On this week’s podcast, Fienberg and I talked about the changes new showrunner Matt Miller had made to “Human Target,” and I was looking forward to seeing how fans of the show reacted to those changes on Friday night. Instead, we’re all going to have to wait a little longer, as FOX has moved the series to a different night, and pushed the season two premiere back to mid-November.
The new timeslot is actually the show’s old one: Wednesdays at 8, starting on November 17. Airing there last season before “American Idol,” the show did just well enough to get renewed, and was going to air as part of a Friday action drama bloc with “The Good Guys.”
But two things happened since that plan was announced in May: “The Good Guys” did very badly in the summer and even worse in its first Friday airing last week, and “Lone Star” was such a ratings disaster on Mondays that FOX pulled it after two episodes and decided to replace it with “Lie to Me.”
“Lie to Me” was originally set to air Wednesdays starting in November, so now “Human Target” takes its place. It’s a much better timeslot for “Human Target,” if only because it was guaranteed to fail on Fridays. Friday has been a disaster night for FOX for a very long time, and those “Good Guys” numbers had to be scary. So this move signals that FOX still has hopes that “Human Target” can at least be a useful piece for the network, but it also says that they’ve basically washed their hands of “The Good Guys.” It may get to air its remaining episodes (paired with “House” repeats) simply because it’s much cheaper than an average network drama, but it’s done.
So we’ll check back in on the “Human Target” changes in a month and a half.