NBC: No Breakout Comedies, Part Two

The National Broadcasting Company thought it had the answer to its long, long, long ratings drought by loading up its schedule for Thursday night, traditionally one of NBC's better nights, with fresh sitcoms to supplement one of the network's few hits, "Parks and Recreation."  It hasn't worked out well.

"Parks and Recreation," at 8 PM Eastern, was followed by the new sitcom "Welcome To the Family."  The operative word is "was."  To refresh your memory, this is the sitcom about a dumb Anglo girl attending Arizona State University being impregnated by a smart Latino boy at Stanford and getting married to him, with the inevitable family culture clash.  This show was not only part of the war against women, it continued the time-dishonored tradition of setting up Hispanics as a punch line.  Of course it flopped - just like I suspected it would.

"Sean Saves the World," at 9 PM Eastern, isn't doing much better.  It didn't make sense to me to build a sitcom around the least interesting cast member of "Will & Grace," and previous shows starring "Will & Grace" alumni - Megan Mullaly's daytime talk show, "Smash," starring Debra Messing - didn't exactly capture the nation's imagination.  Instead of saving the world, Sean Hayes should try to save his career.  However, I do enjoy "The Michael J. Fox Show" at 9:30 PM Eastern, but many people are shrugging at it.  It's been viewed as a pleasant but standard-fare show that, some observers say, hasn't done enough with the premise of Fox's character (like Fox himself) dealing with Parkinson's disease.  The good news is that it will run for a full season.  The bad news is that NBC is contractually obligated to commit to a full season of it.  If not for that, Michael J. Fox would be in as much trouble as Hayes.   

The big culprit here is CBS, whose own Thursday night sitcom lineup, leading off with "The Big Bang Theory," is paying good dividends for the network and boosting Robin Williams' new show "The Crazy Ones," a show I haven't had time to check out (perhaps I should).  Only "Two And a Half Men" shows any real weakness, and hopefully this will be its last season.  (Or, it could end up running as long as "Gunsmoke.")

Anyway, all of this underperformance of NBC's Thursday night sitcom lineup - "Community," currently on hold, is expected to fill the void left by "Welcome To the Family," which itself was a void - means that "Parenthood," at 10 PM Eastern, is suffering since moving to Thursdays.  I think I'd rather see it move back to Tuesdays, when I sometimes can't watch TV owing to other commitments outside the home, and tape it if I have to.  Because "Parenthood" is suddenly up against CBS's "Elementary," the successful modern, New York-based presentation of Sherlock Holmes stories, and ABC's super-hot "Scandal," about an interracial affair between the a U.S. president and his key adviser.  It all boils down to this: "Parenthood" fans have reason to worry about the show's future.  Its schedule change has already taken a toll on its ratings, thanks in no small part to its weak lead-ins and its strong competition.

It's hard to imagine NBC's Thursday night lineup surviving all this.  It's even harder to imagine NBC surviving anything these days.

Not all the bad news of the 2013-14 season has been NBC's.  CBS canceled its Monday night sitcom "We Are Men" - a show like "Two And a Half Men," only with a one-and-a-half-man bonus - after two episodes, while viewers are finding comedian Rebel Wilson's Wednesday night show "Super Fun Night" on ABC to be not so super or fun.