MONDAY
SHILO: 8:00 Gotham; 9:00 Lucifer
CRAIG: 8:00 Gotham; 9:00 Lucifer
SHILO: I would understand the temptation to move Lucifer to another night, as the show demonstrated a lot of ratings strength late in the season and reveled in its compatibility with the comic-inspired drama. FOX doesn’t have a whole lot of lead-ins and when the connection between shows is too good, you want to spread the strength to more troublesome parts of your schedule. But I don’t think FOX is in a place where they can break up this lineup just yet; beyond something established like Prison Break or 24: Legacy, I don’t believe they have anything in their development/new series slate that would do better than Lucifer and if the network pushes Lucifer to a less friendly slot, they might be irrevocably damaging their most promising drama from this past season.
Therefore, I think keeping the two WB dramas attached at the hip for the foreseeable future would be the best move, as it makes Monday a night they don’t have to worry about and gives them the chance to focus on nights that need more attention. And FOX is so keyed in on developing reboots, revivals, spin-offs, and adaptations of existing intellectual property that it might not be as difficult to find some (temporary) relief to their scheduling woes as it would be if they were more reliant on original content.
CRAIG: At least in the fall, it would make sense for Gotham and Lucifer to make up the lineup. They don’t hurt one another, they’d continue the narrative momentum, and all that good stuff. I’m more interested in seeing what FOX does at midseason. I’m assuming that Prison Break will take the 8PM Monday slot as The X-Files did last year, letting it be a “classic FOX show” that lead things off for the evening. (What’s next? Can someone please effectively do In Living Color again? House: Reloaded? Maybe FOX can bring back The Simpsons…. wait, that’s still on? My bad.)
