Ratings: ‘Castle’ falls without Stana Katic; ‘Supergirl’ sinks; ‘Dancing with the Stars’ up

Monday night’s ratings lineup was, with a couple of exceptions, relatively non-eventful. Still, the exceptions are going to give us plenty to discuss and then some within the span of this article.

The winners – “Dancing with the Stars” improved to a 2.0, so at least that show has something to celebrate as we start to near the end of the road there. That’s really the only huge improvement worth writing about; while “NCIS: Los Angeles” (1.2) improved its ratings, it is likely to adjust down after being preempted in the San Diego market for Monday Night Football.

The losers – Let’s start here with “Castle,” which hit a series low with a 1.0 over an episode that we actually felt was relatively fun … at least given that Stana Katic wasn’t a part of it. Do we blame her one-episode absence fully for this? Not really. We doubt that anyone other than the diehard “Castle” fans online knew that she wasn’t going to be in the episode in advance, and even for them there was always a chance at a surprise cameo. There may be an impact there, but a minuscule one. We instead blame more the show being off the air for two weeks, giving casual viewers a chance to get hooked on “Blindspot” or simply lose interest in this show.

Now, let’s turn to “Supergirl” (1.7), which fell once again by more than 20%. The show has almost lost 50% of its premiere audience in the demo in two weeks, which of course already has us wondering if the show could end up being either shopped to The CW or canceled outright at the end of the season if the ratings continue to fall.

If you head over here, you can get a sense as to what we think are the primary problems with “Supergirl” at the moment. Also, sign up here to score some other TV news on everything we cover via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: ABC.)