Brian Bowen Smith/NBCPeople love to watch a good farewell almost as much as a bad trainwreck. On last night's ER, they got both. And ER, in turn, got lots of people.
The hospital drama's final, life-and-death episode scored its biggest audience in nearly three years, NBC said. The audience of 16.2 million, per preliminary Nielsen estimates, wasn't as much as NCIS or CSI draws in a typical week, and won't land the once top-rated show on top one last time. But it was big, and it was a decided throwback to the pre-TiVo days of yesteryear.
According to NBC, last night's ER was TV's most-watched drama series finale since Murder, She Wrote closed its books in 1996. And it was the highest-rated drama series finale among adults 18-49 since The X-Files signed off in 2002.
The episode outdid last month's well-attended George Clooney return by about 5 million viewers.
In an age where shows can lose half their audience in a year or two, last night's farewell wasn't too far off from the show's premiere from 15 long years ago. That very first episode in 1994 was watched by about 23.8 million. This season, the show, prefinale, had been averaging 8.5 million.
Perhaps most impressively, ER didn't even technically stage a trainwreck to pull in last night's crowd. It merely closed with the carnage produced by a factory explosion.
Just another day at the office at County General.
Elsewhere on Thursday:
• How nostalgic were folks feeling last night? At 8 p.m., an hourlong ER clip show (10.6 million) was nearly as strong as an all-new Survivor: Tocantins (11.2 million).
• Don't pity Eleventh Hour (10.4 million) too much for having its season finale up against the final hour of the final ER. The show got killed, yes, but it was off less than 1 million viewers from its season average.
• Going up against the first hour of the final ER, CSI (14.4 million) did not have a typical CSI week. It was down nearly 3 million viewers from its season avearge.
• It took about a week, but In the Motherhood (5 million) and Samantha Who? (4.8 million) are making Ugly Betty, ABC's usual Thursday lead-off show, look really good.
• On an ER-dominated kinda night, Bones (8.9 million) and Hell's Kitchen (7 million) were off, but survived. Smallville (3.8 million) and Supernatural (3.3 million) stayed strong in their niche.