The "Every Episode, Every Rating" series examines the Nielsen ratings history of a program during its broadcast run. Praise or criticism is in reference to the show's performance in the Adults 18-49 demographic.
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| Photo Credit: ABC |
When The Neighbors first landed on ABC's Wednesday-night lineup in the fall of 2012, its mission was to retain as much of its lead-in's audience as possible to survive on this unfamiliar new planet. At face value, this Dan Fogelman creation took on the appearance of a cookie-cutter family sitcom, a staple of the alphabet network during the 2010s decade. However, this program contained elements of sci-fi and metafiction, something that made it stand out amongst its peers ever so slightly. The comedy focused on an unassuming family's move to a gated community populated by humanoid aliens. In the series, the aliens adopted the names of famous athletes and could change back to their original form by clapping. Sci-fi and comedy have worked as a pair before, like with 3rd Rock from the Sun and Mork & Mindy, but there have also been laughable failures (Aliens in the Family). Although The Neighbors did have the advantage of living next door to The Middle and Modern Family, The Weavers failed to attract as many eyeballs as the Hecks or the Dunphys, and The Neighbors eventually had to vacate its time slot.
Fall 2012: Though it spent its first season airing in the 8:30 p.m. time slot, the series premiere of The Neighbors got to air at 9:30, directly after one of the highest-rated episodes of Modern Family. Modern started its season with a massive 5.5 rating, and The Neighbors launched right after with a healthy 3.2. Retention here was not particularly great, with Neighbors retaining just under 60% of its lead-in, but the series did show signs of life with this debut. The Neighbors was then bumped up an hour to its actual time slot and plummeted to a 1.9 rating (-41%). But despite the alarming nature of this post-premiere decline, this was pretty much the worst it got for quite some time. The sitcom inched up to a 2.0 the following Wednesday, and it quickly stabilized in the 1.9-2.1 range for the next two months. Ultimately, The Neighbors looked...just fine during this stretch. Its retention was passable, with the series usually holding onto 70-85% of The Middle's rating, but it generally paled in comparison to its lead-out, as Modern Family would regularly double its rating immediately after it aired. The comedy eventually found a new low once December hit, sinking to a 1.6 on the evening of 12/12/12.
Winter 2013: The Neighbors returned in tip-top shape for its winter premiere, posting a 2.1 rating after The Middle's 2.4 on January 9, 2013. However, it was back down to a 1.6 by the end of the month for an episode aptly titled "The Back Nine". This name served as a playful reference to the nine episode extension that is tacked onto a sitcom's initial 13-episode order to create a full, 22-episode season. Things got rather concerning in mid-March when the series dropped to a 1.4 on a night when Middle and Modern were both in repeat mode. Though it did tick up to a 1.5 on finale night, it was clear by this point that The Neighbors was both a marginal performer and one heavily reliant on its lead-in. And while ABC did hand it a lifeline in the form of a season two renewal, it came with a massive time slot downgrade.
Fall 2013: The Neighbors was not enough of a dud to be canceled, but it had not performed well enough to remain sandwiched between The Middle and Modern Family. As a result, the Weavers were moved from Wednesday evenings to a Friday night death slot. The sitcom began its second season at 8:30 once more, this time paired with Last Man Standing in a makeshift TGIF comedy block. The problem? Last Man Standing is a traditional multi-camera sitcom with a laugh track, while The Neighbors is a single-camera sitcom with elements of sci-fi and fantasy. This ultimately made for an incompatible lineup. Season two began with a 1.2, a rating that already served as a new series low. The program then fell to a 1.0 the following week and went as low as a 0.85 rating by November. Not even a crossover event with lead-out Shark Tank could boost the struggling sitcom, as the November 8th episode "We Jumped the Shark (Tank)" barely cleared the 1.0 threshold and only improved on its previous installment by a single hundredth.
Winter/Spring 2014: Like in season one, The Neighbors had a strong start to the new year after ending fall on a low note. The first episode after its winter break managed a 1.12 rating, its highest since the season premiere. Unfortunately, it dropped after that and was regularly below a 1.0 rating in 2014. The incompatibility of this duo became glaringly obvious by this point, especially on January 24th when it managed a mere 0.8 after Last Man Standing's 1.4. The final episode of The Neighbors aired on April 11, 2014 and posted an abysmal 0.86, just a few ticks above its series low (0.82). A month later, ABC canceled the sci-fi sitcom after two seasons. Expectations are generally low for shows airing on Friday nights, but The Neighbors went even lower.
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| Photo Credit: ABC |
Post-Mortem: At its best, The Neighbors was a middling player that did the bare minimum to survive. In season one, it had favorable circumstances and only had to air one episode during the spring. In season two, it had a more challenging time slot and completely fell apart. A few months after its cancellation, The Goldbergs took over the old Wednesday slot that The Neighbors occupied and performed significantly better, enough so that it eventually became the 8 p.m. anchor. In fall 2015, Dr. Ken would take over its old Friday slot and debut with a 1.5, a rating three-tenths above anything The Neighbors did there. All this is to say that ABC made the right move to eject these extraterrestrials. This show may have done fine at first, but the alphabet network knew they could do better than fine. Had this series been around during a time of comedy drought, it could have potentially limped to a third or fourth season. But ABC's comedy standards were far too high in the mid-2010s to settle for subpar, so they vanquished their alien visitors.
What did you think of this article? Were you a fan of The Neighbors? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below.
