Since The Office finale aired for 75 minutes, these early numbers are approximate (Nielsen’s first-round numbers only measure in half-hour blocks). But even with the final 15 minutes omitted, The Office clearly surged: At least 5.4 million viewers tuned in and the show delivered a minimum of a 2.9 rating among adults 18-49. That’s easily a season high for the show; its best performance in 16 months (the season premiere was a 2.1 rating, to give you some idea of the context of this number).
Over on Fox, American Idol finished the season like you might expect: Down, down, down.
Idol had 14.3 million viewers and a 3.6 rating, according to Nielsen’s final overnight numbers. That’s off a steep 44 percent from last year. This is by far the lowest rated Idol finale ever — the previous finale low was last year’s 6.4. Compare both those numbers to the Idol finale two years ago, which scored a 9.2 rating.
Fox points out that last week’s finale ended on a Wednesday against weaker competition — and again, the show is 12 years old — but there’s no doubt the competition series has endured a beating this year. READ FULL STORY »
The fifth season of Warehouse 13 — which will return for only six episodes in 2014 — will be its last, Syfy announced today.
“Warehouse 13 has been an incredible signature series for us,” said Mark Stern, Syfy’s President, Original Content, in a statement. “We are grateful to the loyal and passionate fan base and know that Jack Kenny, his gifted creative team, and outstanding ensemble cast will give them an amazing finale season.”
Production of the final season will begin this summer in Toronto.
Warehouse 13 will begin filming in Toronto this summer. The series has been airing Mondays at 10 behind the new series Defiance.
The drama follows a team of government agents who work at a massive, top-secret storage facility in South Dakota, which houses every strange artifact, mysterious relic, fantastical object and preternatural souvenir ever collected by the U.S. government.
Who’s trying to come between Homer and Marge in the season finale of The Simpsons? Sounds like Seth MacFarlane. The Family Guy creator/masterthroat will voice the role of Ben, a charmer who makes a play for Marge after she obliviously winds up on a Ashley Madison-type website. Will Marge be able to get the Sinatra-crooning Ben out of her mind? Check out the following clip. READ FULL STORY »
It’s a sad day in Zombieland-land: Franchise creator Rhett Reese — who co-wrote both the 2009 movie and the Amazon pilot that that movie has become with Paul Wernick — tweeted that the series “will not be moving forward on Amazon. Sad for everyone involved.”
The pilot has been available online for a month. Our Chris Nashawaty said, “There are a few yuks and also a pleasantly high body count. [But] the actors feel like bargain-basement knockoffs of Harrelson, et al. … You feel like you’re watching a smudged Xerox of what was a pretty hilarious movie.”
Last night’s wild season 2 finale of Scandal featured a number of shocking revelations and a big moment for our girl Quinn. We caught up with Scandal creator and showrunner Shonda Rhimes after an Academy of Television Arts and Sciences cast reading of the finale to ask her a few questions. Be warned, though, if you haven’t seen the season finale of Scandal, there are only spoilers below.
Keith Urban has already said he would be willing to return to American Idol as a judge, but for the time being, his future on the show remains up in the air, the singer said Thursday backstage at the American Idol finale.
“I have no idea. All I know is that there is talk about it,” he says. “For me, I’m in the studio literally this week finishing up my album and putting a tour together, hitting the road in July. So onwards.” READ FULL STORY »
The new winner of American Idol was still shocked by the time she came backstage to face the press after learning she’d won the crown. READ FULL STORY »
It’s been a tough few weeks for Jo on Grey’s Anatomy. A tough season, really. And as the powerhouse drama cruises toward its season finale tonight, look for things to stay just as intense for the first-year doc as she and the rest of the gang at Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital fight to keep the hospital afloat as a super storm barrels down on them.
“There are issues with the equipment [because of the storm] so they’re actually having to use some the techniques they taught the Syrian doctors a few episodes ago,” Camilla Luddington teases of the chaos at the hospital, caused by a blackout.
Meanwhile, personal drama looms on over the medical teams as well. Over in pediatrics, Jo and Alex, who at the end of last week’s episode were engaged in a passion-fueled conversation that was eventually interrupted by a falling tree, are forced to put aside their ongoing romantic drama in order to help out. And Luddington says that though they are “oblivious” to what went down between Arizona and Lauren (Hilarie Burton) in last week’s episode, “that tension is there in pediatrics as well,” she says. READ FULL STORY »
Last year’s The Big Bang Theory‘s season finale featured our favorite Pasadena nerds in some big moments: There was a wedding and one mission to outer space. So how are the creators of the CBS comedy going to top that with tonight’s season 6 finale?
By focusing on smaller, intimate moments, says executive producer Steve Molaro. Among the relationships that are tested and given some touching scenes in the finale is Penny and Leonard’s. Just when things are at their best for the on-again-off-again couple, Leonard is faced with the tough decision of whether to leave Penny for four months when he gets an enticing job offer overseas. READ FULL STORY »
NBC has locked down judges for the next two cycles of The Voice.
Speculation have run rampant as to who will sit in the red swivel chairs this fall and spring, with major media outlets declaring Shakira will exit the series for good after the singer said told reporters she wasn’t planning to return. There have also been rumors that Usher was finished with the show, too.
And it was all partly true. Shakira and Usher won’t be back … in the fall.
According to sources close to the negotiations, this fall’s edition will reunite the original lineup: Christina Aguilera, Adam Levine, Blake Shelton and, yes, Cee Lo Green. In addition, Carson Daly will return as host for both cycles.
For next spring, cycle 6, The Voice will then switch back to its current lineup, which has made for a surprisingly successful shakeup this season. NBC is finalizing deals with Shakira and Usher, who will take the stage along with Levine and Shelton. READ FULL STORY »
The paper chase is almost over: Tonight at 9 p.m., NBC will present the 75-minute series finale of The Office that will tie up the nine-season comedic saga of the sad-sack-yet-lovable employees at a paper company. This last episode will pick up several months after the documentary at the center of the show has aired, feature the wedding of Dwight (Rainn Wilson) and Angela (Angela Kinsey), and offer up an assortment of new guest stars (including Joan Cusack, Rachael Harris, Ed Begley, Jr. and Dakota Johnson). Former Office mates Mindy Kaling (a.k.a. Kelly) and B.J. Novak (a.k.a. Ryan) pop up as as well, and rumors swirl that Steve Carell also will make an appearance as world’s greatest ex-boss Michael Scott. (Wilson and Jenna Fischer, who plays Pam, indicated to EW that the rumors weren’t true, but given that these were phone interviews, we couldn’t see if their fingers were crossed.)
So, what will they say about the finale? Wilson calls it “epic” and says that the episode boasts “plots and subplots and action sequences and comedy and tragedy.” “It’s as if Francis Ford Coppola directed,” he loftily declares. “It’s Spielbergian. It’s vast in its scope.”
Adds Fischer: “Before the finale was written, Greg [Daniels, executive producer] reached out to every cast member and encouraged them to say what their dream for their characters would be. And he incorporated a lot of those things into the finale. So as an actress, as a fan, as Pam, I couldn’t be happier with the way the show wraps up. I think people are going to be happy… The finale is very sweet, and it’s emotional. It’s funny, but I think mostly it’s emotional.” Wilson and Fischer offer more gentle hints below. READ FULL STORY »
You know the space at your local Barnes and Noble where the graphic-novel section bleeds into the young-adult section? This is the place where The CW lives. I like to imagine that the network has installed surveillance cameras in the spines of all those unsellable copies of Chris Ware’s Building Stories so its execs can spy on their target audience, see what their buying, and develop accordingly. The geeky, young, female-skewing weblet announced today that it will add three new dramas and reorganize its schedule to use existing successful franchises like Arrow and Supernatural to build hits and stronger nights.
The CW knows its brand and knows its audience and is committed to giving them more of what they like. Hence, despite lots of attitude, fresh faces, and cosmetic weirdness, The CW’s picks feel as risk-averse and unsurprising as those of its half-sibling, CBS. While the new shows technically belong to different genres, there is such a sameness to all of them. It’s like every show on The CW is actually a different subplot of the same swoony-romantic dark-fantasy soap opera that’s on every night, every hour — a sigh-fi Cloud Atlas. Which sounds kinda cool, actually.
THE ORIGINALS
A spin-off of The Vampire Diaries, The Originals follows bloodsucker/werewolf hybrid Klaus (Joseph Morgan) as he moves from Mystic Falls to New Orleans, where underworld power games — and a not-yet born child, conceived with Hayley (Phoebe Tonkin) — await. Joining him are siblings Elijah (Claire Gillies) and Rebekah (Claire Holt). For the record, I have never seen an episode of True Blood LiteThe Vampire Diaries. I am open to considering the possibility that I’ve been missing out on something decent: Morgan’s Klaus seems pretty damn compelling in this clip.
THE TOMORROW PEOPLE
From Greg Berlanti, who developed Arrow for the network, comes another superheroish epic starring an Amell (Robbie, cousin to Stephen), this one loosely based on a cult-classic British show from the 1970s. (Dig the trippy credits sequence.) The more likely comparison for The CW’s target audience will be to X-Men, Heroes, I Am Number Four, etc.: Kids everywhere start developing extraordinary abilities; various secret agencies, sinister or otherwise, take an obsessive interest in them. I am hoping the show can be as cool as its title and offbeat/imaginative as the original from whence it derived, and not just Generic Show About Super-Powered PYTs. The clip suggests a healthy special-effects budget and that Mark Pellegrino will be a compelling bad guy. I’m not sure it suggests much more than that.
REIGN
Talented up-and-comer Adelaide Kane plays Mary, Queen of Scots in The CW’s most unusual new offering, an attempt at historical fiction. Call it: Tiny Tudors. The clip kinda lays there until the dude with the beard gets all spooky-intense. Meh.
THE 100 (midseason)
Newsflash! In the near future, we’re going to raze civilization with nuclear weapons, and about 100 years after that, the surviving members of humanity — living on space stations parked in deep space — will send about 100 juvenile delinquents, young adults and assorted others back to Earth to see it can be recolonized. The clip tries to capture your imagination with that moment in which the kids land, open the doors, and behold a planet that has been reclaimed by nature. But can they trust what looks like paradise? Dunno. Just like I don’t know if I can trust this new gloss on the post-apocalyptic genre to be any good.
STAR-CROSSED (midseason)
An alien race known as the Atrians comes to Earth and spends the next decade interned in a camp. A smalltown high school becomes ground zero for a fraught attempt to integrate the ETs into human society. All of them are extremely attractive young people with interesting looking tattoos on their faces. Naturally, they are irrationally, ridiculously hated. But a Romeo and Juliet-style romance between an Atrian named Roman (Matt Lanter) and a human named Emery (Aimee Teegarden) blooms. Blah blah highly metaphorical cornball blah blah blah. Watch it work. Only on Sigh-Fi!
