Ratings: ‘Mistresses’ season 4 plummets without ‘The Bachelorette’; ‘Houdini & Doyle’ finale steady

Now, we come to the portion of the summer in which we throw some serious side-eye to the executives over at ABC. What in the world were you thinking? There are bad ideas, and then there is the idea that they came up with to air a new episode of “Mistresses” on the Fourth of July, and without a new episode of “The Bachelorette” airing before it. There is probably a rather hefty contingent of people out there who had utterly no idea at all that the show was coming on in the first place.

Last night’s new episode sank to the show’s lowest rating yet in a 0.5 in the 18-49 demographic, the lowest rating it has received to date. In general this season so far is down almost 10% from season 3, which isn’t great since it was a surprise renewal to some in the first place. Obviously there are understandable reasons for the decline this time around, but you better hope that the show gets its you-know-what together before things take a turn for the worse next.

Elsewhere in the ratings from last night, “Houdini & Doyle” managed to conjure up a 0.4 rating for the finale, even with the most-recent episode. Unfortunately, that probably isn’t much of a welcome sign as to what the show’s future could be. We weren’t really confident about it going into the finale, though, even if Fox is one of many of its network partners and they don’t have a huge financial commitment behind it as they do other shows.

With “Mistresses,” you can expect at least some turnaround next week.