[News] The Duo establishes itself as Monday-Tuesday leader.

[News] The Duo establishes itself as Monday-Tuesday leader.
Cr. - dramabeans

Dream High‘s departure from airwaves paves the way for a new Monday-Tuesday ratings leader, and it’s MBC’s The Duo, the switched-at-birth sageuk drama starring Chun Jung-myung and Lee Sang-yoon as men living each other’s lives.

The latest ratings put The Duo well in front with an 18.4% rating for Tuesday’s episode, its highest to date, buoyed by the entrance of its adult cast. (The 32-episode drama spent a good number of years in the main characters’ childhoods, and although the young actors earned praise for their performances, let’s be honest: We’re all in it for the grown-up boys.)

Second-place finisher was SBS’s finance-themed Midas with a 12.4%, while new kid on the block Crime Squad came in third with a 7.9%. It’s not a great number for the crime drama starring Song Il-kook as a hotheaded cop and Lee Jong-hyuk as his (ice-cold, yet so hot) police chief boss — but I take comfort in Girlfriday’s favorable impression of its premiere episode.

This is good news for MBC, which has had very little luck cultivating hits in recent years. Although the so-called “MBC curse” is reserved for the ill-fated Wednesday-Thursday slot, MBC has been struggling all around, and badly needed The Duo to be a hit. (They gambled on it, tacking on 11 extra episodes of Queen of Reversals to accommodate The Duo’s delayed filming schedule even though the ratings didn’t really justify the extension. MBC’s only other midweek drama with a decent showing was the cute ball o’ fluff My Princess, although ratings on that slid down as the story got a little less cute and a lot more boring.)

I don’t anticipate that either Crime Squad or Midas will suddenly shoot up to double their ratings, so I suspect The Duo will find its path clear to remain in the top slot and, perhaps, perform well into the 20′s, ratings-wise.