This Season’s TV: Reassessing Our 2014-2015 Predictions

TUESDAY

SHILO: I was also fairly correct in my assessment of ABC’s new Tuesday comedies. Pairing relationship comedies together was smarter than trying to make one work behind Modern Family, but these two relationship comedies in particular just didn’t work on ABC. Despite gathering some positive buzz over the course of its season, Selfie was too initially off-putting for that word-of-mouth to translate into viewership, while Manhattan Love Story was thrown onto the schedule with very little push and seemingly no expectations. ABC might’ve been right in pushing the comedies forward and keeping them away from the disaster zone that was the 9:00 hour, but I have to wonder what would’ve happened had they premiered family comedy Fresh Off the Boat, which found a foothold in the tough Tuesdays at 8:00 hour, in the fall and left both Selfie and Manhattan Love Story on the bench for later.

Props definitely go to you for being apprehensive about moving SHIELD to 9:00. The idea of getting it out of the NCIS shadow was dead-on, but it having to face Supernatural and NCIS: New Orleans, as well as live down its creatively rough start, kept it from popping as much as I thought it would. Part of that probably has to do with ABC’s continued struggles on the night, as Forever turned out to be a mismatched lead-out and the 8:30 lead-in was very rarely above a mid-1.0, but SHIELD is apparently doing well enough for the network to order a spin-off. I just wonder if that spin-off is a merely chance for ABC to do a Marvel show “right” and a way for them to find a compatible partner for SHIELD without having to develop another male-skewing drama.

Unfortunately for FOX, I was right about Utopia being a bomb in the waiting. It was a noble attempt at getting live audiences back to the broadcast networks, but it felt like a warmed over summer show put in a situation where it couldn’t really win. The competition was too tough; the format wasn’t big or bold enough to make the type of waves necessary to survive in the fall; the network didn’t have the pieces to put around it to ensure that it didn’t have a complete meltdown. FOX doing something unusual was good, considering that they need to think outside the box in order to find a hit, but this wasn’t the show to put this much money and attention behind and they paid for it with a half-hearted cancellation.

CRAIG: Bleh. Utopia. At least Tuesdays gave us The Flash, which I said “might be the biggest premiere The CW has had in years.” and I was right.

You didn’t see Forever as lasting beyond its initial 13-episode order, and it did, though some of the problems you said it might face (including a lead-in that didn’t help much and competition from Chicago Fire) did plague Henry Morgan & co.

Person of Interest did all right, though CBS might have wanted more with the two NCIS lead-ins.