The nascent Internet tradition of the hate-watch received a boost last week as Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever overcame caustic reviews to become TV’s most tweeted show on a Saturday night over a holiday weekend. It was a Pyrrhic victory for Lifetime, however, as Grumpy Cat was crushed in the ratings by rival network Hallmark Channel’s Christmas Under Wraps starring Candace Cameron-Bure, who is not a celebrity cat but was on Full House. (Grumpy Cat pulled in 1.8 million viewers on its initial showing, 4 million short of Christmas Under Wraps’ 5.8 million, and scored a 0.5 rating among viewers 18-49.)
But, as The A.V. Club’s Libby Hill pointed out in her review, product placement appears to have made ratings for Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever irrelevant anyway. Not to mention that tweets are only mean if you actually read them, not aggregate them into abstract data which will be used to sell network executives on A Cat Rides A Roomba For All Eight Nights Of Hanukkah.