THURSDAY
CRAIG’S PREDICTIONS: 8:00 Superstore; 8:30 The Good Place; 9:00 Chicago Med; 10:00 Chicago Fire
SHILO’S PREDICTIONS: 8:00 Superstore; 8:30 The Good Place; 9:00 Chicago Fire; 10:00 Chicago Med
ACTUAL SCHEDULE: 8:00 Will & Grace; 8:30 Great News; 9:00 This Is Us; 10:00 Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Brothers
CRAIG: Have we ever had a night where we were both so completely wrong in our predictions? NBC is attempting to bring back “Must See TV,” but I can’t help but wonder how this is going to look when they run out of Will & Grace episodes. On the bright side, I think this is a fantastic way and a vote of confidence to launch Great News into the realm of possibly becoming a hit. I admit, I really liked the trailer for the show, but assumed that just being a midseason thing, I won’t get attached. Now, I have a reason to watch, and hopefully others will too.
I’m still not sure this is the right move for This Is Us just yet. Scandal may be fading and ultimately ending, but that is habitual viewing for people who now have to choose (I know, there’s DVR and streaming, but still.)
American Crime Story— err, Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Brothers is clearly NBC’s attempt at creating another watercooler like FX’s O.J. series. We’ll see how it goes.
SHILO: Yeah, absolutely nothing about this lineup works for me. I think Will & Grace going up against The Big Bang Theory (albeit later in the season, given the Thursday Night Football scheduling) is suicidal, given that Big Bang is the top comedy on TV (by a lot) and both it and Will are multi-cams with similar sensibilities. Great News is doing 0.6s after The Voice, so it being stuck between two of NBC’s highest priority vehicles of the fall gives me no confidence; I know that The Voice isn’t a great comedy lead-in, but Great News is still going to have to significantly improve in order to justify its placement and not bring This Is Us down. While networks have managed to make hits post-season one recently (see: ABC and The Goldbergs), I don’t know if Great News isn’t too low (or, frankly, too niche) for that to be possible.
I understand the This Is Us move in the sense of NBC wanting to rebuild a night using a strong piece and wanting to use the Voice/Chicago Fire combo on something else. However, the scheduling is going to be choppy (six episodes on – football hiatus – 4-5 episodes on – Olympic hiatus) even without taking into account them wanting to stretch 18 episodes until May, which is absolute death for a serialized drama like this. Plus, they didn’t seem to move it with a specific purpose; if they developed a companion that they wanted to premiere in the fall, I could probably overlook the red flags (e.g. the competition with fellow female-skewing drama Scandal) since they didn’t risk damaging such a strong show for nothing. But no, they moved it for a pre-branded eight-episode limited series that seems designed to win awards for lead Edie Falco and that’s about it. True Crime is about as incompatible as you can get post-This Is Us, a cable-chasing drama about the trial of two brothers who murdered their parents following the touchiest feeliest family drama this side of Parenthood, so couple that with the weakness of Great News and This Is Us looks like it could be on the way to becoming the next Blacklist – a strong performer early in the week that moves to Thursday, gets surrounded by nothing, and eventually melts down.
