Vanquished by Veteran, 'V' Victory Vanishes

Although the second episode of "V" put up perfectly fine ratings -- 10.7 million viewers in the updated Nielsen nationals, and a 3.8 rating among adults 18-49 -- ABC ought to be somewhat concerned about the fairly sizable drop from the premiere.

As other networks were more than happy to point out, "V's" decline of more than 25% marked the steepest week-to-week falloff for any new scripted series this season -- trailing CBS' "NCIS" in demos as well as total viewers. And that was despite a premiere that generally drew strong reviews -- including from yours truly -- with a very respectable score of 67 on metacritic.com.

The second episode held up reasonably well creatively, though not surprisingly, it lacked the pace and urgency of the front-loaded pilot. Still, the show seems to have some a number of solid elements in place, though I could seriously do without the subplot involving the love-lorn teenager pining after the hot blonde Visitor (except for maybe the hot blonde part).

As scheduled by ABC, "V" will air for two more weeks in November, then take a break and return next year. The network has to hope now that the declines don't cut much deeper during this mini-run so that it can bring the series back with a degree of momentum.

"V" also might illustrate what ABC appears to be discovering with "FlashForward" -- namely, that viewers set the bar quite high for series they know are going to be heavily serialized and will bail out fairly soon if they're not pleased with how the shows are progressing. I'm sticking with "FlashForward," but I seem to spend more time reading the newspaper as I watch with each subsequent airing.

In both cases it's clearly too soon to press the panic button, but that thrill of victory that ABC doubtless felt after the premiere could be short-lived if much more of that first wave of valiant "V" viewers vanishes before Thanksgiving. Take it as a reminder that in primetime, there's a fine line between "victory" and "vacancy."