Tue 20 Oct 2009
PAST LIFE gets cut down to 7 episodes
Posted by Brad L under Brad L., FOX
[7] Comments
With AMERICAN IDOL coming back to Fox midseason, the network has cut back PAST LIFE’S original 13 episode order to just 7 episodes.
“Due to the return of AMERICAN IDOL, 24 and our other midseason programming in January, as well as the back order of GLEE, we have a wealth of material for midseason and can only accommodate seven episodes of PAST LIFE on our schedule.”
Translation – this show is awful, we should never have picked it up in the first place so now we’re going to try and limit the damage as best we can. I’d almost be tempted to say there’s more chance Dollhouse airs out of Idol than Past Life but that’s not true.
What I find funny is that they’re using shows that were already on the mid season schedule with Past Life and working for the episode order being cut. That’s good.
So does this mean Dollhouse/Brothers/Til Death are getting a Full Season? or is something else going to Fridays to die in the Fox graveyard.
I believe ‘Til Death already has a full season, on top of the full season that barely aired last year. Fox easily burn off episodes on Sundays at 7:30 (or even double episodes from 7-7:30) and it would last them the full season.
Some Guy Named John, it certainly does raise some questions about Friday Nights… all I’m hearing is that as of today, they’re seriously considering ordering 3 scripts of DOLLHOUSE. Whether or not that is just a way of making Joss happy with them to do future business or because they really believe in a show no one watches is hard to say.
I’m wondering if they’re going to give Human Target the Tuesday night post-Idol spot instead. Originally it was set to take Wednesdays, but with GLEE doing so well I don’t think they’d want to mess with a good thing.
Craig, Glee & Human Target were always supposed to timeshare Wednesdays, independent of Past Life. It was thought this was due to the musical production aspects taking more time than a standard episode – the Human Target airings would allow the Glee crew extra time to prepare their latter batch of episodes.
So unless Fox plans on repeating the heck out of Glee, it is likely HT will still air on Wednesdays.
The real question being what airs on Tuesdays. Fox gave Lie to Me 3 extra scripts, and with the possible Dollhouse extras, I don’t think anyone knows what Tuesday/Thursday/Friday will look like in Spring, Fox included.
My understanding on the Glee/Human Target situation was similar to Tom’s, which does raise the interesting question of whether Glee will just air from mid season next season, especially with Fox and Murphy keen to do a ‘Glee Tour’ over the summer. Its hard to see how they’d fit shooting in around all of that…
When it comes to the mid season line-up on Fox its hard to predict.
I don’t think they’ll move Fringe back behind Idol and I absolutely don’t think they should for various reasons, none of which I can really be bothered to get into. I’d like to see Lie To Me moved back behind Idol just because I’m a fan and think the show has a lot of potential but I won’t be holding my breath on that just yet.
I think the most likely course of action for Fox might be that they’ll just run a two hour Idol block on Tuesday.