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The 2-hour opener of AMC’s third original series, political thriller Rubicon, became the network’s highest-rated and most-watched original series premiere ever, attracting 2M total viewers. For comparison, Mad Men averaged 900,000 viewers and Breaking Bad 1.2M viewers in their first seasons. Following Rubicon, the second episode of Mad Men’s fourth episode drew 2.5 million viewers, down 14% from last week’s season premiere. ”AMC is now three for three with our original series,” said Charlie Collier, president and GM of AMC. Rubicon, which moves to its regular Sunday 9 PM time slot next week, had already been sampled by 4.6 million viewers via the network’s sneak peek on-air as well as on VOD, iTunes, and Hulu.
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SOLID.
Great story telling.
And no…I don’t friggin’ work for AMC,
but a big lover of great stories.
Which is simply…great characters in great scenes.
Which means unapologetically about conflict.
Over and over again.
I didn’t say over acting, or over styling.
I said great scenes.
The cast appear and act like normal people beginning to get caught up
in situations out of their control and …
You know…
Just watch it.
Pay attention.
This is solid, good story telling.
Solid storytelling? Hmm. So it makes sense to you that a covert government agency hires lots of smart people and stick them in a think tank without knowing who they work for and then kill them off when they get too close. Too close to themselves? Yeah, that is good story telling of you’re alma matter is Contrived University in Crapville.
http://www.tv.com/story/23582.html said it well: “Just because the AMC brand name is now a mark of quality doesn’t mean we can start blindly accepting all of its programming.”
What happened to the team at AMC? BROKEN TRAIL, BREAKING BAD, MAD MED and now this? Have they started smoking crack?
it’s not a covert government agency, it’s an independent intelligence analysis think tank. which makes a lot of sense that the people at the top who know more than the people at the bottom don’t want them to know too much of the CONSPIRACY
How can they be 3 for 3 when the PRISONER completely bombed?
Oh well, The Walking Dead will also crash so there’s that.
Really now, a troll against AMC, which is going out of its way to promote quality original scripted programming? The Prisoner was a miniseries, not an ongoing series, smart guy.
So glad you think you know so much about The Walking Dead, too, especially considering how well the sizzle reel went over at Comic Con and all the stills floating around the internet are causing horror fans to go wild in anticipation. What’s not to like about a good zombie story in the month of October?
If anything “The Walking Dead” will most likely be their highest rated series. I can easily see it breaking the 3.5-4 million mark.
Wait wait wait. So what this means is that Rubicon’s two hour premiere did HALF A MILLION fewer than Mad Men’s SECOND episode which followed it? After all those billboards and ads they poured in? I’d call that many things, but solid is not one of them.
Mad Men and Breaking Bad’s series premieres were smaller because no one knew about AMC. (I gotta think that the .4 million drop for Mad Men after the premiere is causing people to sweat a little, too.) Rubicon’s premiere was tied to Mad Men’s new season. No way to look at this as anything less than a disappointment.
The one hope: maybe it’ll grow next week — there’s a chance that so many people saw Rubicon’s pilot in the preview a couple months ago or online, they didn’t tune in last night having seen the first hour already. I’m curious how the numbers held in the second hour from the first…
Actually, 2M for a BRAND NEW SERIES is pretty great, considering Mad Men has had a COUPLE MORE YEARS to gain a loyal following resulting in its 2.5M.
How can they count this as a ‘premiere’ episode when the pilot has aired twice already?
~
Coat
I hope Walking Dead is as great as True Blood is. True Blood is a great trashy show.
Go Rubicon!
Finally, a decent story actually told well on TV.
Guess Obi-Wan isn’t our only hope.
Rubicon’s nicely made, strong cast, but in terms of tradecraft, they’d better do a better job explaining the purpose of the crossword puzzles. To keep this spoiler free, the more usual technique to do what the crosswords were supposed to do, is to place personal ads with pre-arranged codes. Personal ads can be phoned in anonymously and be published within 24 hours. Crossword puzzles, like comic strips, are prepared weeks ahead of publication. The creators of the crosswords that run in the papers mentioned in Rubicon are created by known puzzle authors, they’re submitted to editors, syndication fees are paid… to subvert that process on the orders of hours, as it was mentioned happened in the past, would involve the cooperation or coercion of dozens of civilians, each of whom would then be a security risk. Personal ads = vastly reduced risk.
Writers of this genre, it’s not enough to come up with an idea for something that’s cool, you have to have an idea that’s cool AND makes real-world sense. It’s one thing to play fast and loose with logic in a two-hour summer movie that moves so quickly the audience doesn’t start discovering the plot holes until they’ve left the theatre. But Rubicon feels like a show that should be a puzzle in itself, inviting the audience to think carefully about how the pieces fit together each week.
I’m rooting for the series, but I really hope the purpose of the crosswords is not what was revealed in episode 2. 10101100011011111000
The crosswords weren’t “real” crosswords, either. Many of the squares did not intersect across AND down, sign of an unprofessional grid and just unheard of in crossword publishing.
well, there was A LOT of publicity and advertising pushing the opening eps. and I WANTED it to be good television because i work very hard and want that escape. but SADLY i think it was a “fail” on
interesting, multidimensional characters we care about
engaging stories that intrigue and surprise
it had a similar lack of soul to the prisoner. like something that may have started out interesting, then lost itself in the development process.
but time will tell. and i hope i’m wrong. because i need a fix before the next season of “breaking bad”.
Totally loved it. Good solid story.
Even though everyone thinks episode one had already aired, all that showed up on my DVR were trailers & interviews — & I had to retape ‘Breaking Bad’s finale because of the delay.
So, yes, three hits — ‘Mad Men,’ ‘Breaking Bad,’ & now ‘Rubicon,’ with ‘Walking Dead’ still to come.
Dreadful
Why is Rubicon slow?
As far as I can tell from the versions I’ve seen of ep. 101 and from what I’ve heard, the original pilot was disastrously slow and opaque. Then AMC changed showrunners. Bromell made changes to the pilot that helped speed up the show and make the characters more interesting. I imagine that the show will continue to get more interesting under his guidance, though I do think its pacing may remain on the slower side. I could be wrong, of course. I don’t work for AMC.
Regardless, 2M is a great start. I hope it means we’ll get to see more.
I really liked the show. But, I can’t get past the male lead being too young for the part. He’s 32. He looks 32. How could he have lost his wife and child in 2001? He would have been a high school kid when he had his daughter. But otherwise, excellent writing and storytelling.
“I really liked the show. But, I can’t get past the male lead being too young for the part. He’s 32. He looks 32. How could he have lost his wife and child in 2001? He would have been a high school kid when he had his daughter. But otherwise, excellent writing and storytelling.”
2001 was 9 years ago. Is it that far-fetched to believe he was married with a daughter at age 23? Did they mention how old the daughter was?
Anyway, in the previews I didn’t think he looked right for the part, but now that I’ve seen him act, he’s grown on me.
The key is the daughter’s age. He could certainly have a child because he would have been 23/24 years of age in 2001.
I didn’t know for absolute certain that the main character was a genius until he took a book entitled “STRING THEORY” out of his bag and held it up for the camera for a few beats before he put it on a shelf. Oy….
I like how Collier says WE are three for three. Strange he takes credit for all the shows, since he had nothing to do with Mad Men or Breaking Bad – he came to the channel after both those shows were picked, developed and shot. The only show he can take credit for is Rubicon which if you did watch now know it’s slow, has no character depth, is totally derivative and doesn’t make sense or add up to anything. Way to go!
“Ugh” you need to fact check. The guy has been at AMC since before Mad Men because I remember him in my office pitching the launch of this period piece (turned out to be Mad Men) about a year before it finally aired. (I negotiated with him on a deal — pilot was done, series not even written. Matt was still on Sopranos). Collier believed in this show and sold hard on why this period drama would succeed on AMC where others on other nets had died. He looks about 12 years old and was pretending to be an expert on period authenticy. Funny. I know from a friend’s stories (sr exec now at toon) that Collier ran all over his company trying to get support/money for Vince’s genius meth-making teacher story when AMC wasn’t yet in the drama business. Vince loves the guy. Now Rubicon …and AMC’s also casting a crime drama and a western pilot.
The guy is pres of the network and you’re ragging on the word ‘we’…At the Mad Men premiere last month, the guy couldn’t stop naming and praising his team and the creatives at AMC. I like that and my guys like that. AMC is doing the work no one else is doing and Collier is the guy who has helmed AMC from old movies into originals. He’s the guy.
Are you confusing Collier with Joel Stillerman? Collier’s been there since 2006.
RUBICON! Amazing series. It’s like a cross between CSI & House. Will Travers is great. Very well written and directed. I literally can’t wait for the next episode each week, I admit, it’s a little slow, and dramatic, but you just have to be into it. Really try to follow what’s going on. Haven’t seen any other of the AMC series, but I’m in love with this show. Glad it’s a hit, and I hope it keeps going strong!
I know that Peter Nashel wrote the music score for Rubicon, but is it available?
Any news yet about a renewal?