Although, as I mentioned last week, the social media presence of Cooper’s Guide is lacking, the show does have the support of a solid website for fans to visit. On the show’s section of the FOX website, fans have access to full episodes that have aired as well as individual clips. Other available clips include behind-the-scenes interviews with the actors and previews of upcoming episodes. There is also a tab on the site titled “Barry’s Grandma’s Hangover Cure” which encourages fans to tweet their preferred hangover cures using the hashtag #CBHangover (perhaps the producers took notice of my previous blog post which was critical of the lack of hashtags for the show). This is an effective method of keeping fans involved while the show is still on its hiatus.
Cooper’s Guide still boasts average scores on most sites on which fans can rate it, with the lone outlier being TV.com, on which it boasts a significantly higher rating. The numbers are as follows:
The second episode of American Odyssey premiered on Sunday night to a bit of a smaller audience than last time. The second episode brought in a .8 rating/2 share in 18-45 with 4.05 million total viewers according to Tv By the Numbers. It came in second for its 10 o’clock time slot behind Revenge on ABC which earned a .9 rating in 18-49 but 3.84 million total viewers. The time slot is very interesting because Battle Creek lost in 18-49 with a .7 rating, but won overall pulling in 6.48 million total viewers. Revenge is the most popular for younger audiences, and Battle Creek is the most popular overall with older demographics, leaving American Odyssey in second overall, appealing to some people 18-49 but also a slightly older demographic. American Odyssey’s lead-in A.D.: The Bible Continues brought in strong numbers with 7.75 million total viewers. This could be helping keep some viewers for American Odyssey since the demographics may be similar. According to Deadline, American Odyssey fell -27% from its first episode, which did not have the most successful turnout to begin with. It is normal for numbers to fall a little bit from the pilot episode, but when the numbers start relatively low it is hard to come back from. Deadline is already predicting the show to not be renewed, and possibly cancelled before all of the first season airs. Tv By the Numbers is also predicting the show to be cancelled, but only time will tell.
Publicity wise, the Facebook page is doing another Twitter Q&A with one of the stars of the show, Jake Robinson, this Tuesday at 8:30 pm. The Explore American Odyssey page has been updated to reflect material for each new episode. They have also been running promos on NBC, but there hasn’t been too much other publicity being pushed. I think the best way to sum up all of the reviews for the show so far is from Rotten Tomatoes Critics Consensus: “With a been-there-seen-that premise and multiple muddled plots, American Odyssey can’t escape the shadows of its superior predecessors in an age of solid spy/action television”. The people who are already fans of the show are very engaged.
The writer/director of American Odyssey Peter Horton did an interview with the Hollywood Reporter about the show. He said that he thought the show was better suited for a television network as opposed to cable because it’s a big enough show to handle a network, while it’s good enough quality to raise the bar for networks to compete with cable networks. Horton also spoke about one of the show’s biggest challenges which is balancing the three separate main characters storylines. He said that this season is mostly focused on Odelle and her journey home, but the focus will shift to the other two characters in the future. You can find the full interview here.
Secrets and Lies was preempted on Sunday, April 5 for ABC’s annual airing of The Ten Commandments. It is the first time since the show began that a new episode was not aired. The show returns to its regularly scheduled 9:00 p.m. time slot on Sunday, April 12.
ABC is yet to renew Secrets and Lies for a second season. The show seems to have a solid following, as week in and week out the viewership remains at about 5 million people. Much like the expert reviews, which greatly vary, audience opinion does too. The show has a Metascore of 48 on Metacritic based on 22 critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the Secrets and Lies has a 36% score, with 21 people deeming the show rotten.
As expected, the promotion for One Big Happy dramatically increased as soon as March hit. First, executive producer Ellen DeGeneres talked about and even showed clips from the show during her talk show time. One Big Happy commercials also became more frequent as the premier date approached. Also, The Today Show’s Matt Lauer gave OBH a shout out during the eight o’clock hour. Lauer also conducted an interview with Ellen DeGeneres, asking about her roll as executive producer, and what she wanted the audience to take away from watching the show. DeGeneres said she did not want the show to focus on the lesbian co star, but rather have it just be one of the many components in the show that make it unique. DeGeneres also tweeted about the show several times before the premier.
After One Big Happy premiered, I looked to several websites like Rotten Tomatoes, to see what critics thought of the show, and the results were not pretty. Most websites said the show was cute but lacked original humor. Others said the show relied too heavily on the humor from past sitcoms. One critic from Rotten Tomatoes said, “Although Ellen DeGeneres is an executive producer of the show, her influence is undetectable.” Another said, “Obvious, dumb and mostly unfunny, One Big Happy is an embarrassment for all involved.” And the comments only got worse. I don’t see the show surviving for very long.
This past Sunday, March 15th, Battle Creek premiered its third episode on CBS, which means critics have had plenty of time to digest the not-so-buddy-cop dramedy as part of the Sunday night lineup at 10pm EST.
Survey Says? It’s pretty good! Metacritic, the web’s favorite criticism aggregator (after Twitter of course) gives the show a robust score of 73 with 25 positive reviews and 4 mixed.
The consensus: Critics applaud the acting performances of leading men Josh Duhamel and Dean Winters and appreciate the show’s departure from the well worn treads of CBS procedural predecessors CSI and NCIS. Strengths also include a light-hearted tone and “real” story lines, while the show’s weakness lies in occasionally being “too coy or sappy”.
User reviews on the Metacritic site echo these sentiments, with one user noting that the show has gotten better with every episode, a trend that could bode well for the show. Rotten Tomatoes also has rated the show as 95% fresh, tying Tina Fey’s Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt as the top score for new shows. It’s worth noting that the show’s creator, Vince Gilligan, has had success with atypical shows that start a little slowly… Ok, Breaking Bad is only one show and totally different, but you get the point.
