First Two Weeks, Mixology

WEEK ONE
Modern Family had never led into a truly disappointing series premiere before, but Modern Family had never met anything quite like Mixology. The show managed a terrible 1.7 demo in its premiere, 45% below an also underachieving Modern (3.1). There was a lot of competition from American Idol, Survivor and a well above average Law and Order: SVU, but there was really no spinning this one. It was only a couple ticks ahead of the last Super Fun Night to air after an original Modern.

WEEK TWO
The Mixology story took an unexpected turn in week two as the show became the first big four series to hold its entire premiere rating in week two (unless you count the About a Boy preview in a different slot). But like with Mind Games, the True formula somewhat normalizes this strange behavior after accounting for the timeslot change. In Mixology's case, it was an upswing night for everything that surrounded it, including Modern Family (3.4). The show's retention was down to 50%.

PROGNOSIS
Well, this at least makes week three more interesting than I'd have expected. ABC has spent much of this season in the grueling exercise of having to choose which bombs to ride out the string with. Holding 100% in week two is actually one of the better cases any of these shows has made, so Mixology may be around for a bit. But given the upswing of everything else on the night for ABC, it's hard to read it as legitimate momentum. Mixology still needs to move in the upward direction to make a renewal case. 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.