ABC's ratings momentum from its Wednesday night comedy block gathered strength last night when the Disney network crushed NBC's Comedy Night Done Right. Although Grey's Anatomy lost 10% of its audience from last season's premiere, it still easily scored the night's highest rating. Grey's lead-in FlashForward premiered with a respectable 12+ million viewers. CBS finished second last night, even though its CSI premiere suffered a dramatic 44% loss of its audience from last season. Despite NBC's new episodes of The Office and Community, The Peacock finished fourth. Complete ratings after the jump.
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Project Runway sold out last night, but in a fun way: They tailored the challenge specifically toward me and my harem at Movieline. I was surprised, too! Until I realized it was the right f*cking thing to do, obviously, because I deserve it. Last night's challenge required the Seamster union to design in the style of famous film genres, which yielded no results from the two most prominent genres of the last decade, "American Pie sequels featuring a visibly embarrassed Eugene Levy" and "Amateur Xtube Solo Effort." The latter snub wouldn't have happened on Bravo, guys.
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Megan Fox made a surprise appearance during last night's Saturday Night Live: Thursday Update during a schmaltzy Guiding Light gag. Sadly, that preview made this weekend's season premiere less enticing and reminded us that a Saturday Night Live-scripted Megan Fox is not nearly as captivating as an unscripted Megan Fox. Come to think of it, the Jennifer's Body star might draw more viewers if she was just given a Charlie Rose roundtable format. Take a look at the video (after the jump) and let's hope that SNL takes our skit suggestions rather than making Fox a foil to Kristen Wiig's Gilly.
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House isn't the only television program shuttling out original characters. It was announced late last night that Law & Order: Criminal Intent is gearing up for dramatic cast changes during its upcoming ninth season that include four regular cast members leaving the Major Case Squad. Vincent D'Onofrio who plays Robert Goren, the startlingly intense and intuitive badge with his own sordid past, will exit next March. Who will he take with him?
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After speeding through last week's pilot episode with a truncated opening credits sequence, the NBC comedy Community got to air the entire thing last night. It was a cute ten seconds or so, with each cast member's name written on the multiple surfaces of a paper-folding game. Still, as one of our tipsters pointed out, there's one kinda awkward thing about it.
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With all of this talk about ABC comedy blocks, mo' medical dramas and the premiere of Jay Leno's prime time show, we've ignored one of the best weeks in Late Show history. Earlier this week, David Letterman hosted President Barack Obama and former president Bill Clinton and achieved his highest ratings in four years. Tonight, the host continues a great week by welcoming his employee Craig Ferguson and Movieline's favorite free agent Kristin Chenoweth.
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America can hate Katherine Heigl for her mouthiness and her apparent lack of appreciation for the television series that brought her fame and multi-million dollar movie roles, but Grey's Anatomy has never needed Heigl more. George O'Malley has passed tragically into that elevator after world, the Mer-Der relationship flat lined with anticlimactic post-it note wedding vows and Shonda Rhimes revealed that she will be flooding the halls of Seattle Grace with new administrators and nurses while Ellen Pompeo is on maternity leave and Heigl is busy shooting rom-coms. Even with her spotty attendance and the fact that Izzie Stevens will probably be unconscious for half of this season's episodes, Katherine Heigl is the reason viewers will keep tuning into past-its-prime Grey's Anatomy.
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House is one of the world's biggest television shows, so one can see why original cast member Jennifer Morrison would want to keep her job there, even as the addition of new characters demoted her to little more than a glorified extra over the past few seasons. And hey, she played Kirk's mom in Star Trek this year...maybe that could earn her a little more screen time, right? Not quite, says EW's Michael Ausiello:
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ABC is back in the comedy game, according to last night's premiere ratings. Modern Family led off the network's comedy block by crushing its 9 PM time slot, followed by strong numbers for Cougar Town and Eastwick. While the comedy numbers are a big win for the network, who has had a considerable amount of comedy misses the past few seasons, ABC still has awhile to go before matching NBC's Thursday night in the humor department.
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While popcult junkies may say her legacy is defined by abduction theories and well-publicized relationships of varied success, Anne Heche is also -- and this deserves emphasis -- hilarious. The 40-year-old actress has graduated from bookending the world's most famous lesbian couple (at the time) to being an eminently watchable loose cannon and television star. Since the demise of her series Men in Trees in May 2008, she and boyfriend James Tupper, who co-starred on Trees with her, have won roles on two different series: HBO's Hung for Heche, and NBC's Mercy for Tupper. Movieline caught up with Heche to discuss their newly separated careers and whether she regrets calling her ex Coley Lafoon "a lazy ass" during that very special sit-down with Letterman.
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Shortly after stomping out her Best Supporting Actress competitors at Sunday's Emmys, Kristin Chenoweth turned to the onstage presenters, Jon Hamm and Tina Fey, and asked them to throw her a guest-star bone. How can Kristin Cavallari be getting regular MTV paychecks but a triple threat like Chenoweth is failing to find multi-episodic arcs, let alone her own series? Sure she has Glee, American Idol and the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade appearances penciled into her fall schedule, but this woman can sing, dance and act herself into a travel-size suitcase. Movieline is taking the reins in this gross misuse of Hollywood resources to handpick five new series that Chenoweth would instantly meliorate.
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In cable, there are many quirks
For shows that need a buzz recharge
Like ad campaigns that networks shirk
For every season, by and large.
At Showtime, there is one such show
In its third season, coming soon
About a writer, dad, and cad
Who's on the hunt for easy poon.
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We're not even past the three day Dancing With the Stars season premiere extravaganza and one of the celebrities has already suffered an injury. After a particularly "cruel and sadistic" 30 second fox trot last night, straight-shooting actress Debi Mazar banged out a cryptic tweet: "after premiere.hospital." At some point during the dance, Access Hollywood reports that the actress tore a muscle in her neck. It is assumed that Mazar will not drop out of the reality show. [Access Hollywood]
ABC tries its hand at racier programming with tonight's power block of Modern Family, Cougar Town and Eastwick. The new programs aren't any more risque than a particularly bawdy episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, but they do represent a more sophisticated sense of humor for the home of the accidentally funny Dancing With the Stars and The Bachelor.
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If audience members can invoke John Updike's fabled witchcraft to magically cauterize the area of the brain that stores any memory of his Witches of Eastwick novel or the 1987 film adaptation starring Jack Nicholson, then ABC's Eastwick has a chance at lasting an entire season. Instead of Nicholson's witchy triumvirate (Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon and Cher), television viewers will have to settle for Rebecca Romijn, Lipstick Jungle's Lindsay Price and the relatively unknown Jaime Ray Newman. If you can get past this downgrade in star power or complete the aforementioned selective amnesia procedure, then you might just find yourself enjoying this breezy, small town drama.
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