According to Entertainment Weekly's James Hibberd, NBC has renewed Parenthood, Revolution, Grimm, Law & Order: SVU, and Chicago Fire for the 2013/2014 TV season. Each show has received 22-episode orders for next season. Here's an excerpt from the article:
“On the verge of our 2013 fall scheduling decisions, we’re pleased to renew five drama series that will be important to our new season line-up,” said Jennifer Salke, president of NBC Entertainment. “We’re proud and very appreciative of all of the actors, producers, writers and directors who work so hard to deliver such high-quality work week in and week out. These complex shows represent a broad range of genres and tones, and all of them stand out for us in a television landscape now filled with one-hour series. We’re especially pleased to be renewing Revolution and Chicago Fire — two first-season successes — and there will be more returning series announcements made in the next couple of weeks.”
Link to the full article:
NBC renews 'Parenthood,' 'Revolution,' 3 more | Inside TV | EW.com
My thoughts: Out of all these shows that NBC has renewed for next season, the only show that I don't watch is Law & Order: SVU, so I don't really have much a reaction to that renewal other than the fact that I'm not the least bit surprised that it has been renewed for next season. That being said, I'm absolutely thrilled that Parenthood, Revolution, Grimm, and Chicago Fire have all been renewed. I absolutely love Grimm, Parenthood and Chicago Fire, and while I don't love Revolution, I do kind of like it, so I'm glad that it has been renewed.
Honestly, the only thing that I find surprising about this renewal news is the fact that NBC has renewed Parenthood for 22 episodes, mainly because the only season of the show that has a had a full season of 22 episodes is season 2. I was pretty confident that Parenthood would get renewed for another season, but I didn't necessarily think that it would be for a 22-episode season. Parenthood definitely deserves to be renewed for a full season though, because I truly believe that it's an extremely underrated show.
That being said, it will be very interesting to see what the NBC network executives do with their scheduling next season, especially when it comes to Grimm, Chicago Fire and Revolution. The fact that they have moved Grimm to Tuesday nights after The Voice for the rest of the season starting on April 30th makes me wonder if they are thinking about moving Grimm to another night next season. Assuming NBC decides to have the potential Chicago Fire spin-off go to series, I'm guessing that they will air it after Chicago Fire, but I suppose they could do something else with the scheduling for the spin-off if it goes to series.
It will also be interesting to see what NBC decides to do about Revolution next season. Personally, I think they will probably decide to give one of their new shows the Monday night post The Voice time slot and move Revolution to another night. I wouldn't completely blame them if they did that considering the fact that the two post The Voice time slots on Monday and Tuesday nights are basically the best time slots that they could give their new shows. There's no denying that Revolution is hemorrhaging The Voice's viewers, so I don't think that the two shows share much of an audience to begin with. On the other hand, I kind of feel like The Voice is the only thing that's propping Revolution up right now, regardless of how little having The Voice for a lead-in seems to be helping the show's ratings at the moment.
A part of me thinks that Revolution would completely collapse in the ratings if it didn't air after The Voice, especially after seeing how much Smash plummeted in the ratings this season when they moved it away from The Voice. If they decide to keep Revolution in the same time slot next season, I wouldn't entirely question that decision either if they wanted to try and prevent that from happening to Revolution. Although, I do think that it's important for Revolution to be able to stand on its own at some point, because I don't think that it would be fair to other new shows in the future if they didn't get a chance to air after The Voice simply because NBC network executives might think that they need to prop Revolution up by always airing it after The Voice, but I digress.
As I said earlier, I wouldn't say that I love Revolution, but I definitely like it at least a little bit. Now that I know that the show will indeed be back for a second season, I'm planning to continue with my whole project that I started with watching Revolution and taking notes on the episodes, but I'm not planning to write my review of the show until season one has ended. My review of the show will now be of the entire first season instead of just the first ten episodes like I had originally wanted to do, but for a variety of reasons I didn't get a chance to finish watching the first half of the season and write my review before the show returned in March, so I ultimately decided to wait until after the season ended to write my review.
