There’s no surer sign of summer than Big Brother dominating pretty much every night when people bother to watch TV. This Sunday was as sunny as ever for the 11th-season reality hit, as BB averaged 6.8 million viewers (yes, that’s a victory during the warm months) and, along with stalwart 60 Minutes (7.9 million), helped win the night for CBS. The rest of the weekend was more of the same: Reality triumphed with Fox’s Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? (5.7 million) on Friday, while burnoffs like NBC’s Kings (1.6 million) and the series finale of CBS’ Harper’s Island (3.9 million) were buried on Saturday.
Here, a look at Sunday’s lineup:
| Time | Show | Viewers (in millions) |
|---|---|---|
| 7 p.m. | 60 Minutes (CBS) America’s Funniest Home Videos (ABC) Great American Road Trip (NBC) ‘Til Death (Fox) Valentine Inc. (The CW) |
7.9 4.6 (repeat) 2.7 (repeat) 1.4 (repeat) .6 |
| 7:30 p.m. | Just for Laughs (ABC) American Dad (Fox) |
4.4 1.8 (repeat) |
| 8 p.m. | Big Brother 11 (CBS) Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (ABC) The Simpsons (Fox) Merlin (NBC) Hoosiers (The CW) |
6.8 5.0 (repeat) 3.7 (repeat) 3.6 1.1 |
| 8:30 p.m. | King of the Hill (Fox) | 3.1 (repeat) |
| 9 p.m. | Cold Case (CBS) Meteor (NBC) Family Guy (Fox) Desperate Housewives (ABC) |
5.6 (repeat) 5.1 4.4 (repeat) 2.5 (repeat) |
| 9:30 p.m. | The Simpsons (Fox) | 4.0 (repeat |
| 10 p.m. | Without a Trace (CBS) Brothers & Sisters (ABC) |
6.0 (repeat) 2.1 (repeat) |
USA Today gave “Meteor” a pretty scathing 1-star review. So I thought to myself, “How bad could it possibly be?” Well, as it turns out, GLARINGLY bad. EMBARRASSINGLY bad. SO bad, in fact, that it made me downright ANGRY that one of the venerable “Big Three” broadcast networks would actually air it … and in this era of Reality TV, that’s really saying something.
There was absolutely nothing remotely redeeming about “Meteor.” The acting and direction were both about as awful as it gets. The special effects were cheap, and there was absolutely no attempt made at scientific accuracy. Bad enough for you? Well, how about that SCRIPT? According to USA Today, the screenwriter for “Meteor” was one Alex Greenfield, whose last major writing credit was for “WWF Smackdown,” if you can believe that. And BOY, did it show. The script for this film was so laughably, eye-rollingly BAD that for the first time in my life I felt geniunely ashamed of myself for tuning in to watch a TV program.
We may have reached a point in time where we have this thing — and I think it can only be called a “thing” — that has all the earmarks of a movie but yet, on even the most cursory inspection, you realize it isn’t even a movie at all. http://www.roundtablepictures.com