A night of "Worsts"

Have you noticed that there are two different shows on Monday nights with the word "Worst" in the title? The Zeitgeist has a temper.

So "My Own Worst Enemy" had what MediaWeek ratings analyst Marc Berman deemed a "sluggish" debut last night, with 7.3 million viewers. But on the one hand, when you consider how weak "Heroes" has become (8.6 million viewers), its audience retention isn't awful. But on the other hand, the fact that nearly 700,000 viewers tuned out by the second half of the show isn't encouraging. But - and you'll need three hands for this - it did better than other NBC shows in this timeslot of late. So in NBC's universe, this qualifies as good news.

(Christian Slater, left, does his imitation of NBC Entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman (right, obviously).)

The other worst, CBS's "Worst Week," did a little better because it's no longer up against "Dancing with the Stars," but it still lost about a third of its "2.5 Men" lead-in. CBS might consider trying "Gary Unmarried" in the timeslot and seeing how it does - better, I imagine, than this.

"Samantha Who?" did OK in its second-season premiere, with 11.7 million viewers, though it had pretty crummy numbers in the viewers aged 18-49 demographic, and it only held onto 64 percent of its "Dancing with the Stars" lead-in, and that's a loss of about 2.7 million from its premiere last year. But, again, ABC's in no position to quibble, so they'll declare this a victory and move on.

(Posing in a maze could inspire a lot of "The show has lost its way" conjecture. Because, you know, it sort of has.)

But there's no way that good news can be spun from the fact that Media Rights Capital, producers of The CW's amusingly disastrous Sunday-night line-up, has shut down production on scripted dramas "Valentine" and "Easy Money." The former had only 1 million viewers Sunday, which looks great compared to the latter, which only had 750,000 - that's even worse than what the network did in that timeslot last year, and last year's ratings were so bad that The CW threw up its hands and turned the night over to MRC. (If, next season, they want to let me take control of the evening, I bet I could work those numbers down even lower.)

(If a TV show falls over in the woods and no one's around to watch it, does it make a sound?)

Ostensibly, the shows are expected to meet their 13-episode commitment, but I don't think anyone sees the point. I see big things with The CW's new Sunday Corey Feldman Film Festival: First up - "License to Drive."