"Witch's Lament" is the 163rd episode of the ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

 television series Desperate Housewives

Desperate Housewives

Desperate Housewives is an American television comedy-drama series created by Marc Cherry and produced by ABC Studios and Cherry Productions. Executive producer Cherry serves as Showrunner. Other executive producers since the fourth season include Marc Cherry, Bob Daily, George W...

. It is the sixth episode of the show's eighth season and was broadcast on October 30, 2011.

Title reference

The episode title, "Witch's Lament" is the title of a song featured in the musical Into the Woods

Into the Woods

Into the Woods is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Lapine. It debuted in San Diego at the Old Globe Theatre in 1986, and premiered on Broadway in 1987. Bernadette Peters' performance as the Witch and Joanna Gleason's portrayal of the Baker's Wife brought acclaim...

Reception

According to Nielsen ratings

Nielsen Ratings

Nielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States...

, "Witch's Lament" was watched by 9.280 million viewers and held 3.1 rating between 18 and 49 years of age. The episode was competing against Sunday Night Football

Sunday Night Football

Sunday Night Football is a weekly American football game held throughout most of the season by the National Football League. Sunday night games have been played regularly since 1987 and have thus far aired on three different television outlets:...

on NBC, which averaged 21.98 million viewers and a 13.8 rating/21 share, The Good Wife on CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

, which was watched by 10.12 million viewers but held a 2.0 rating and Family Guy

Family Guy

Family Guy is an American animated television series created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series centers on the Griffins, a dysfunctional family consisting of parents Peter and Lois; their children Meg, Chris, and Stewie; and their anthropomorphic pet dog Brian...

on Fox

Fox Broadcasting Company

Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...

 which was watched by 5.96 million viewers and held 3.2/7 rating in the 18-49 demographic. The episode gained an additional 2.0 million viewers and 0.9 rating in the week following the original broadcast due to DVR recordings

Digital video recorder

A digital video recorder , sometimes referred to by the merchandising term personal video recorder , is a consumer electronics device or application software that records video in a digital format to a disk drive, USB flash drive, SD memory card or other local or networked mass storage device...

.