They're Movin' On Up to Sundays

I am, if nothing else, a creature of habit. I get my usual order from my favorite coffee shop, drive to work, and park my car in the same spot every day. I like my routine. And so I like my TV shows to stay put, thank you very much, and not get shuffled all willy-nilly around the schedule. (Although thank God for DVR, which keeps track for me when I can't.) Just when I got used to it being on Tuesdays, Fox went ahead and moved Brooklyn Nine-Nine to Sundays. I was rankled, but, then I wondered: Is this better or worse for the show? (Because it doesn't always have to be about me.)

This made me feel better, because the move to Sundays seems like it will probably be a good thing for Jake Peralta and his colleagues at the precinct. It's not like the show had a plum time-slot on Tuesdays. In fact, despite the two Golden Globes and all the critical praise, Brooklyn Nine-Nine was not a ratings juggernaut last year. Far from it — the ratings actually went down as the season progressed. More than 6 million people tuned in to check out the series premiere, but, by the end, only around 2.5 million were watching.

In fact, the highest ratings Brooklyn Nine-Nine ever got by far — more than 15 million viewers — was on a Sunday. But it was Super Bowl Sunday, when it aired after the big game, so counting that would be totally cheating.

The culprit gobbling up all of those Tuesday-night viewers? NCIS: Los Angeles. That show is one of the top five most-watched television shows, according to TV Guide. There's no way our scrappy little sophomore could compete with that.

Sunday is a night blissfully free of any NCIS. It is also the night of the week when the most TV watchers tune in. And, when it moves, it'll be up against Madam Secretary, a new untested show on CBS, and Once Upon a Time , which has better ratings than Brooklyn Nine-Nine did on Tuesdays but isn't an unstoppable NCIS-like force. Of the three, Brooklyn Nine-Nine is the only comedy, so it has the field to itself for people who want to laugh before a case of the Mondays sets in.

There is only one giant, hulking, linebacker-sized monkey wrench standing in Brooklyn Nine-Nine's way: Sunday Night Football on NBC. According to TV Guide, Sunday Night Football is more watched than NCIS: Los Angeles. If NCIS trounced Brooklyn Nine-Nine in the ratings, football will crush it. But that ends by early February.

Here's hoping the little guy can stick it out until then.

Images: Eddy Chen/FOX; Giphy (4)