It’s an interesting question, and certainly one we’ve come face-to-face with in the recent past. Those of us up and down the East Coast got hit with the big one back in 2003 … I walked 140 blocks back from work to my wife — then my fiance — getting in just before nightfall, which would have left her stuck in my apartment in the pitch black.

But it didn’t matter so much that the electricity grid was down. Everything was closed, so worst case scenario we couldn’t send personal e-mails (although it did require me to be in the office the following Sunday).

But life at NCIS does not stop for the lights. And boy did that lead to a lot of amusing situations. Read the rest of this entry »

Or, put another way, is there only so much funny out there in TV land that if another success story shows up, or something already on the air gets better, everything else is destined to get worse?

Maybe it’s that as individual viewers we’re only allotted so much laughing in a week. I don’t know which is the case … all I know is that, week in and week out, some of my favorite sitcoms are consistently falling flat. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

How exciting, right? A lady friend for McGee, and one who has no problem with the hours he needs to work — she’s available for a night of passion whenever he has the time. Definitely an exciting development, and one that was a long time coming.

Not only that, but the old sparks of jealousy from Abby were visible when she learned of Amanda (Lindy Booth, AJ from The Philanthropist). I’ve never really understood that relationship. Yes, I believe Abby and McGee slept together once upon a time, and they’re definitely close friends, but there was never anything romantic between them, then or now. Funny how she asked McGee about Eric (Barrett Foa) from the LA office — correct me if I’m wrong though, NCIS: LA watchers … didn’t Abby already go out west? Read the rest of this entry »

The sixth season of NCIS brought a lot of changes to the squad room. The death of Jenny Sheppard brought forth a new director, who didn’t start out on a popular foot by breaking the team up in the last seconds of season five. It didn’t take long for everyone to find their way home though, and we spent quite a bit of time exploring some of the character’s back-stories that we hadn’t necessarily been privy to. I’ve had the DVD set sitting on my shelf to review for quite some time now, and being the Special Feature nut that I am, these are the things that I learned. 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 »

A full episode’s worth of an investigation, and still no solution as to how Gibbs managed to get his boat, The Kelly, out of his basement and down to Mexico. But how funny was it that Abby continued to gather clues about that, as everyone else on the team investigated the double homicide that brought Gibbs’ boat back to the US?

For one reason or another, I’ve never quite enjoyed any story that involves Mike Franks (Muse Watson). I’m sure at first that was because he was introduced during Gibb’s retirement, then later because of his association with Jenny’s death. Either way, I’ve never really been able to get on board with his plots. I mean, I enjoy seeing Gibbs as a Probie once again, but that could be successfully achieved with a better senior agent to Gibbs. Read the rest of this entry »