The last premiere in NBC's revamped two-hour comedy Thursday featured the return of Will & Grace's Sean Hayes in Sean Saves the World. But it was quickly clear he wasn't saving anything. Sean premiered to a measly 1.4 demo. Though it built noticeably on its 1.1 lead-in from the Welcome to the Family premiere, it was still mired in fourth place in the timeslot, dropping even behind a struggling Glee (1.7 at 9:00).
WEEK TWO
Sean and the surrounding comedies all came crashing down the next week, taking the lineup from "very disappointing" all the way down to "unthinkably disastrous." Sean dropped 29% to a 1.0 demo, still a bit ahead of Welcome to the Family (0.8) but (on Glee's Cory Monteith tribute night) well below half any of its competitors.
PROGNOSIS
Amazingly, Sean is probably only the third-weakest newbie on NBC this fall, given Ironside has a somewhat passable lead-in. The NBC suits are likely praying that Sean can pick back up by a tick or so as the inflated Glee audience comes back to other options this week. In the very low 1's, maybe they could justify keeping this show on for a little while while they deal with Welcome to the Family and Ironside. But there doesn't seem to be a season two scenario here. Cancel.
"First Two Weeks" is an ongoing experiment to see how often a new scripted show's fate can be predicted by the very earliest data. Here are the picks and lineups for every show this season.
