Movie Box Review

AWAKE didn't keep anyone from a full night's sleep.

NBC:  In the universe of NBC these days, you take your glass-half-full where you can get it, and here it is:  AWAKE won its time slot, it was up from its lead-in, it had the network's highest Thursday 10PM rating of the season, and despite its unusually convoluted premise, it lost relatively few viewers during the course of the hour.  So there's that.  Back on earth, though, Awake was for all intents and purposes NBC's last chance for a scripted break-out hit this season (whatever Smash is, it's not that), and marked yet another failure.  It could only reach a 1.9 rating against repeats on the other networks, and fell considerably below even the season lows for new episodes of The Mentalist and Private Practice.  (Even against a Mentalist repeat, its margin of victory was a mere 0.2.)  So:  on to next year!  Meanwhile, the rest of the evening was dismal as well:  none of the sitcoms were more than 0.2 above season lows, despite airing against repeats on 2 other networks.  Creatively, it was also a down night:  THE OFFICE neared the end of its Tallahassee arc with its weakest recent episode (the big gag was that Ed Helms' character was beaten up by a little girl), 30 ROCK was unable to match the conceptual brilliance of its last couple of entries and resorted to network television's one millionth Law & Order parody, and PARKS & RECREATION was unusually scattered.  (Let's not even speak of UP ALL NIGHT.)

FOX:  It's been the same story all week, as AMERICAN IDOL, with another 2-hour episode, was up from last Thursday (since this week aired against ABC and CBS reruns), but horribly down (more than 40%) from the parallel episode last season.  

ABC:  For an explanation of the network's schedule shenanigans last night, see Mitch Metcalf's rating report.  In any case, nothing on the night scored higher than a 1.3.

CBS:  With THE BIG BANG THEORY in repeats, the season finale of ROB hit a series low 2.6, which on the bright side was down only 0.6 from its depressed lead-in.  Repeats of PERSON OF INTEREST and THE MENTALIST were both under a 2.

CW:  Reruns of VAMPIRE DIARIES and SECRET CIRCLE were at 0.4 and 0.3, respectively.

Tonight is all new (except CW), with the notable event--such as it is--being the season (at least) finale of CBS' A GIFTED MAN.

Ow, says FOX.  See FOX say Ow.

FOX:  AMERICAN IDOL's 4.4 rating was its lowest since the show began as a summer series 10 years ago.  That was down 14% from last week, 38% from the first hour of last year's parallel episode, and 43% from last season's Thursday average.  The combined Wednesday/Thursday average for this week was more than 20% lower than NBC's rating for Monday's The Voice.  Oh, I could go on.  The question is what--if anything--can FOX do to reverse the trend?  The show is locked into its format and judges, so look for some high-profile theme nights and other stunting.  The network may also have to give Idol some of the valuable promo time that would otherwise have gone to launching shows like Touch.  Meanwhile, THE FINDER was down to the rating it was getting before it had Idol as a lead-in, although considering that  Idol was down 1.4 rating points from the lead-in it provided 2 weeks ago, Finder's 0.2 decline wasn't at all alarming.

NBC:  The lower Idol numbers on FOX didn't do anything for 30 ROCK or PARKS & RECREATION, both of which were even with last week's season lows (if you exclude 30 Rock's oopsie DVR listing episode).  This is too bad, as both featured first-rate episodes this week, especially 30 Rock with its inspired Leap Day William concoction.  THE OFFICE is also on a creative upswing, although the Tallahassee gambit that's perking the show up is by definition a temporary one.  Office, facing The Finder instead of Idol, was up a decent 0.3 from last week, still far from its numbers earlier this season.  UP ALL NIGHT also had a 0.3 boost with the higher lead-in.  The last rerun GRIMM before Awake arrives next week received little interest with a 0.9.

ABC:  GREY'S ANATOMY tied its season low, and PRIVATE PRACTICE took a big 0.4 hit from last week's crossover episode.  

CBS:  THE BIG BANG THEORY is now the unquestioned king of the 8PM slot, although ROB slipped a bit to a new low (at 3.0, it's still in pretty good shape).  PERSON OF INTEREST benefited from the reduced FOX competition at 9PM and rebounded 0.3, but THE MENTALIST tied its season low.  (The 10PM ratings in general support the idea that in the absence of strong programming, this is when people are catching up on their DVR playlists, since Mentalist and Private Practice were both down, and no one was watching NBC.)

CW:  Already in repeat mode for the night (new shows won't return till mid-March), with a SUPERNATURAL thrown in instead of the usual SECRET CIRCLE at 9PM and garnering an unremarkable 0.3. 

No special events for the evening tonight, just fresh sweeps episodes of all the regular shows (except at CW).

AMERICAN IDOL's best days are behind it.

FOX:  Idol gave FOX an easy win for the night, but it continues to be 30% below last season, and last night dipped 0.3 from its first Thursday.  It appears as though the show didn't even win the time-slot for its first half-hour, falling behind BIG BANG THEORY on CBS (although Idol recovered at 8:30PM).  Again:  a 5.4 rating these days is still tremendous, and Idol isn't going anywhere, but it's no longer the fearsome beast it's always been.  The best news for FOX last night was that THE FINDER did a very robust 2.9 at 9PM, although the number (which may come down if Idol had an overrun) comes laden with asterisks, as it faced a mix of repeats and atypical competition in its hour.

NBC:  The network let it be known this week that, with much of THE OFFICE cast not under contract after this year, it's already starting to prepare for a post-Office schedule by developing a Rainn Wilson spin-off that could start airing in early 2013.  Last night it got a look at what an Office-less Thursday might look like:  with a fresh 30 ROCK airing at 9PM, not a single show on the once-Must-See night could reach even a 2 rating.  In the Ignominious Department, THE FIRM, even with reruns on the other networks, only scratched its way to 1.0.

CBS:  Big Bang, as noted, seems to have beaten Idol at 8PM, and even though ROB declined at 8:30PM, its 3.5 was still quite strong.  After that it was repeats, although it's worth noting that the MENTALIST rerun at 10PM equaled the combined ratings for NBC and ABC in the hour.

ABC:  Conserving its original episodes for February sweeps, the network was all-repeat last night, with nothing over a 1.5.

CW:  Preempted the schedule for the dreadful theatrical movie The Covenant (featuring a couple of Gossip Girl actors) and managed a 0.5.

Tonight we bid hail and farewell to CHUCK, which was never a breakout hit but managed to hang around fairly entertainingly for 5 seasons. Although series finales are notoriously tricky, up to now the show has remained admirably faithful to its mythology and tone, so let's hope it sticks the landing.

Lots of news, but it's only good for one network.

CBS:  Keeping in mind that the Thursday 8-9PM landscape will change drastically next week with the return of American Idol, CBS got everything it could have wished from the debut of ROB at 8:30PM.  The show's 4.1 blew past the numbers that Rules of Engagement was doing in that slot (let alone How To Be A Gentleman), retained 80% of its BIG BANG THEORY lead-in, and boosted PERSON OF INTEREST at 9PM to its own season high of 3.2.  THE MENTALIST was at a standard 2.7 at 10PM, good enough to win the hour.  Last year, the CBS 8:30PM sitcom (S#![ My Dad Says) did a 2.8 against the debut of Idol, after a 4.2 for Big Bang Theory, so even if Rob takes a hit from last night, it's in a good position to improve CBS's numbers overall.

NBC:  Ugh.  30 ROCK only made it to a 1.8 in its season debut.  That's a little better than what Community had been doing at 8PM, but a whopping 30% behind last year's season average.  On any other network, it would be in line for cancellation.  PARKS & RECREATION didn't benefit from the new lead-in, rising only 0.1 from its last original outing after a Community episode.  (In what now look like the halcyon days of 2011, NBC's 8-9PM sitcoms averaged a 2.2 against the debut of Idol.  That's not gonna happen next week.)  Despite all the marketing dollars spent to promote the new 9PM hour, THE OFFICE tied its season low, and UP ALL NIGHT, in its new timeslot, was up only 0.1 from Whitney's lowest rating in the slot.  But the worst was yet to come:  THE FIRM had its timeslot premiere with a catastrophic 1.0, 45% lower than the number Outsourced did last season at 10:30PM.  That would be a decent (and not exceptional) number for USA; it's a ridiculous rating for NBC. 

FOX:  THE FINDER had a very unimpressive 1.7 debut.  Of course its lead-in beginning next week will be probably triple the 2.4 it had from BONES last night, which should certainly leave it looking healthier--but still, a 4th place finish doesn't suggest much audience enthusiasm.

ABC:  The network took a hit from the higher level of competition on the night, not to mention the marketing dollars spent by the other networks in promoting their changes, as GREY'S ANATOMY and PRIVATE PRACTICE fell to the mid-levels of their season numbers.

CW:  VAMPIRE DIARIES was down a significant 0.3 (by CW terms), but still huge (by CW terms) with a 1.2.  Even with the diminished lead-in, SECRET CIRCLE held steady at a strong 0.8.

Tonight:  the return of FRINGE!  (There may not be many more chances to use that phrase.)  And the final regular episodes of EXTREME MAKEOVER:  HOME EDITION.  

We live in a Dickensian era of situation comedies, the best and worst combined on every network.  ABC is the home of both Modern Family and Work It; NBC contains Parks & Recreation and Whitney; FOX has New Girl and I Hate My Teenage Daughter.  And at CBS, the same network creative team presents us with How I Met Your Mother and the new ROB, a dismal piece of work that debuted this evening.  It's inconceivable that the networks aren't aware of the differences between their highs and lows; it's as though they periodically run out of energy and just stop caring what fills in the empty slots on their air.  Rob, in this context, is less a comedy than it is grout.

Rob is, at least, less actively unpleasant than most of the terrible sit-coms on its fellow networks.  It's not trying to simplemindedly shock viewers, or to be cutting-edge with hostility.  It's just a slow, obvious, unfunny piece of work with little promise.  The basic plot--and so far, that's all there is--goes back to the stone age of sitcoms.  Written by Lew Morton and Rob Schneider, who stars and is a Co-Executive Producer, the story is inspired by Schneider's own life:  he, like the "Rob" of the TV show, is married to a tall, young, gorgeous Hispanic woman from a large family.  (Although the cynical might note that Schneider is a movie and TV star and not the landscape architect of the show's "Rob".)  In the show, she's named Maggie (Claudia Bassols), and her family (father Cheech Marin, mother Diana Maria Riva, grandmother Lupe Ontiveros and uncle Eugenio Derbez) does not approve of Maggie's short, clumsy,, unimpressive, middle-aged husband, whose only notable attribute is a mild case of OCD.  He tries to win them over; they warily decide to accept him for their daughter's sake; that's the show.

Sometimes a series gives the game away with a single joke, and when Rob, seconds after meeting Maggie's family, says that he feels like he's at a Julio Iglesias concert, it tells you everything you need to know about Rob.  It's not mean-spirited, but it's carelessly humorless.  The jokes take every obvious subject--illegal aliens, sangria, guacamole, shrines to dead grandfathers--and throw something witless in its direction, without any imagination, let alone insight.  When it finally gathers itself for what's supposed to be the show's big sight-gag (Rob, through some idiotic contrivances, is caught grasping grandma from behind with his pants down, but hey, it's not what it looks like), the result is less offensive than pitiful.  Combined with the old-fashioned mode of lengthy scenes played out on large, multi-camera sets, the 22 minutes crawl by.  

The cast tries.  Marin manages to draw a couple of chuckles, and Derbez practically contorts himself trying to get laughs from his loser-con man uncle.  Bassols is certainly gorgeous, and probably benefits from the fact that since her character is the straight man, she doesn't bear the burden of bad punchlines.  Ontiveros, for no apparent reason, has no dialogue.  Schneider overdoes it, but he's been worse.  

Rob is so rudimentary that it's like a 1950s training film on how to make a sit-com.  Anyone who badly wants to see a show like it is better off switching to TV Land.

AKA the season's final pre-American Idol Wednesday.

NBC:   In the absence of the 600-pound gorilla that's arriving in a week, the new 8-9PM hour did respectably.  WHITNEY's 2.1 was slightly higher than where Up All Night had settled in last fall, and ARE YOU THERE, CHELSEA built a bit on that to a 2.3, which is more than anything else at 8:30PM has been able to do for the network all season.  On a night when 3 networks were in repeats, that was good enough for 2d place in the hour.  However, as Mitch Metcalf notes, that's partly because NBC spent a lot of money and effort marketing the shows.  And did we mention American Idol arrives next week?  HARRY'S LAW was up fractionally, while SVU couldn't capitalize much on the absence of CSI in its hour, up only 0.1 from its season low.  (And apart from Idol, next week features the start of Marg Helgenberger's departure from CSI, which can be expected to stunt that show's ratings.)

ABC:  An easy night-long win.  Everything was stable except MODERN FAMILY, which was down a not-insubstantial half a ratings point... but if you're Modern Family, you can afford to go down half a point.  Notably, even with presumably more female-skewing competition on CBS than usual, REVENGE still won its hour.

CBS:  The PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARDS were down 0.2 from last year, still enough for 2d place over its 2 hours.

FOX:  Basically bowed out for the night, with repeat and new episodes of MOBBED that didn't top a 1.3.

CW:  ONE TREE HILL's 0.9 season premere was excellent by CW standards.