Switching (Laugh) Tracks on Monday Night
Get on a plane to start the holiday early (in the weirdly warm Ohio River valley) and look what happens. CBS pulls a switcheroo with its Monday comedies.
On paper, it looks like more canny scheduling for a network that is solid (if uninspired) nearly every night of the week. CBS's current two-hour comedy block of traditional-looking (though often edgier than you'd expect for mainstream) sitcoms may lack the distinctive brilliance you can find in the best of NBC's Thursday comedies, but they're all watchable and at times very enjoyable.
How I Met Your Mother has sharpened its game in its second season, the new
The Class is working through its growing pains (perhaps not quickly enough to ensure renewal),
Two and a Half Men is as bawdy as ever (and is at its best whenever Conchata Farrell and Holland Taylor are around), and
The New Adventures of Old Christine has become one of the season's more delightful surprises, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus a hoot as she bumbles her way through divorced life amid a sea of disapproving moms and long-suffering loved ones.
The changes begin the night after the Super Bowl (when at least one of CBS's comedies should have been given the post-game slot). Expect to see roughly 6,214 promos for
Rules of Engagement during the football extravaganza. This new comedy (which I haven't seen yet), produced by Adam Sandler's shingle, inherits the plush slot following
Two and a Half Men starting February 5.
Christine will disappear for a short while, stockpiling episodes so (in this season's favorite trend) there will be as few repeats during the season as possible.
Christine will return March 12, taking over the 8:30/et time period from
The Class, which will have finished its full first-season order. (
The Class being a show that probably wouldn't repeat particularly well, being so serialized in nature.) Those worrying about the show being benched so early in the season probably have good cause to. This last batch of episodes will be critical, both in quality and in audience response, to determining this uneven but promising show's future.
The final piece of the programming puzzle kicks in April 9, once
Rules of Engagement ends its midseason tryout. (The snark within me wants to doubt the viability of a romantic comedy whose leads include proven show-killer Oliver Hudson and the frequently annoying David Spade. But let's not prejudge. Yet.) After
Rules signs off,
The King of Queens will return to finish out the season with its final episodes ever, for one of the few times in its nine-season history getting decent lead-in support (though the competition against the final hours of
Heroes and
24 will be pretty brutal). The end of
King's reign is hardly a surprise. It's not that the show isn't still popular with its loyal fan base, or that Kevin James has lost his overgrown-kid appeal. But shows like this get exponentially more expensive as they age, and negotiations for this shortened ninth season were reportedly anything but smooth sailing. As long as the show can end with dignity (not that dignity has ever been this raucous comedy's strong suit), let's just be happy for a nice long run.
The big question mark in all of this is how
Rules will perform, and whether it's up to CBS's Monday standards. The network already has established three strong elements of a winning comedy lineup with
Mother, Christine and
Men, all of which are sure to return next fall. What remains to be seen is if
The Class or
Rules will make the cut in May, or whether CBS will develop yet another new comedy for next season that will upstage both of them.
