“Dude. I’m Chuck Bass. Even Europeans must know what that means.”

Chuck was sadly underused in this episode, but really, that line made up for all of it. In fact, that one line was so perfect, that it’s not even worth sullying it by talking about the beyond-boring Jenny storyline in which it appeared. Jenny Humphrey is not, nor has she ever been, an interesting character. If they insist on putting her in every episode, they should at least put her in school so we can see Constance 2.0 in action. Otherwise, more Chuck time, please.

Here’s my new theory after watching this episode: Serena is a sociopath. Doesn’t it explain her behavior over the past three seasons? Her inability to maintain social relationships for more than a handful of episodes, her robot-like demeanor, her ability to shift from one “emotion” to the next without so much of a blink? I hope that my theory is correct, or Serena van der Woodsen may just bore me straight to death.

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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 »

As a parent, I would like to start my own council that bans stupid, “edgy” threesomes from television. Not because I find them too scandalous, but because they are lame. Gossip Girl’s much ballyhooed threesome was quite, uh, anticlimactic. Instead of going all out and making it completely crazy, which Gossip Girl could totally get away with, not only did they choose the most boring three people to take part in it, but it was, by far, one of the tamest things I’ve seen on that show, lately. Hell, the skirts that Jenny Humphrey wears in any given scene are way more scandalous.

It’s not that I’m complaining about the lack of a sex scene, because, believe me, I’m fine with that. It’s that they hyped it up so much and it was nothing. Like, literally nothing. Three fully-clothed people kissed one time, they cut away, and when we see the three characters again, they are asleep in bed. The HORROR! They were SLEEPING in BED. OMZZZZZZzzzzzzz.

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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 love how everyone on Gossip Girl tonight was basically dealing in human trafficking: either they were selling themselves, or selling out everyone else. Although, I guess that could pretty much be said for every episode of Gossip Girl– they just spelled it out for us this time.

Today is election day all over this great land of ours, so this episode is especially timely. Gossip Girl can hardly be accused of realism, but I really enjoyed what they did with the election storyline. America loves a good hero, and it seems as though New York, especially, has a local hero about every week.

But enough about heroes. Let’s talk about hookers– and how Serena is totally a big one.

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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 »

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 »