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Articles · Supernatural · TV Shows

TV Spoilers & Speculation Corner: 6/22/11

This entry is part 25 of 26 in the series Spoilers 2011: Part 1

Spoilers 2011: Part 1

This week, we have spoilers for Supernatural:

Supernatural (Friday nights, 9pm, CW)
By Paula R. Stiles

Well, things are starting to pick up with the spoilers, but it’s still slim pickin’s. We found out on Monday that season seven will begin on September 23 and it was officially announced yesterday that Supernatural will appear at Comic-Con 2011 on Sunday, July 24, 11:15am-12:15pm in Hall H (which is reputed to be the largest venue in the place). Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles are confirmed to appear, pending announcements for other actors or producers (i.e. the writers). Also, the Supernatural anime series will be part of preview night on Wednesday, July 20 in Ballroom 20, along with shows Alcatraz, The Secret Circle, and Person of Interest. Here’s hoping we get another blooper reel and preview clip. We will be covering Comic-Con again this year.

We reported last week that the season six DVD would be out on September 13. There is also pricing: $59.98 for DVD and $69.98 for Blu-ray (But we all know Best Buy and Target will probably be selling it dirt cheap out of the gate, with little toys. I loves me the little toys. And the dirt-cheap part).

A new interview with a media programmer in the industry (albeit not with the CW) speculates that the CW is beginning to skew its attention span toward the older end of the A18-34 bracket. It doesn’t mention Supernatural (practically dances around it), but an older-viewer-skewing trend wouldn’t hurt the show at all, since it has an older audience than most other shows on the network.

Director Guy Norman Bee confirmed that he will be directing episode 7.03 (He goes to Vancouver July 18 and starts shooting “around 7/28“), 7.09 and 7.21, and that Jensen Ackles will be directing the first-produced episode (but that it won’t necessarily be the first aired. It’s been slated as 7.02). He also reassured anxious fans that just because Misha Collins was no longer a regular, that didn’t mean Castiel would not continue on the show. While he was careful to say that he had no actual spoilers about Castiel’s actual fate, he expressed confidence that the showrunners were all “very aware” of Castiel’s popularity. He promised this season: “Without sending “spoilers” I will tease as much as I can!”

One interesting thing Bee said on June 17 was that he had “not a clue [about what 7.03 is about]…the writers are laying out the season now but It’s not even close to being written yet.” This might indicate that the script Ben Edlund said he was writing could be either 7.02 (directed by Ackles) or 7.01, the season premiere.

Finally, ratings. This week, Supernatural tied for first in the 18-49 demo (0.4/1) on the CW, despite dropping to 880,000 in audience. Remember, folks, that the demo is what’s important. Not that the audience was that bad compared to what everybody else was getting on the network. And this was “Live Free or Twihard”, skipping over “Weekend at Bobby’s”. Which was, ironically, far more relevant to the storyline in the end. Still, Vampire Dean was fun.

We’ll be back next week with more spoilers. Stay tuned and check out our reviews of Game of Thrones, Doctor Who, The Event and Supernatural.

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— Paula R. Stiles

Paula is not at all paranoid about government conspiracies after six years in EMS, two years in Africa for the Peace Corps, a few summers with the Park Service, and ten years studying the Knights Templar. She's seen governments in action. They couldn't cover up a toy picnic table, let alone evidence of alien visitation. Writes about science for fun, history for money, and zombies for the company. You can read her sober-as-a-judge book about Templars in medieval Spain, Templar Convivencia, on Amazon. You can find her homepage at: http://thesnowleopard.net.

8 Comments

  1. Kay says:
    June 22, 2011 at 3:42 pm

    Thanks for rounding up the spoilers. Jared tweeted today that he had received scripts for both 7.01 and 7.02 but Bee tweeted that he hadn’t received 7.03. So I would also guess that Edlund wrote 7.01 or 7.02. I wonder if it’s 7.01, because that is sure to have Castiel in it, and Edlund understand the character the best. Just my opinion, but I feel that after the utter mess of Season 6, the first few episodes of Season 7 have to be written really well in order to hold audience interest.
    Is it my imagination or do the two new writers this season, Blacker and Acker, sound quite condescending to fans on Twitter? They seem to be following in the grand traditions of Kripke and Gamble in that respect. Will have to see how their script(s) turn out.
    About CW skewing its attention towards the higher end of the A18-34 demo, did you see the age break-up for many shows? Supernatural viewers’ median age is 37 in Live + 7 viewing. Nikita is 41.8%! Smallville was in-between.
    http://geekfurious.blogspot.com/2011/06/what-geek-tv-show-has-youngest-viewers.html

  2. Paula R. Stiles says:
    June 22, 2011 at 8:11 pm

    Thanks for the info, Kay. I checked Padalecki’s Twitter this morning, but he hadn’t said anything about scripts yet. The question of who wrote 7.01 is important because in the past, the current showrunner has always written the season premiere. If Edlund wrote 7.01, then that means either the pattern has been broken or it’s an early sign that we have a new showrunner.

    Not that it would be small potatoes if Edlund wrote 7.02 because Ackles is directing that one and many fans would love to see Ackles direct an Edlund script. If Padalecki just received 7.01 and 7.02 and 7.03 won’t be filming until the end of July, it seems pretty unlikely that Edlund was talking about writing 7.03…unless he’s a really slow writer. And he’s been doing this too long to be that slow.

    I think it’s too early to tell with Blacker and Acker. I suspect a perfect storm has been set up where they are afraid to say anything spoilery or potentially negative about their new bosses (for reasons obvious to anyone who keeps a job longer than two weeks) and then somebody on the show mentioned the “crazy fans” and when certain Twitter followers (many of them sockpuppets of a very small number of people with far too much time on their hands, I bet) tweet-bombed them, they assumed these represent fans in general. Myself, I care the most about their writing something I want to see. The tweeting is a side issue.

    I did see that graph. Mostly, it confirmed something that shows up in other, more rigorous studies–older people tend to watch TV in the traditional manner and younger people…don’t. SPN actually skewed younger than other shows on that graph. What that means is unclear. It could mean that more younger viewers watch the show or it could just mean that the fandom in general watches the show “live” more than other shows that have lost huge amounts of their live audience in recent times, like Fringe and Nikita, leaving more older viewers of the traditional “If it’s on at this time, I’ll watch it” configuration.

  3. Fates3 says:
    June 23, 2011 at 2:20 am

    Thanks for the round up, Paula!

    I really find it interesting that Supernatural is moving to Hall H this year. As far as I know, that’s a huge place, and traditionally for the movies (I thought). So for them to be going there, is pretty big.

    Soooo glad that Jensen is attending again! Thank goodness. It will prove interesting to see which writer’s attend, and if Misha goes. Hey, Beaver was there last year, and he was “recurring.” If Misha is really recurring, then there should be no problem with him attending.

    I’m going to have to start following Bee on Twitter, LOL! Maybe he will be able to tweet out some reassurances in regards to the show.

    All of your talk about Edlund writing 7.01 or not, has made me intensely curious what episode he is writing. It’s a smart idea to lead with your best foot forward, especially in a season where fan’s might be a bit disgruntled (again, deja vu to season 6), and out of the big 3, Edlund is definitely the “best foot” they have going.

  4. Manto says:
    June 23, 2011 at 3:54 am

    I just popped in to say that Jared faxed to a fan the first page of the episode Jensen will be directing and it says that Dabb and Loflin will be directing. If it is like Weekend at Bobby’s I am hopeful for the end result…

    http://doctorcolinjames.tumblr.com/post/6814440245/this-is-what-jared-faxed-that-girl

  5. Manto says:
    June 23, 2011 at 3:56 am

    * that should have been “Dabb and Loflin have written it”. Sorry!

  6. elena says:
    June 23, 2011 at 6:12 am

    Thanks for the spoiler round up, Paula.

    According to zap2it, Jensen will direct 7.3, which if the script cover sheet Jared reportedly faxed a fan is legit, was written by D&L (maybe the 7.1 there refers to the order of filming?). So it sounds like the cast just got the scripts for 7.1 and 7.3, which might mean Edlund’s working on 7.2. In a way, I’m actually happy- Edlund writes such an awesome Dean (and Dean & Cas relationship), it would have been a shame to miss out on that since the Jensen directed episode will most likely be Dean lite.

    Also on that fax, it lists Kripke and Edlund now as just regular producers. Maybe they’re keeping all of this quiet so as to make the announcement about status changed at Comic Con.

    Link to the script cover sheet:

    http://yfrog.com/z/kgpbxumj

    As to the new Bens, I’m really not impressed with the level of maturity they’ve shown so far with their tweets. Calling fans “dumdums” because they didn’t understand a joke, threatening to block anyone who sends them ideas for storylines or repeatedly tweets them with the “SaveCastiel” campaign instead of just ignoring them, saying “most” SPN fans are nice (I don’t remember the exact adjective)……they’re definitely not coming across like the show’s goodwill ambassadors/ideal PR dream team. We all know there are extreme fans out there. But compared with how professionally Misha and Jim Beaver conduct themselves on twitter, these two come across sounding petulant and whiny. The only reason it concerns me is that I hope this type of immaturity isn’t reflected in their writing, specifically in the interpersonal dynamics between the characters. Kripke thinking that Bobby’s rant was hilarious and justified because Dean was being a pussy was bad enough; we really don’t need another 2 writers who are clueless when it comes to how normal people operate.

  7. shamangrrl says:
    June 23, 2011 at 7:28 am

    Edlund is the “best foot” going, if he isn’t interfered with. I think that’s what happened in the “Fairies” episode. The difference in tone between the first and second half made no sense, otherwise.

    With regard to the new writers, I hope that they’re good. I, too, care about their product – it’s too soon to know whether they’ll be great or not. But with the cluster of this past season, they aren’t going to be given much slack.

  8. Allison says:
    June 27, 2011 at 10:23 am

    Thank you for interesting thoughts concerning SPN. Sadly, I think my interest in SPN died with season 6, at least interest in watching. I am however, curious to find out how bad season 7 turns out to be.. Yeah, I know, I need to give it a chance – though I did that the last episodes of season 5 and almost entirely season 6, and it turned out to be as bad as expected – or worse!

    Sorry Jensen!