How 16 Shows Can Increase Their Ratings for May Sweeps

A month from now, many of our favorite shows will have finished their respective seasons, never to be seen again…until next September, hopefully. That’s right, it’s season finale time, which means it’s also SWEEPS SEASON, when shows resort to guest stars, illogical plot lines, and cliffhangers to increase their ratings. It’s beautiful really. To help overworked TV writers out, I’ve included some helpful ideas on how a variety of different shows (including some on cable, just because) can get people watching and talking.
Crossovers, 3D episodes, reunions, Bob Saget – it’s gonna be a good (hypothetical) month of TV.

Following in the footsteps of “Desperate Housewives” and “Heroes,” both shows that resorted to lady kisses for ratings stunts, Max and Caroline finally get together and…go to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, where they meet a civil servant played by Stephen Tobolowsky. (What? He was on “Desperate” and “Heroes.”) The inevitable kiss: that’s gonna have to wait for another season, much to the dismay of this guy…
…who writes:
But hey, Tobolowsky!
For the series finale of “House,” producers decide to do a greatest hits episode. A man checks into the hospital with every illness that Dr. House has treated over the years, including scurvy, undigested toothpick, fat embolism from an unrepaired broken toe, precocious puberty, leprosy, Whipple’s disease, toad egg toxicity, and leprosy again. It will be *voice-over voice* his toughest case yet.
3D episodes are a May sweeps tradition, and I can’t think of a better show to view in a third dimension than:
Along the same lines as “House,” “America’s Funniest Home Videos” attempts THE WORLD’S greatest hit/funniest video. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I hear it involves Bob Saget narrating a video of a man being hit in the groin by a farting dog who mistakes his owner’s balls for a ball, while in the background, a crying baby, fat guy, and old woman all fall down the same slide into a kiddy pool full of beans and poop.
Now that producers know “Suburgatory” gets better ratings when there’s a Clueless reunion, the show decides to go all out, bringing in nearly the entire cast of the 1995 movie to Chatswin. The first call goes out to Julie Brown, who puts down the one-and-only copy of her 1987 album, Trapped in the Body of a White Girl, to pick up the phone. After inking Brown, everyone else agrees immediately: Breckin “Bro” Meyer, Wallace Shawn, Donald Faison, Paul Rudd, even Brittany Murphy, whose corpse is used as one of Dalia’s dead-eyed friends.
They try to get Coolio to perform “Rollin’ with My Homies,” but he’s too busy counting the royalties he’s made from the “Kenan & Kel” theme song. It’s $17.23.
/tries to think of a celebrity who hasn’t been on the show
//continues to think
Um, I dunno, have the baby shoot someone again?
All of the contestants on FX’s “The Ultimate Fighter” just go to TOWN on Joffrey. There’s slapping and punching and mauling and thrashing and raging and kicking and lashing, for hours and hours. At one point, someone even spanks him with a crossbow. And that’s just the first installment of a six-part miniseries.
“Mad Men” hits the road in a very special episode starring Roger and Sally. No Don, no Megan, no MILFs jollying Roger – just a 55-year-old businessman traveling the Northeast with his co-worker’s underage daughter. While making a pit stop at a gas station in Tennessee, Chris Hansen, of “To Catch a Predator” fame, pops out of an unlocked bathroom and begins talking into an imaginary microphone. He still believes “Dateline” is airing “Predator” segments, and Roger and Sally drive away, terrified of the man babbling something about perverted justice. Also, Roger and Sally are in the future, for some reason.
Future Ted, sick of telling the tale of how he met their mother after seven seasons, has a shocking revelation for his kids: he’s gay. He’s been calling Rosco “mother” all these years because he clearly likes to drag out the reveal of his stories. And he’s into drag. The yellow umbrella, Rosco’s. The person he meets at Barney’s wedding, Rosco. Cindy’s roommate whose feet we briefly see, Rosco. (He has very feminine legs.) As for the kids, they were created in a lab somewhere, setting up the spin-off: “How I Met the Scientist Who Made Me.”
It’s canceled after one episode.
Just air that instead of every show in all timeslots. HIGHEST RATINGS EVER. ( )
And Baby Goose for the ladies. ( )
Phil Keoghan reveals, after so many years, that the answer is, “African-Americans.” African-Americans.
Want to know how to be accepted by the Warming Glow community, “Two and a Half Men,” and save a bit of cash, too? For the season finale, fire everyone on the show – and literally throw Ashton Kutcher into some fire – and replace the cast with corgis. You can keep the laugh track, the sets, even the jokes, just have the corgis.
It’s a normal day at Dunder-Mifflin, until the Doctor (Matt Smith) and his TARDIS transport into the middle of the office. He says he’s come to take Nellie, who he knows as Donna, to her home planet, No Taco World. Fifteen seconds later, this appears on-screen:
Everyone rejoices.
Can $omeone $ay “Arli$$” reunion on “Grey’s Anatomy”??????
No, no one can say that. That’s an awful idea and should never, ever happen.
Episode-long tribute to The Movie of our time: “Step Up,” obviously. What say you, C-Tates?
Noted.

×