Cartoon Network; NBC

Star Wars: The Clone Wars premiered big. Friday Night Lights premiered…well… Anyway, it premiered. 

When The Clone Wars bowed in theaters in August, it was called a glorified TV pilot, and sure enough it brought glory to Cartoon Network—4 million viewers for Friday's back-to-back episodes, a new record for the cable network.

Friday Night Lights' third-season opener was watched by, um, 400,000, The New York Times reported, down, um, 6 million viewers from last fall's premiere. But don't punt the football yet: FNL is running exclusively right now on DirecTV, the subscription-only satellite system that helped save the series.

Possibly in need of saving soon: NBC's Heroes , which hit another new low last week (9.5 million) and was down again last night. So no one's watching, right? Not quite.

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CBS

Apparently Maw-Maw's getting in all her favorite crime stories before the daggummit digital conversion ruins everything.

That's one way of explaining how while most premiere-week shows were down from last year, an uncommon number of veteran CBS shows were up.

NCIS (18 million) added 4.1 million viewers over last fall; CSI: Miami (17.2 million) grew by 4.5 million. Criminal Minds (17 million) added 4.3 million to its ranks, while CSI: NY (14.6 million) scored 1.9 million more.

Even two comedy shows got into the act: Two and a Half Men (14.9 million), which was up by 1.3 million; and How I Met Your Mother (9.8 million), up by 1.7 million.

One CBS series that didn't get the memo was Without a Trace (11.3 million), which shed more viewers—5.4 million—than any returning show, save NBC's Heroes (10 million), which suffered a whopping 7 million desertions.

One of the only non-CBS shows to build from fall premiere to fall premiere was the week's No. 1 show, the Monday edition of ABC's Dancing With the Stars (21.3 million, up 100,000 viewers), which celebrated the debut of 82-year-old Cloris Leachman.

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ABC/ Kelsey McNeal; NBC/Adam Taylor

Those poor superheroes. They never had a chance against Cloris Leachman.

On the first night of the fall TV season, Dancing With the Stars' two-hour season opener ruled with 21.1 million viewers, per Nielsen Media Research estimates.

Dancing's success helped defeat Heroes, which recorded its least-watched season premiere ever.

The NBC show, now three seasons old, averaged 9.9 million for back-to-back new episodes. Last year, the show started off with 17 million viewers, thanks in part to NBC's plumping up of the numbers with a special Saturday-night repeat.

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Chris Haston/NBC

Kristen Bell is coming back to give Heroes a jolt.

The Gossip Girl narrator will be reprising her role of the electricity-slinging Elle Bishop on the NBC drama's third season, a network rep confirmed to E! News.

The malcontented character was last seen learning that her Company-leading pop had conducted endless experiments on her when she was a little girl, a revelation that didn't leave her electromagnetic hands very happy.

She then unwittingly saved Mohinder, Molly and Maya from Sylar's latest attempt at mass murder—although she failed to cap the power-hungry psycho—and, touched by Mohinder's gratitude, calmly said, "Cool."

"I’m just happy to be electrocuting people again!" the 28-year-old Bell, who will have another multiepisode story arc, told People.

As originally reported by E! Online's Watch With Kristin, Bell will not be a full-time character.

The third season of Heroes premieres Sept. 22.

Teen Vogue

Yeah, yeah, we know. By saving the cheerleader, we can save the world.

But the world may need to save Hayden Panettiere from possibly believing she really is the indestructible rah-rah girl she portrays on the boob tube.

In the June issue of Teen Vogue, the Heroes heroine chats about the tabloids and how invasive they can be when it comes to her personal life.

"Nothing is private," she says. "And when they write about you, it's almost completely false."

Of course, when pressed if she's referring to stories about her rumored romance with costar Milo Ventimiglia, the tiny TV titan insists: "I'll not comment until the day I die!"

Um, Hayden, despite what your alter ego Claire is capable of doing, from what we hear, voicing the truth after you've passed on tends to be a wee bit difficult.

Michael Pasquale/NBC

Forget saving—come this summer, kids and creepy aging fanboys alike can do whatever they want to the cheerleader.

NBC has teamed up with Mezco Toyz to launch the first batch of collectible figures based on the Heroes characters.

Hayden Panettiere's cheerleader Claire Bennet, Masi Oka's time- and space-bending office drone Hiro Nakamura, Milo Ventimiglia's absorbent Peter Petrelli, Sendhil Ramamurthy's erudite Mohinder Suresh and Zachary Quinto's villainous Sylar are the characters that made the initial cut and are set to debut in all their seven-inch glory in June.

The remainder of the superpowered set will be released in two additional waves over the course of the year, as will—most potentially disturbingly—an assortment of alternate heads for the dolls, which will cost between $17 and $20.

Living out adolescent fantasies in the privacy of one's own home...priceless.