A romantic comedy, Bent revolves around the relationship of a divorced no-nonsense lawyer (Amanda Peet) and the irresponsible womanizing contractor (David Walton) that she reluctantly hires to renovate her kitchen. Others in the cast include Joey King, Margo Harshman, Jeffrey Tambor, J.B. Smoove, Jesse Plemons, and Pasha D. Lychnikoff.
NBC held Bent until late in the season (never a good sign) and ran the six episodes in hour blocks over the course of three weeks.
The belief was that, by airing two episodes together, they would have a better chance of hooking an audience.
It’s hard to know if that strategy worked to any degree but the ratings were terrible. The show aired opposite other popular shows on Wednesday nights and debuted to a 1.0 rating in the 18-49 demographic with 2.75 million total viewers. It was fourth place in its timeslot. The second installment dropped 20% to a 0.8 rating with 2.38 million.
The next two weeks saw a low of 0.7 in the demo with 1.93 million. With those numbers, there was just no way that NBC was going to bring it back for a second season.
On our NBC Ratings Report Card, which measures the relative demo performance of TV shows on the network, Bent has an “D-” grade. It’s the lowest-rated sitcom that the NBC aired this season.
What do you think? Do you think Bent is a better show than what the ratings seem to indicate? Would you like to have seen it return for a second season?
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