ABC: Easy as XYZ

"The Middle."  "Modern Family."  "Scandal."  "Grey's Anatomy."  "Once Upon a Time."  All of these television shows are ABC shows, and they're all hits.  

So how the heck did the alphabet network end up in fourth place this season?

I kid you not.  Honest and for true.  ABC won the Bedwetters chamber pot award (you have to be of a certain age to get that reference) for the 2013-14 season, ending NBC's nine-time "winning" streak for the same dubious honor.  The simple fact is that ABC is like a contaminated lake; it looks fine on the surface, but underneath, there's poison.  One need look no further than Wednesday nights, where ABC has been consistently unsuccessful to build a block of hit sitcoms that's just as consistent.  "Modern Family" is still a hit at 9 PM Eastern, as is "The Middle" at 8 PM Eastern, but while any actor would be blessed to appear on "Modern Family" (it revived the careers of Julie Bowen and Ed O'Neill and jump-started the careers of Ty Burrell and Sofia Vergara), it's a curse to be a part of the cast of any ABC show that airs in the half-hour slots just before or just after "Modern Family."  This season, the 8:30 Eastern slot on ABC's Wednesday night lineup was occupied by "Back In the Game," which got cut, then by "Suburgatory," which returned as a mid-season replacement but got canceled in the end.  (Re "Suburgatory":  I suspect that it lost viewers for the same reason it lost me; the show was just getting too weird.  And so, as Gerald Ford would have said, our long pleasant nightmare is over.)  At 9:30 Eastern on hump night, ABC treated us to "Super Fun Night," an excuse to build a show around the corpulent Australian comic Rebel Wilson that was neither super nor fun, and its replacement, the bar/dating scene show "Mixology," is out of the mix.  As I recall, the Sarah Chalke show "How To Live with Your Parents (for the Rest of Your Life)," which aired in the same 9:30 Eastern Wednesday time slot last season, got respectable ratings but got axed to make room for Rebel Wilson's show because the chance to build a sitcom around a comedian generating so much buzz was too good to pass up, and ABC couldn't find room for both.  If this is true, ABC owes Chalke an apology . . . and a show.

The rest of ABC's lineup has holes here and there - though not as bad as the slab of Swiss cheese that is Wednesday night - which the alphabet network hopes to fill.  "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." was a modest success on Tuesdays, but it could have been a bigger success without so many untried shows around it, most of which have been canceled (including the critically appreciated "Trophy Wife," with Malin Åkerman).  The 2014-15 season finds "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." returning to Tuesday nights surrounded by newbie shows, but in a better time slot (9 PM Eastern), while the one successful new Tuesday night sitcom from this past season, "The Goldbergs," moves to the Wednesday slot between "The Middle" and Modern Family."  Hmm, ABC may finally have a solid Wednesday night sitcom block.

Following "Modern Family" at 9:30 PM Eastern will be "Black-ish," starring Tracee Ellis Ross (Diana’s daughter) and Anthony Anderson as black parents raising their four children in suburbs. and try to balance upward mobility without causing their kids to lose their sense of cultural identity.  You know, I'm sort of insulted by the idea that people - particularly white people - lose their cultural identity when they move to the suburbs.  My Italian mother grew up in the city, and she's still very Italian after living in the suburbs for decades.  Not that I support the suburban living pattern - "Suburgatory" at its best masterfully lampooned it - but how does anyone necessarily lose touch with their roots by moving to the 'burbs?  Geez, you go out to a couple of towns in Morris County, New Jersey, and it's like you're in an Italian village, only everyone drives an SUV and speaks English!

You know what's really weird about "Black-ish?" A black sitcom starring a daughter of a Motown legend is the lead-in for ABC's Wednesday night country and western drama "Nashville," which is returning.

So what else is there in store? Well, ABC is moving "Grey's Anatomy" - produced by Shonda Rhimes - to 8 PM Eastern on Thursdays, moving "Scandal" - produced by Shonda Rhimes - to 9 PM Eastern on Thursdays from 10 PM Eastern on the same night, and premiering another show, "How To Get Away With Murder" - produced by Shonda Rhimes - starring Viola Davis as a law professor turned detective.  Thursday ought to be called "Rhimesday."  Apparently ABC believes they have in Rhimes another Aaron Spelling, a producer who can conceive TV hits in her sleep, so the network seems to be betting on "How To Get Away With Murder" to ride on the coattails of "Scandal" to success.  Because that strategy worked so well with anything following "Modern Family."  And truth be told, ABC loaded up on Spelling-produced new shows in the 1984-85 season, which was one of the network's most disastrous - the new Spelling shows that season tanked quickly.      

Anyway, I'm going on too long here, so let me just refer to a few more new ABC programs coming in the new season - "Selfie," about a woman who realizes that having Internet friends and having real friends are two different things and hires a life coach to teach her how to live in the real world as opposed to the cyber-world, in the style of Shaw's "Pygmalion;" "Manhattan Love Story," about a man and a woman who begin dating and reveal the gender differences through unfiltered thoughts and contradictory acts, and: "Cristela," starring Hispanic comedian Cristela Alonzo as a Mexican-American woman in law school trying to get a coveted law firm internship while trying to handle her family's culture-based expectations.

Okay, some of these shows might help get ABC out of the ditch it's gotten into after airing too many shows no one wanted to watch - especially before or after "Modern Family."  ABC brass ought to be aware, though, based on NBC's TV ratings of the previous nine seasons - the TV biz equivalent of the Long March - that getting out of last place may seem as easy as 1-2-3 but may be as easy as πr².

And oh, yes, "Dancing With the Stars" will be on again, on Mondays.  Why did you have to ask? :-D

Wait - "Neighbors" just got canceled? You mean it was still on? :-D 

The full ABC 2014-15 lineup is here.