I mean, without going into anything spoiler specific, things are going in a direction I would have speculated based on the scant spoilers I had for the rest of this season, but I shouldn't be this impatient. There's four weeks to go 'till Out on a Limb, which is the first episode I downloaded clips from, and five weeks till the one that aired in the US this week. But, as always at this time of year, the UK airings start to catch up rapidly.
Looky, this is how it'll run:
| No. & Title | US | UK (E4) |
| 12.12 Split Decisions | 12 Jan 06 | 23 Mar 06 |
| 12.13 Body & Soul | 2 Feb 06* | 30 Mar 06 |
| 12.14 Quintessance of Dust | 9 Feb 06 | 6 Apr 06 |
| 12.15 Darfur | 2 Mar 06* | 13 Apr 06 |
| 12.16 Out on a Limb | 16 Mar 06 | 20 Apr 06 |
| 12.17 Lost in America | 23 Mar 06 | 27 Apr 06 |
| 12.18 Strange Bedfellows | 30 Mar 06 | 4 May 06 |
| 12.19 No Place to Hide | 27 Apr 06* | 11 May 06 |
| 12.20 The spoilery title | 4 May 06 | 18 May 06 |
| 12.21 The untitled one | 11 May 06 | 25 May 06 |
| 12.22 Twenty One Guns | 18 May 06 | 1 Jun 06 |
| * indicates a big break | ||
So those huge gaps in the US running order mean that by the finale, the UK is just two weeks behind. I know one year Sky's airings of Buffy actually caught up with the US airing, so we got it less than 24 hours later.
I find the broken up method of scheduling a show rather odd. It seems to go against the idea of building an audience week on week, especially when the show is essentially a classy soap about medical staff. Here I am struggling to wait a month for a particular episode but I've got new episodes arriving every week. I can't imagine waiting a month because the show is on a break, with nothing but DVDs and the oddly scheduled More4 repeats.
As I have TV-on-demand via the teleport system, and BBCi are trialing streaming programmes after they air for global access to the BBC's output, I suspect the more scattered American network system is one even those of us who don't currently download whole episodes will end up adjusting to, but I do wonder if I'll stick with my digital broadcast from E4 so that the habit isn't disturbed.
In the meantime, I may bake cookies and watch my clips again.
(I was doing some e-commuting last month, thus catching season 6 (pregnant Carol) during my afternoon tea break. I've been travelling for work this week, hence missing last night's episode. And I'm travelling next week as well. Argh.)
1 comment:
I think I have been spoiled - indirectly through neela ray, and then another ep, but I'm pretending it hasn't happened. Or something. I don't download so I'm going to stick with the British way of doing thigs. Apart from habit, I prefer having a steady stream of weekly eps later rather than all over thee place. Coming from a country where weekly is the norm, the American system just baffles me. Like you say, it seems like no way to build an audience. No wonder I think exposition is clunky, if they're catering for an audience that's had a gap of weeks,t hey have a ot of memor to refresh. Can't they just film a lot in advance and delay the transmission?
And having started watching some TV seasons direct from DVD, I'd have thought that the American stop-start system must seem even more weird to those who start watching shows as and when suits them.
Over the summer, I watched Veronica Mars and Gilmore Girls on satellite channels nyghtly - compeletly not how I was intended to watch them, so if was a bit like watching them on speed. I didn't have the normal week to absorb dramatic impact.
I know one year Sky's airings of Buffy actually caught up with the US airing, so we got it less than 24 hours later. More or less the same thing happened with the first serise of Smallvilee on Channel 4. And then the schedulers did their usual.
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