CBS: The Big Eye Looks Over Its Shoulder

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

--William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part Two

Nobody said it was easy being number one.  Also, nobody ever said it was easy bring America's most watched television network, and CBS, despite having been on top for over a decade, is antsy.  As Alan Sepinwall of the Newark, N.J. Star-Ledger noted, there's trouble over the horizon for the Big Eye.  CBS's most recent new dramas, "Hostages" and "Intelligence," were flops.  With "How I Met Your Mother" already gone, the network has failed to produce a hit sitcom to succeed it, and it's abandoning the Monday night sitcom block as quickly as NBC ditched the idea of rebuilding its Thursday night sitcom lineup.  It's had to cut back on sitcoms a bit as a result.  Also, many of its current hits are aging - the same problem NBC faced before descending into fourth-place hell.  However, CBS has some momentum to sustain its lead, what with having renewed seventeen shows.  The network is taking no chances going forward, however; it's airing more original summer programming ("Under The Dome" is coming back), it's cutting back on repeats, and it's saving some of its series premieres and season premieres for later in the year.  

The two biggest news items to come out of CBS's 2014-15 upfront press conference is that "Two And a Half  Men" will finally be ending after twelve years and that "How I Met Your Dad" - the sequel series to "How I Met Your Mother," which would have starred indie movie actress Greta Gerwig - is not being picked up.  I'm naturally overjoyed at the news of the former show's imminent finale, and I'm actually kind of happy to hear that the latter show has been left off the schedule.  Particulars below.

I hate "Two And a Half Men" so much that I'm eagerly anticipating its series finale without any desire to watch it.  Yet, I have to concede that Chuck Lorre, its creator, is a master hitmaker who managed to get people to watch this show for so long, even after the loss of Charlie Sheen and the subsequent loss of Angus T. Jones (whose departure left the show half a man short).  Lorre can boast how successful the series has been by citing a long list of hit sitcoms that have come and gone in the time "Two And a Half Men" has been on the air, such as "30 Rock," "My Name Is Earl," "The Office," and "How I Met Your Mother."   Among the flops it's outlasted, Lorre can point to a slew of shows that have followed "How I Met Your Mother" on CBS and just about anything that's followed "Modern Family" on ABC, and he could have also pointed to NBC's "Growing Up Fisher" a week after it (like "Fisher" star Jenna Elfman long before) had become irrelevant.  So my hat is off to him - begrudgingly.  And just remember, he has plenty of other shows on CBS at the moment - including "The Big Bang Theory," which and has been on the air since 2007 and is so big itself, it's been renewed through to the 2016-17 season.  If Barack Obama started watching this show before he became President, he can look forward to still seeing it even after he's left office.        

Oh yeah, "How I Met Your Dad" . . .  Apparently, CBS wasn't too thrilled with the pilot that Carter Bays and Craig Thomas devised, and it tried to get them to rework it, but Bays and Thomas refused.  CBS, in turn, refused them.  I believe it's all for the best.  The plot line is similar, the characters would have likely been along the lines of the earlier show's protagonists, and Bays and Thomas have become somewhat predictable in their plot twist devices.  They should quit while they're ahead.  Anyone who remembers the "M*A*S*H" sequel "AfterMASH" would agree.  And while Bays and Thomas are free to offer it to another network, there likely aren't going to be any takers.  ABC and NBC, for example, already have comedies in the same vein in their 2014-15 schedules.  

Meanwhile, "Friends With Better Lives" will go down in history as the last sitcom to air after "How I Met Your Mother" (its premiere episode followed the earlier show's finale) and fail miserably.  It's been canceled (good riddance!), freeing Brooklyn Decker to hopefully go on to better things.  Also gone is the Robin Williams-Sarah Michelle Gellar sitcom "The Crazy Ones," which, as the title suggested, was "Mad Men" as a present-day comedy rather than as a period drama.  I had a feeling that trying to recapture the magic of Williams' late-seventies TV glory days wouldn't pan out - because the oldest "Mork and Mindy" episodes are 36 years old and Williams is 36 years older - and, apparently, I was right.  On the positive side, now that Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alyson Hannigan are both done with sitcom television for the foreseeable future, maybe a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" reunion won't be far behind.      

Among other developments, CBS will temporarily air "The Big Bang Theory" on Mondays at 8 PM Eastern while it shows NFL football on Thursday nights in September and October before it moves back to Thursdays.  "2 Broke Girls," which almost got canceled - largely because its humor is as bankrupt as its characters - will fill the 8 PM Monday slot after "The Big Bang Theory" moves back to Thursdays, but given "2 Broke Girls"'s tenuous hold on its audience, it hopefully won't be on for much longer.  Among the new shows slated for 2014-15 are "The McCarthys," about a sports-crazed Boston Irish family, and a remake of "The Odd Couple," starring Matthew Perry and Thomas Lennon.  I assume that Perry will play Felix and Lennon will play Oscar, and while I will reserve judgement until next spring, when it premieres, do we really need another "Odd Couple" iteration?  The 1968 movie and the early-seventies sitcom should be enough.  Oh, yeah, there's a drama about a female Secretary of State, "Madame Secretary" (why not just watch the Benghazi hearings, which will be going on long after the 2014-15 season is over?) and a New Orleans version of "NCIS."  

And yes, "Survivor" will be back.  If you must watch reality TV, watch "The Amazing Race" (which will also be back).  At least you get to see the world on that one.

The full CBS 2014-15 lineup is here.