Schedule Five-Spot, WE 4/1/12 - The Big Bang Theory, Teenage Daughter, Smash, Hell's Kitchen, Bones

Here's the Schedule Five-Spot for the week ending April 1, 2012 (and also the previous week):

CBS Season Finale Dates - The CBS finale dates revealed that the net is basically sitting out nearly the entire final week of May sweeps. Its last finales come on May 17, the first day of the final week of the season, and Thursday tentpole The Big Bang Theory is ending a week earlier. Several shows (2 Broke Girls, Unforgettable, CSI) are ending even earlier to make way for double-sized finales for How I Met Your Mother, NCIS: Los Angeles and Criminal Minds.

I Hate My Teenage Daughter - A week after Fox bumped the leftover I Hate My Teenage Daughter episodes from Wednesday (where they would've aired post-Idol) to summer, the show then pulled a mere 1.2 demo in its Tuesday timeslot and got pulled even from that situation. Fox still claims the remaining episodes will be aired this summer.

Smash - Following NBC's Grimm renewal a couple weeks ago, their second renewal for 2012-13 went to another new show: the musical drama Smash. The show has been a long way from the savior of NBC scripted programming, but it seems Truly about on par with shows like Grimm and Law and Order: SVU, which sadly is easily good enough on this network. The more interesting drama will be whether the show gets the post-Voice timeslot back.

Fox Summer - Hope you like Gordon Ramsay, because he makes up the lion's share of what Fox will be offering this summer. Hell's Kitchen will air on two nights for the second straight season, and it's joined on Monday by Ramsay newbie Hotel Hell and on Tuesday by Masterchef. As reported months earlier, So You Think You Can Dance is now just a one-night show (Wednesday), though it premieres on the first Thursday of the summer.

Bones - Who'd have thunk a few years ago that Bones would end up running at least as many seasons as House? It's gonna happen, as Bones got renewed this week for an eighth season (tying cancelled House). The network really has no choice considering their major drama problems elsewhere, but in a more ideal situation I'd think they might want to wait and see how it does starting tonight in another Monday pairing with House.

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.