The Question, Thursday 5/28/15: Is This the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius?

NBC begins the scripted portion of its summer season with tonight's two-hour premiere of Aquarius, a David Duchovny drama about the Charles Manson saga in the 1960s. The show has gotten some industry attention because of NBC's decision to mimic the streaming service model by releasing the entire season online. But this won't happen until after tonight's premiere, so it shouldn't be a negative for tonight. The whole thing was probably just a play for attention, but one that the casual viewer is unlikely to notice.

Of the big four's drama premieres over the next month, Aquarius seems to have the least going for it. Dateline will be a modest lead-in. Wayward Pines might actually be somewhat OK-rated drama competition. And it's set in a time that the 18-49 demo will not remember. As with many of these shows, there's the fact that it was originally ordered for the regular season and ultimately deemed not good enough to play there. That seems particularly damning in this case since 2014-15 NBC had one of the worst new slates in recent memory.

Even the weakest of the NBC regular season dramas broke 1.0 for the premiere. But most of them had better situations than this show, so I think 1.0 would be a win (relatively speaking) here. Is this the dawning of the age of Aquarius? That's The Question for Thursday, May 28, 2015.

Over/Under: 0.85. (If the finals separate the 9:00 and 10:00 episodes, the over/under for the sum of the two will be 1.65.)

No entries accepted after 6:00am ET the morning after the date in the headline. If editing your pick, please leave a separate comment. All results based on final ratings rounded to the nearest tenth.