Predictions?

Monday is the DWTS/Castle premiere on ABC.  Last week ABC hit off the charts with the finale of The Bachelor.  There's no way Castle is hitting the 6.7 A19-49 the After the Final Rose Special scored.  Frankly, there's not a shot in hell the final half hour of DWTS gets anywhere close to the 6.3 the Bachelor got at 9:30pm, though it will almost certainly have a couple million more viewers (closer to 21 than The Bachelor's 17.48)

So, what is successful for Castle?  Boston Legal "failed" in the timeslot and its season premiere after the last cycle's DWTS premiere did just shy of 10 million viewers and a 2.4 in the demo.  Castle, given the LARGE promotional push, must do more than that.  A good deal more.  ABC has mad marginal success at 10pm.  A 3.0 is a tough get on ABC at 10pm.  Yet, less than a 3.0 really must be deemed a failure here (I wouldn't be surprised to see 10 million viewers drop off, but for the demo retention to be better... so I'm not even going to pay attention to the overnight numbers... unless, of course, a bunch of the 50+ set looks at Castle and gets confused and thinks ABC brought back Murder, She Wrote).

I'm not sure the same barometer applies later this season to the Cupid and The Unusuals' premieres.  Cupid will have the lower rated DWTS Results show as a lead-in, which will be lucky to get 16 million viewers and a 3.5 on Tuesday, March 31st, and even if it does, it'll be number two or three in either measure (The Mentalist will be higher in both, and who knows what that Osbourne family special is going to do on Fox after Idol).  A 3.0 for Cupid would be a startling success (Eli Stone did, what, a 2.0 at the max?  Primetime has been in the mid-2s).  And The Unusuals... well, we all know Lost's audience doesn't stick around.

Meanwhile, the return of Desperate Housewives tonight could've given The Office a run for its "let's mine comedy out of some awkward situations until there's nothing left to mine... then let's mine some more!"

As soon as Bree invited Lynette to dinner at her place for Tom to meet her publisher, we knew Lynette was eventually going to put herself up for the job.  But the way it went down... Tom is an asshat.  Used to love him.  Can't stand him anymore.  Playing the C-card... that's lowest of the low.  Lynette's stories and problems have always been the most real-world, and the "Tom's restaurant closes because of the economy (and some other things)" has been no exception.  But it really doesn't seem to have much of a place in the far more over-the-top world of Desperate Housewives.

Also Orson's kleptomania is LAME.  Remember when Buffy had no idea what to do with Dawn's character so made her a kleptomaniac?  And it sucked?

But... yay, murder!