Tuesday ratings: New Girl debuts big; prepare to hear "adorkable" another million times

America has apparently rediscovered its love affair with "sassy single girl in the big city" sitcoms, what with the big debut of 2 Broke Girls Monday night and the fact that Fox's new "Zooey Deschanel is in a really annoying advertising campaign" sitcom New Girl opened last night to numbers better than Fox's hit Glee. Pulling in 10.08 million viewers to Glee's 8.91 million, New Girl certainly got a good-sized sampling from viewers, and its 4.7 rating in the 18-49-year-old demographic was the best of the night (runner-up NCIS pulled a 4.2). (Remember: Those ratings represent a rough percentage of households in the 18-49-year-old bracket tuning in. So right around 4.7 percent of you 18-49-year-olds who own a TV were watching New Girl at 9 p.m. Eastern/Pacific.)

Glee was down quite a bit from last year's premiere, but that was back when the show was a stratospheric super hit, instead of the regular old hit it is right now. (It pulled in 12.45 million for last year's debut.) Its number was roughly comparable to where the show was in the spring, however, which suggests that if the show can avoid further audience erosion, it will have hit a comfortable plateau, with a number that will keep it on the air for years. (Whether or not that will actually happen is anybody's guess; we had these conversations about Heroes back in the day, too.) Raising Hope, meanwhile, closed out the night with a number roughly comparable to its series premiere last fall, pulling in 6.87 million viewers and a 3.1 in the demo.

The most-viewed program of the night, though? That was the venerable old warhorse NCIS, usually TV's top scripted program, which pulled in 19.55 million viewers. It was followed by NCIS: Los Angeles, which garnered 16.69 million viewers, and the Dancing With The Stars results show, which pulled in 14.54 million viewers. The night's biggest debut in raw viewership was for the new "Poppy Montgomery can remember your birthday and a lot of other stuff" detective show Unforgettable, which pulled in 13.98 million viewers (though New Girl stomped it in the demo, as Unforgettable posted only a 2.9 there).

Other highlights:

• NBC's Parenthood continues a fairly solid, if unspectacular, performance, hanging on to much of its audience from last year, despite the erosion of its lead-in, The Biggest Loser, which was down significantly from last season's debut.
• CW's Sarah Michelle Gellar vehicle Ringer fell just over a quarter from last week's premiere, pulling in just 1.96 million viewers. We'd say it wasn't long for this world, but, well, 90210, which is on before it, 1.56 million, and that's in its fourth season. So who knows anything anymore?
• The only show we haven't talked about from last night is Body Of Proof, so why not? It pulled in 9.65 million viewers, all of whom said, "Oh, that Dana Delany is so nice."