We all knew the wedding between Jim Parson’s Sheldon and Mayim Bialik’s Amy was going to happen but there were a few surprises last night on the Season 11 finale of The Big Bang Theory (2.8/14) with Star Wars’ Mark Hamill as himself plus the star power of Laurie Metcalf, magician Teller, Kathy Bates and Jerry O’Connell in the room too.
In a season that has seen some series lows for the still staggering popular science geek sitcom, last night’s “The Bow Tie Asymmetry” episode was unsurprisingly up 22% from the fast affiliates of last week among adults 18-49 to hit a three-month high. The top-rated show of the night by far as usual, the nuptials-themed BBT snagged 15 million sets of eyeballs to give a finale heavy CBS an overall primetime win of 1.6/6 in the key demo and 9.2 million viewers in total over the night.
In the media landscape where ratings decline has become the status quo for most shows, Big Bang Theory bucked the trend last night and actually saw an 8% rise among the 18-49s from the fast affiliates of its Season 10 finale of May 11, 2017. Hitting an all-time finale low for BBT, the demo for that proposal “The Long Distance Dissonance” episode last year rose a tenth in its final number and had 12.99 million viewers. Now, it should be noted that unlike in the past few years, last night’s Big Bang Theory ender did not face any NBA playoffs action as strong competition – which means we could see a greater uptick than usual in the final numbers.
Before, we get to the rest of last night’s numbers and fellow CBS finales, take a look at this scene of a wedding gift from Stephen Hawking that didn’t make it to the Season 11 finale – or as Johnny Galecki’s Leonard says of present from the now deceased genius, “I thought I was all cried out.”:
In this exclusive, unaired clip from last night’s season finale, the happy couple gets one last gift from #StephenHawking. 💕 #BigBangTheory pic.twitter.com/xgpU7G7Wpw
— The Big Bang Theory (@bigbangtheory) May 11, 2018
The rest of the House of Moonves’ Thursday saw the Season 1 finale of BBT spinoff Young Sheldon (2.1/9) was up 11% in the demo from its May 3rd show and a double dose of Mom. The 9 PM (1.5/6) airing of the Anna Faris and Allison Janney led sitcom was up a tenth from last week while the 9:30 PM (1.3/6) Season 5 finale of the show was down 13% from its BBT lead-out 9 PM Season 4 ender of May 11 last year. At 10 PM, S.W.A.T. (0.9/4) was up a tenth from last week.
Things are still in play for last night’s Supernatural (0.6/3), which is up two tenths, and Arrow (0.42), which is even with last week, as the CW was showing Major League Baseball on its NYC affiliate. Gotham (0.7/3) and Showtime At The Apollo (0.6/3) were both up a tenth from the final numbers of their last originals.
ABC had a mixed night with Grey’s Anatomy (1.8/8) up 12%, Station 19 (0.9/4) down 10% from its final numbers of May 4 and Quantico (0.5/2) unchanged.
Also holding steady with last week’s one-hour episode, NBC’s only original of Thursday was the two-hour Season 6 of Chicago Fire (1.0/4). However, the real fire may have been the ratings which burnt down 23% in the demo from the Season 5 one-hour ender of May 16, 2017, a Tuesday.
Oh, and the NBA is back this weekend, so …
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