ABC/SCOTT GARFIELDAudiences tuned in Grey's Anatomy for the planned wedding of Meredith and Derek. They didn't tune out the impromptu wedding of Izzie and Alex.
Some 15.3 million felt their way through last night's marriage-go-round, per preliminary Nielsen estimates. Grey's outdrew time-slot rival CSI (14.6 million) for the first time since November 2007, ABC said. Among hopeless romantics aged 18-49, Grey's dominated the night more than usual and beat CSI by its widest margin in two years.
Last night's Grey's was its 100th. Episode. Not wedding ceremony.
Other ratings highlights from Thursday and the past few nights, courtesy the finally-got-its-act-together Nielsens:
• Grey's helped Michael J. Fox's ABC special, Adventures of an Incurable Optimist, to 10.6 million viewers, and a 10 p.m. time-slot win over the slowing Southland (6.5 million) and CBS' always sturdy crime-show reruns (9.7 million for an old CSI).
• Even opposite the Grey's matter, The Office (7.7 million) and 30 Rock (6.2 million) managed to get bigger.
• If you're a bubble show, and you only manage 4.4 million viewers, like My Name Is Earl did last night, that's bad.
• If you're already on the fall schedule, and you only manage 4.6 million viewers, like Parks and Recreation did last night, that's OK. You're already on the fall schedule.
• Memo to Earl: Next time, try to do what Castle (10 million) did—beef up by nearly 2 million viewers from the previous week. Oh, and air after Dancing With the Stars. That's important, too.
• The home stretch was kind to American Idol (23.4 million for Tuesday's rock show; 23.6 million for Wednesday's results show and Paula Abdul dance party), Dancing With the Stars (20.3 million for Monday's show; 14.6 million for Tuesday's results episode), and Survivor: Tocantins (12 million). Compared to last week, all three franchises were up, save for the Tuesday DWTS.
• Guess President Obama wasn't such a ratings pushover, after all. While Lie to Me got some nice press last week for outdrawing any single network's coverage of the Obama press conference, the show got bigger in a hurry, going from 7.4 million viewers last week to 8.7 million this week, when it didn't have to square off against the Oval Office man.
• For a show that was drawing less than 4.5 million viewers on Wednesdays, Scrubs got a big season-finale send-off: 5.1 million.
• In the 9 p.m., Wednesday hour, Lost (8.7 million) beat out Criminal Minds (14.1 million) for the right to claim a second-place finish in the demo, behind Idol, but fell further behind the crime show in viewers.
• The Melrose Place revamp may be a go, and the Gossip Girl spinoff may be dead (or maybe not), but GG had scoreboard this week all over the 90210 universe: 2.2 million viewers versus the latter show's 1.8 million.