Grey's Anatomy's Jeffrey Dean Morgan is set to reunite with his P.S. I Love You costar Hilary Swank for the suspense thriller The Resident. In the film, which starts production in May, Swank plays a single doctor who moves into a loft in Brooklyn and soon suspects that she's not alone.... Don't worry, Morgan isn't a ghost. He's the deceptively charming landlord that's obsessed with her.
Finnish music video director Antti J. Jokinen will direct the Hammer Films picture from a script he cowrote with Savior's Robert Orr (and had rewritten by Secretary's Erin Cressida Wilson). Swank is among the film's exec producers. Morgan, who (fingers crossed) may have finally made his last appearance as Denny on Grey's, will hit theaters in March as The Comedian in Zack Snyder's Watchmen.
More on Jeffrey Dean Morgan:
Jeff Jensen's first look at Watchmen
Jeff Jensen's video chat with the cast of Watchmen
Jennifer Armstrong recaps Morgan's last (?) episode of Grey's Anatomy
Predictably, CSI fans were more interested in Grissom's last show than they were the series' first episode without him. Though the veteran drama still won the 9 p.m. hour, its 17.5 million viewers was a 28 percent decline from William Petersen's Jan. 15 exit. ABC's Grey's Anatomy saw an 8 percent increase week-to-week, averaging 14.3 million viewers, according to overnight data. Fox's Bones made its debut in a new time slot, Thursdays at 8 p.m., and took the hour with 10 million viewers. That's on par with the show's last original airing in its old Wednesday at 8 p.m. slot (Thanksgiving eve), but 9 percent below its season high in that time period. (A second new episode of Bones only held on to 75 percent of that crowd at 9 p.m.) At 10 p.m., ABC's Private Practice hit a season high with 9.2 million viewers, but still finished second to CBS's Eleventh Hour (12.3 million).
| Time |
Show |
Viewers (in millions) |
| 8 p.m. |
Bones (Fox)
NCIS (CBS)
Ugly Betty (ABC)
My Name is Earl (NBC)
Smallville (The CW) |
10.0
8.6 (repeat)
7.5
6.5
3.8 |
| 8:30 p.m. |
Kath & Kim (NBC) |
4.9 |
| 9 p.m. |
CSI (CBS)
Grey's Anatomy (ABC)
The Office (NBC)
Bones (Fox)
Smallville (The CW) |
17.5
14.3
8.7
7.5
3.0 |
| 9:30 p.m. |
30 Rock (NBC) |
6.4 |
| 10 p.m. |
Eleventh Hour (CBS)
Private Practice (ABC)
ER (NBC) |
12.3
9.6
7.7 |
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Fox's American Idol is used to topping ratings charts, and Nielsen's year-end list of the Top 10 DVR'd shows of 2008 is no exception. Idol is first among prime-time programs that saw the biggest total gain in audience from households that watched live to households that watched within seven days. The Tuesday performance show Idol averaged a gain of 2.2 million households; the Wednesday results show, 1.9 million.
Rounding out the Top 10 shows were: NBC's Heroes and ABC's Lost (an increase of 1.8 million); Fox's Fringe (1.6 million); Fox's House (1.5 million); CBS' The Mentalist, CBS' Survivor: Gabon, and ABC's Grey's Anatomy (1.4 million); and Fox's Bones (1.3 million).
Nielsen also released a Top 10 list of the prime-time shows that saw the biggest percentage increase in household rating when comparing its live audience to the audience watching it within seven days. Sci Fi's Battlestar Galactica topped that cable-heavy list, growing its audience by 53 percent. The rest of that Top 10: USA's Burn Notice (37 percent); NBC's Heroes, The CW's 90210, and Sci Fi's Sanctuary (35 percent); Sci Fi's Eureka (34 percent); TBS' My Boys (32 percent); USA's Psych (29 percent); USA's In Plain Sight (28 percent); and The CW's America's Next Top Model, Fox's Fringe, USA's The Starter Wife and NBC's The Office (27 percent).
More ratings:
Ratings: 'Sunday Night Football' scores a weekly win for NBC
Ratings: 'Chuck' delivers for NBC, but CBS still rules Monday
Ratings: Laurence Fishburne pushes 'CSI' over 20 million
EW's complete 'American Idol' coverage
For a Thursday devoid of a new installment of CBS's CSI (which premieres Oct. 9), it's no surprise that ABC's powerhouse Grey's Anatomy dominated the ratings last night. According to overnight data, the sudsy hospital drama garnered 18.3 million viewers in its two-hour premiere, easily topping last season's average of 14.4 million. That's down 12 percent from last fall's 20.9 million premiere, but with DVR usage increasing so much, it's pretty much guaranteed that Grey's will get a huge bump in viewership once those numbers are out.
Thursday also saw the two-hour launch of CBS's Survivor: Gabon, which nabbed 12.9 million viewers, down slightly from last fall's average and premiere. Ho-hum premieres (read: no ratings breakouts...yet!) were the story of the night. Other season debuts included: ABC's Ugly Betty (9.8 million), which gained more than a million viewers in its second half hour; two debut episodes of NBC's My Name is Earl (6.1 and 6.7 million), which also grew; and an hour-long episode of NBC's The Office (9.2 million), which almost matched the 9.7 million who tuned in for last year's premiere. Like many other shows premiering yesterday evening, The Office debut greatly improved over its 2007-08 seasonal average of 7.2 million, but season premieres are typically inflated because of a surge of interest early in the season. Plus, last season was affected by the writers' strike, which caused viewers to tune out, making last year's averages slightly lower than they probably would have been otherwise.
Since The CW premiered their Thursday night early, we were treated to second episodes. Smallville snagged a decent 4.1 million viewers, only down 200,000 from last week. Supernatural, on the other hand, was down to 3.2 million viewers — a steep 20 percent decline from last week's rather surprising debut of 4 million viewers.
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Aubry D'Arminio's recap of the season premiere of The Office
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Kate Walsh has a big job ahead for fall; she has to help relaunch Private Practice, the much-ballyhooed spinoff of Grey's Anatomy about a beach-based group of randy doctors. But even though her character, Dr. Addison Montgomery, is starting to settle in at the Oceanside Wellness Center (David Sutcliffe guest stars as her boytoy! She asserts herself more around the offices!) she may take another trip back to Seattle Grace sometime in the middle of the season, hints executive producer Shonda Rhimes. "I don't know if it's going to work with the story, and we don't want her to come back for a visit if it doesn't feel important, something only Addison can do," says Rhimes. "But the idea is on the table." This wouldn't be the first homecoming for Walsh's Addison; the comely redhead showed up in a Grey's episode over the spring while Practice was on hiatus.
We think Kate Walsh is a real beaut and all, but the real breakout in the Sept. 26 premiere of Private Practice is (drumroll, please) guest star Moon Unit Zappa. The genius behind the 1982 hit "Valley Girl" has a five-hanky moment in the latter part of the episode as a bereft mom. The gutwrenching scene also features series stars Amy Brenneman and Paul Adelstein. If you need a reason to check out the Grey's Anatomy's spinoff, Zappa is it.
