Ratings: ‘Life in Pieces,’ ‘American Idol’ down; ‘The Family’ starts so-so on ABC

One of the more interesting tests to us from Thursday night’s primetime lineup was whether or not “Life in Pieces” would be able to recover rather nicely without having “The Big Bang Theory” as a lead-in. We’ll get to that in due time, but we’d say that for the most part it did okay.

The good news – Is there really good news? We suppose that we will give both “Grey’s Anatomy” (2.2 in the 18-49 demographic) and “Elementary” (1.1) a little bit of a thumbs-up given the fact that they stayed steady versus their previous episodes.

Let’s now get to “Life in Pieces.” Sure, it was down almost 15% to a 1.8, but we actually think that given the circumstance, it held up rather well and really earned a season 2 renewal by doing this without a lead-in. It may have helped to show that it could survive on its own next season if thrown into a different spot in the schedule.

The bad news – We can’t say that ABC is that thrilled with “The Family.” Their ambitious new drama series scored just a 1.5 despite a good lead-in from “Grey’s,” and that is sure to decrease from here. Meanwhile, “How to Get Away with Murder” (1.4) declined, “American Idol” (1.9) showed further why it is ending this season, and “The 100” (0.5) dropped for what was probably its biggest episode of the entire season so far. Also, we’re surprised that “You, Me, and the Apocalypse” is still on the air over at NBC with a dismal 0.5 rating.