hate that we’re in a procedural cop show and you want to know to know why … because I hate procedural cop shows! There’s like 300 of them on television and they’re all the freaking same. It’s, ‘Oh, plane crashed here.’ Oh shut up!” — Dean

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“I’m worse than shallow — I’m a kiddie pool.” – Caroline

I’ve got to hand it to The Vampire Diaries. Just when I think they are going to deliver a boring episode, or go someplace entirely lame or sappy with the storyline, they fool me. In a good way, because they are not afraid to kill, maim or otherwise off a character that we all (well, those of us who didn’t read the books anyway) thought had some staying power for one reason or another.

Where I need to suspend my disbelief, or extend my total trust to the writers, is when it comes to everyone being so very stupid when it comes to Damon. OK, Caroline can’t really help it, but everyone else should be able to have a synapse or two from their brains firing at some point in the episode. It’s not going to be much fun if Damon gets away with everything, all the time.

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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 »