TV or Not TV . . .

So how's the 2012-13 television season going? Here are some interesting results so far . . . 

NBC has apparently won the November sweeps for the first time since 2003, with 7,917,000 viewers - a 17 percent increase from last year.  Every other network saw their ratings go down from November 2011.  I assume that "Parenthood," the storylines of which are becoming more fascinating and heartbreaking - such as Kristina battling cancer - is responsible for some of NBC's increased viewership (though, as always, "Parenthood"'s season will finish up long before the rest of the season does), but the science fiction series "Revolution" is the big reason for NBC's new-found success.  To be blunt, it's a hit.  A drama about a global electrical blackout is a must-see series in the wake of Hurricane Sandy blacking out a good deal of the East Coast? Who'da thunk? With tough competition from other networks, particularly Fox, expected in the season's remaining six months, NBC Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt doesn't expect such good fortune to last.  But he does see the Peacock Network finally crawling out of fourth place when all is said and done.

Indeed, the ratings for NBC's new series are actually not awful; most of their new shows are still on the air, with, I've been led to understand, only its veterinarian sitcom "Animal Practice" having been canceled.  So far, cancellations of new shows seem to be elsewhere; ABC canceled its supernatural drama "666 Park Avenue," a series that a young actress I know from my writer's group had a bit part in.  Pity she had to sink it. (Only kidding!)  CBS canceled "Partners," a sitcom created by "Will & Grace" creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohan based on their own business partnership, despite following "How I Met Your Mother" and preceding "2 Broke Girls" on Mondays.  To add insult to injury, repeats of "Two And a Half Men" - the godawful sitcom that refuses to die - will fill its 8:30 PM Eastern time slot for now.

Since being scheduled between two established sitcoms, as "Partners" was, doesn't guarantee success for a new sitcom, I was hoping that ABC's "The Neighbors" - scheduled between "The Middle" and "Modern Family" on Wednesdays - would also bite the dust.  That's the sitcom about a family living in a suburban New Jersey condominium development and whose neighbors are aliens disguised as humans and living under assumed names, all taken from famous athletes.  But no, its ratings in that coveted Wednesday night time slot (8:30 PM Eastern) are so strong, it's been renewed for a whole season.  It might still be canceled come springtime, but for now, it's a "walk the dog" show, a show that airs for the same length of time it takes to walk your dog and is so bad, walking the dog is a preferable option.  I don't have a dog, and I watch "The Middle" and "Modern Family," so I have to find something else to do in that intervening half hour on Wednesday nights . . . like read.  Because, as Groucho Marx once said . . . "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend, and inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."  

"The Neighbors" wasn't the only insult to the Garden State this television season.  I already noted the legal drama "Made In Jersey," starring British actress Janet Montgomery as a working-class Italian-American lawyer from New Jersey, the casting of whom was supposedly meant to show how British actors can play anyone.  It was canceled after two weeks.  Now, to add insult to insult, CBS is airing the unaired episodes of this dead show, a practice known as "burning off."  After Hurricane Sandy, hasn't my home state suffered enough?

(Honorable mention goes to American actress Teri Polo - a native of Delaware, for the record - who does not appear in a new series in the 2012-13 season that is canceled or is in danger of cancellation, which is to say she does not appear in a new series in the 2012-13 season at all.  Here's hoping she comes back soon and gets a hit series at last.)