NBC yanks ‘The Firm’ reboot from Thursday night, skeds ‘Awake’

Molly Parker as Abby McDeere, Josh Lucas as Mitch McDeere on “The Firm.” (Steve Wilkie - NBC) Right around the time final stats came out on Friday, revealing NBC’s reboot of “The Firm” had averaged under 3 million viewers on Thursday night and less than 1 percent of the country’s 18-49 year olds, the network announced it had yanked “The Firm” off Thursday night and slapped it on Saturdays — aka NBC Burnoff Theatre Night, starting Feb. 11.

 RIP “The Firm.”

 As of next week, “Grimm” reruns will hopefully keep the Thursday 10 p.m. timeslot warm until NBC can unveil its new down-the-rabbit-hole-ish drama series “Awake” in the timeslot on March 1.

“Awake,” from “Lone Star” exec producer Kyle Killen and “24’s” Howard Gordon, is about a police detective who is in a car accident that has killed both his son and his wife.

 But the brain of Det. Michael Britten (Jason Isaacs) creates a “coping mechanism” in which he now leads two separate lives. In one, his wife survived the crash; in the other, his son survived.

 Unfortunately, this coping mechanism did not also give him a rich aunt who hands in her dinner pail leaving him untold wealth, so he goes back to work.  And, as has happened to so many of us, his workload has now been doubled.

Det. Britten must solve crimes in the world in which his son survived, and also solve crimes in the world in which the wife is still around. It’s exhausting. But Det. Britten discovers that working twice as much has made him better at his job. Which, in­cred­ibly, is just what bosses all across America have been saying the past couple years.

 Making things even more complicated, in each world, Det. Britten’s bureau has assigned him a different partner. In one reality, it’s Steve Harris from “The Practice.” In the other reality, it’s “That ‘70’s Show” star” Wilmer Valderrama.

 And, as if all this is not tough enough for one detective to keep straight, Britten’s bureau also has assigned him a different therapist in each reality. In one reality it’s Cherry Jones; it’s BD Wong in the other.