“House is back in charge … and we’re treating a porn star.” – Foreman

Is it wrong that the most memorable moment of tonight’s House episode was in the cold open, when the teeny little porn director was the exact height of the swarms of boobs around him? No wonder the guy got into the porn biz….

I’m really torn about the events of this episode. I never missed Taub and Thirteen, and I was really enjoying the old team being back together again. I liked House’s growth, because he could be an ass without being downright cruel, but all that got thrown out the window tonight. So did we see Cameron’s growth instead, only to have the door hit her on the way out? Is there no room for growth on House?

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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’ll take “people we got an earful from this week” for two hundred!

I was going back and forth through the quotes submitted by our writers this week, and I couldn’t quite understand why the haul seemed so light. Then it dawned on me: ABC didn’t air its new Wednesday night comedy lineup this week. Can you believe how quickly those three shows (sorry Hank!) have entered our pop-culture? Yowza.

30 Rock

“Alright hosers: I want all 12 of us fighting for every meter on all three downs. And we’re gonna make this a Boxing Day the Prime Minister will never forget.” – Danny, in his Canadian football movie

“I feel about as useless as a mom’s college degree.” – Kenneth, on his problem with Danny Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s House is the first episode of the series I’ve enjoyed in a long time. And not just because it hasn’t aired in three weeks because of baseball. “Known Unknowns” was reminiscent of House at its finest, early in the series. Unlike some episodes that seem like filler, this episode moved the characters forward instead of keeping them spinning in the perpetuity of their Princeton Hospital hamster wheel.

There were a lot of beautiful small moments to appreciate: Cameron sitting at House’s desk opening his mail; the jokes about Cuddy’s breasts being like Selma and Patty from the Simpsons.

“Why would you name them after somebody’s aunts?”

“Well, they’re always smoking.” 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 »

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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