'The Blacklist' surges for fall finale

One more time, NBC’s The Blacklist is proving its hit status. The freshman action-procedural surged in the ratings for its fall finale, climbing to its best adult demo number since its series premiere back in September.

The Blacklist delivered 12.3 million viewers and a 3.5 rating among adults 18-49, up 17 percent from last week. The series tied its lead-in, The Voice‘s live Top 6 Performances, to top the night. Even given the strong and fairly seady Voice lead-in, and ABC airing a country music special instead of Castle, this is pretty impressive. There’s not another freshman drama on the schedule that’s pulling numbers in December that are anywhere close to their first episode (except perhaps The CW’s much more modestly rated The Originals and Reign). NBC plans to return The Blacklist in early January, more on those plans.

As for the rest of the Monday night crew, pretty much everybody was on par with their previous episodes, if not down a tad. Most notably: Fox’s Almost Human was down 11 percent — and was beaten by ABC’s A Charlie Brown Christmas repeat. Full chart: