First Two Weeks, Grimm

GRIMM (NBC)

WEEK ONE
There was every reason for Grimm to be totally dead on arrival. First, NBC put it on Friday, which is not much of a show of confidence; it felt like a second hour of Dateline was just begging to replace it. Then, in an almost comical twist of fate, a rain delay and then multiple miracle Cardinals comebacks in Game 6 meant the show was suddenly premiering against Game 7 of the World Series. But despite it all, Grimm somehow found a 2.1 demo on that night, more than doubling its Chuck lead-in (1.0) and outrating NBC's other two drama premieres of the fall (The Playboy Club and Prime Suspect), both of which were much better situated.

WEEK TWO
This was one of the more interesting week twos going in. Some thought Grimm might actually grow without the 7.0+ demo of the Series in the mix, but others thought it could completely collapse against the full complement of drama competition: Fringe, Supernatural and CSI: NY. Neither one really happened, as the show dropped 14% to a still strong for Friday 1.8 demo. And it beat all those competing dramas, led by CSI: NY (1.6).

PROGNOSIS
I guess I'm really going down with all the genre/serialized dramas this year, because I'm predicting this one gets renewed too. Here's the deal: NBC has to move this show. I like to think I'm not as kneejerk in my schedule speculations as many randoms on the Internet, but I literally would've moved this show after week one. As I've said on a couple occasions, there was no week two result that makes the move a bad idea. Either it "holds up" and it's far too strong for an otherwise disastrous NBC to keep on Friday, or it collapses and NBC has taken its only promising drama and murdered it with low viewing levels and (for Friday) an uncanny amount of drama competition and no lead-in. I feel this strongly precisely because it's on NBC. I hear the, "You've found something that works on a Friday; why mess with it?" argument. That'd definitely fly with me on CBS or Fox, maybe even ABC (who at least has something respectable on every night). But this is NBC. You mess with it because you have (and this is a very conservative estimate) five other hours on the Monday to Thursday schedule that are complete disasters. How can this network put anything that shows any kind of promise in a Friday situation? I hate to use this kind of strong language, but really... if this show airs on Friday in 2012, it may truly be time to give up on NBC.

"First Two Weeks" is my look at... the first two weeks of a new scripted broadcast show's ratings. I also line all of these numbers up to do an objective analysis in what I call "the system."