ABC Gives Season Pickups to Better With You, No Ordinary Family

Photo: ABC

Did you know ABC has a new comedy called Better with You airing Wednesdays at 8:30 p.m.? Apparently it does, and the network likes this show so much, it's decided to order up a full season of 22 episodes, despite the fact that said half-hour has generated about as much buzz as a Hallmark Channel movie of the week. New ABC chief Paul Lee late Monday also gave a full-season order to the much more hyped new drama No Ordinary Family, confirmed the previous full-season pick-up for Brothers & Sisters and ordered 5 more episodes of fellow Tuesday night newcomer Detroit 1-8-7. ABC didn't say anything about struggling crime drama The Whole Truth, however, which would indicate the show isn't long for this world (though it may stay on the air through the end of the year). Meanwhile, back to Better with You: The comedy, which comes from the mind of former Friends (and Joey) exec producer Shana Goldberg-Meehan, has been doing acceptable, but hardly inspiring, Nielsen numbers, holding on to about 85 percent of its The Middle lead-in among viewers under 50 the last few weeks. That's on par, or maybe a bit better, than recently renewed freshman comedies $*! My Dad Says and Outsourced. The latter two series, however, have gotten a lot more ink during the early part of the fall season-- though mostly because critics have been slapping those shows for being really awful. Nobody's talking much at all about Better With You, but now that it's apparently going to be sticking around a while, we might actually have to watch it to see if it's worth forming any sort of opinion about it whatsoever.
[Vulture]