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FRINGE, having watched Monty Python & the Holy Grail, shouts “I’m not dead!” as the gravediggers try to take it away.
CBS: An extremely soft win for the night (1.6 average). UNDERCOVER BOSS was down 0.4 from its season premiere, A GIFTED MAN (in its penultimate episode, at least for this season) was down 0.2, and only BLUE BLOODS was up a slight 0.1 from last week, when it aired against ABC’s Whitney Houston tribute.
FOX: FRINGE was up 0.1, and while that doesn’t sound like much (and isn’t), at least it was in a tightly squeezed pack at 9PM (1.5-1.4-1.3-1.2). The show now takes 4 weeks off, to return at the end of March with what it hopes won’t be its final 8 episodes in this timeline and universe.
NBC: GRIMM continues to be a very niche success, at the top of that 9PM scrum by a bare 0.1 and showing no signs that it could thrive in the tougher competition that exists Sun-Thurs. WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? is flopping at 8PM with a 1.0, and DATELINE barely won the newsmagazine battle at 10PM by 0.1.
ABC: The network was in 2d place by only 0.1 at both 8PM and 9PM (SHARK TANK particularly benefited from Undercover Boss’ decline), but 20/20 slumped without the buzz of the Whitney Houston story.
CW: Repeats, although it’s worth nothing that the 0.4 scored by NIKITA and SUPERNATURAL was only 0.1 below what some of the network’s new episodes have been rating.
Tonight is repeat hell, except for NBC’s burn-off of THE FIRM episodes (another kind of hell). Tomorrow night is likely to be joyful for fans of black-and-white silent French films, and depressing for everyone else. (It’s a mark of just how dreary this year’s Oscars are that the media has spent 2 days obsessing about Sacha Baron Cohen’s publicity stunt for his new movie instead of the awards.) All the other broadcast networks are staying away, as are many scripted cable locales, with the exceptions of giant hit WALKING DEAD on AMC, and enormous flop LUCK on HBO.
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