NBC's Thursday lineup finally stopped bleeding with a little help from The Voice.
Following a Voice repeat, which built on Parks and Recreation's and the now-canceled Welcome to the Family's numbers, Sean Saves the World drew 4 million and a 1.1 in the adults 18-to-49 demographic, even with last ...
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Once upon a very different time, Lisa Kudrow owned Thursday night along with her other TV Friends during NBC's now-distant era of "Must See" supremacy. She's back on the same night, on a different network, but once again she's landed on the buzziest show of the moment: ABC's Scandal (10/9c), where she begins a recurring role as Josephine Marcus, a Democratic Congresswoman — and outspoken critic of the Grant administration — who tangles with First Lady Mellie (the awesome Bellamy Young). What drew Kudrow back to network TV? May have something to do with her longtime friendship and working relationship with producing partner (and guest actor Emmy winner) Dan Bucatinsky, who plays Cyrus's excitable partner James on the show. While she's reason enough to tune in, the Pope & Associates subplot also sounds like fun, as they take on as a client a politician notorious for snapping photos of his unmentionables. (Sound familiar?)
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History be damned. And that's no joke, though the show sometimes feels like one. The CW's Reign (Thursday, 9/8c) is all about herstory, an opulent and giddy bodice-ripper very loosely inspired by the teenage years of the ultimately ill-fated Mary, Queen of Scots (a pouty Adelaide Kane). It's like Masterpiece Junior as seen on MTV after a jolt of Red Bull, or more to the point, Gossip Girl goes to court. And while it will win no prizes for scholarly accuracy (to put it mildly), Reign is such a fanciful folly of royal romance and literally poisonous court gossip that it's hard not to hail a CW show that breaks so lavishly from the network's usual formula of angst-ridden ghouls and cloying rom-com.
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Kerry Washington may have to handle some seriously sticky situations on ABC's hit Scandal, but her involvement with the Gay, Lesbian, & Straight Education Network's (GSLEN) online auction is not in need of any fixing.
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Question: So now that we have quickly and predictably sorted out CBS's switch of We Are Men with Mike & Molly (and you called that one out a long time ago), can we now focus on further obvious moves for the Fox, NBC and ABC sitcom slates? I know Fox wants to be in the Seth MacFarlane business, but how soon can we banish the 1990s relic Dads and replace it with Raising Hope, which is just screaming to be back on Tuesdays? Can NBC just return low-rated but at least cult classic Community back to Thursdays where yes, it will do poorly but at least it has 80-plus episodes to its name and more value than these dire new cadets, so bye-bye Welcome to the Family, which was wrongly paired with Parks and Recreation to begin with. I can also live without Sean Hayes' and Michael J Fox's "supposed" comebacks, but one step at a time for poor NBC.
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