Ratings Five-Spot, WE 3/13/11 - The Event, Mad Love, Harry's Law, Mr. Sunshine, Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior

Opinion Fiver taking a week off (maybe more) since most of my TV watching this time of year is basketball. I'll try to get enough thoughts together to have one next week. Since it was not a big week of premieres, I'll take a look at how a selection of new shows are doing. The most interesting new show not included is The Chicago Code, but I wanna wait and see how it does once Dancing with the Stars enters the mix; hard to say either way right now. Here's your Ratings Five-Spot for the week ending March 13, 2011:

The Event - This is how it works sometimes; after I spent a lot time on a post suggesting that long in-season hiatuses usually aren't the death blow, The Event proceeded to drop 26% in its two-hour return from a 14-week hiatus. The resulting 1.4 demo was already easy cancellation territory, but then it lost another two ticks this week and has now shed exactly two-thirds of its stout premiere audience. It's already in The Cape territory now, and it looks like Harry's Law must continue to march on without a good lead-in.

Mad Love - Things aren't looking very good for CBS' new offering Mad Love, which has now dropped from a 2.7 all the way to a 2.1 during the last two weeks with How I Met Your Mother in repeats. That 2.1 is the lowest CBS Monday original performance since 2008's Welcome to the Captain similarly struggled out of HIMYM repeats during the WGA strike. Though the show may rally once it gets the original HIMYM lead-in back, it does not look like this one's headed for renewal, even with the 2.5 Men strife ongoing.

Harry's Law - Just to avoid having five totally bleak outlooks, I threw in Harry's Law, the only midseason newbie that seems to be even remotely capable of self-starting. Upper-1 demos aren't good, but they're not terrible by NBC standards, and I think the show has a good chance to return because of the big leaps it's taking from its pathetic 9:00 lead-ins. (Oh yeah, and the huge total viewer counts too, but I won't get into that again.) I wouldn't mind seeing what an episode could do after The Biggest Loser or something.

Mr. Sunshine - Another comedy that's lost a big lead-in and dropped off is ABC's Mr. Sunshine, which fell all the way to a 1.8 last week with Modern Family pulling a 2.3 in repeats at 9:00. It's now lost more than half of its premiere demo from just over a month ago. I won't totally rule out the show coming back, but it seems pretty clear that neither this nor Cougar Town are going to be the show to hold a solid portion of the Modern demo at 9:30. If that show does exist, it'll have to come out of future development.

Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior - Yet another show on the downswing is Criminal Minds spinoff Suspect Behavior, which dropped four-tenths in week four (its first time without an original Minds lead-in) to a 2.2 demo. That's still a (slightly) better performance than the likes of The Good Wife, but this show certainly doesn't have the critical acclaim/awards potential of that show, and new drama spots on CBS next season will be limited. It'd probably do well to stop the bleeding quickly.

More Five-Spots in the Index.