Schedule Five-Spot, WE 12/4/11 - Grimm, Touch, Breaking In, Justified, Army Wives

Didn't do one of these for the short Thanksgiving week, but I'm bringing over the one significant piece of news from that week (the Grimm full season) and trying to squeeze that, a Fox midseason announcement and lots of cable news into one Five-Spot. Good luck to me! Here's the Sked Five-Spot for the week ending 12/4/11:

Grimm - The full season is certainly good news for Grimm, but it doesn't really even cancel out the horrible news from the previous week that it'll stay on Friday. As I said last week in the Power Rankings, I think the low viewing levels of Friday will eventually wear down this kind of show. Fringe and Dollhouse also had promising Friday night starts but eventually lost huge chunks of that initial audience. I'll be watching its Thursday ratings with great interest this week.

Fox Midseason Monday - I found two things newsworthy in the Fox midseason announcement. The first was that Alcatraz and Touch would both have their go at the post-House timeslot on Monday. Some of the rumors had one of these shows on Friday, but both will get a relatively similar chance. Now we can compare these shows against both each other and fall Monday occupant Terra Nova. Touch also gets a Glee-esque preview after American Idol on January 25.

Fox Midseason Tuesday - Remember when Fox had multiple pilots squaring off against each other for the coveted right to join a two-hour comedy block on Tuesday at midseason? Well, said block is still happening, but it's kind of underwhelming now that none of those pilots were picked up and the first half of that night consists of a New Girl repeat and the ridiculously-renewed Breaking In, which basically got test pattern-level numbers after Idol last spring.

Cable Midseason - No analysis, just dates: USA will bring back White Collar on Tuesday, January 17, Royal Pains on Wednesday, January 18 and newbie Common Law on Thursday, January 26. HBO goes with Dustin Hoffman newbie Luck on Sunday, January 29, then brings in returning comedy Eastbound & Down two weeks later. FX returns Justified on January 17 (opposite White Collar) and the animated block of Archer and Unsupervised on January 19.

Cable Extensions - Two notable cable shows got episode extensions last week. The first was a conventional renewal for ABC Family's Pretty Little Liars. As has seemingly become the norm for ABC Family, it's a big order (24 episodes) which will surely be split up across multiple runs. And Lifetime added 10 episodes to the upcoming season of Army Wives, an important distinction because it locks in the cast and their expiring contracts.

The Five-Spots are my recaps of what aired, what got renewed/cancelled and what rated well or poorly last week in TV. For more Five-Spots, see the Index.