TV Spoilers & Speculation Corner: 01/18/12

This week, we have spoilers for Once Upon a Time and Supernatural:

Once Upon a Time (Sunday nights, 8pm, ABC)
By Heather S. Vina

Someone put up a new trailer for this week’s episode on Youtube. It’s very Snow/Charming/Mary/David centric.

E!Online has some spoilers up in their recent spoiler column for the show.

“tiffanyrush: Anything on Once Upon a Time!
“Prepare to meet Jefferson, a former criminal in the fairy-tale world who is extremely handsome. (Aren’t all TV criminals?) In Storybrooke, he’s a mysterious figure who is in the know about a certain curse and attempts to sway Emma (Jennifer Morrison) into believing as well.”

“fotreya: Something about Once Upon a Time, about Snow and Charming! Any scoop?
“David (Josh Dallas) is about to make a big decision regarding his love life that should make David and Mary Margaret (Ginnifer Goodwin) very happy.”

I’m intrigued by someone knowing about the curse and attempting to sway Emma towards believing it. Fingers crossed it works, because I’d like a little forward movement on that, thanks!

E! also has up an interview with Jennifer Morrison, where she talks about her new love interest, in the form of Eion Bailey, who appeared at the end of this past week’s episode. Sounds like he might start believing Henry’s story.

There are some speculations that this role could be Rump’s son, Baelfire. Not sure about that one, but it would be interesting if he was Bael all grown up. And if Snow White’s daughter fell for Rumpelstiltskin’s son!

SpoilerTV has up some Behind The Scenes pictures of episode 1.11, “Fruit of the Poisonous Tree”. There are pictures of Snow White and her dad King Leopold, the Evil Queen, and Prince Charming. And a set of behind-the-scenes pictures of Mary, David and Granny.

They also have up the casting call for this Jefferson character: “[JEFFERSON] Late 20s to Mid 30s, a rakishly handsome, former criminal who in Fairy Tale Land has given up his life of crime and dedicated himself to his daughter, while in Storybrooke he is a dangerous and mysterious figure who knows about the curse and attempts to convince Emma that it is real. Guest star. Any ethnicity.”

Interesting. I wonder who his daughter will be? And what happened to her in the real world?

Matt Roush at TV Guide has a short Q&A up:

“Question: On Once Upon a Time, what has Snow White done to the Evil Queen for her to go to such lengths to punish her? – K

“Matt Roush: The key word here is ‘evil’. No matter who’s telling the story, the Queen’s murderous ire toward Snow White is all about envy, jealousy and irrational spite. In this version, the curse is the Queen’s way of denying her nemesis a happy ending. For now. Besides, what fun would it be if they actually got along?”

The show has been chosen to be featured at Paleyfest 2012:

“The Paley Center for Media Reveals Full Lineup of Honorees for PaleyFest 2012:

“Beverly Hills, CA, January 10, 2012 – The Paley Center for Media today announced the full lineup of honorees for the upcoming PaleyFest: The William S. Paley Television Festival, with the latest additions including freshman series New Girl and Revenge, as well as returning favorites The Office, Castle, The Vampire Diaries, and Community. These series will join previously announced honorees Two and a Half Men, Sons of Anarchy, Once Upon a Time, Mad Men, Modern Family, and American Horror Story, which will each take part in the Center’s annual two-week celebration of great television at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills March 2 – 14, 2012.”

And finally, the overnight ratings came out for Sunday’s episode. They were down from last week’s return, to a 3.3 in the demo and 9.839 million viewers. Down about 11%, but considering they were up against the Golden Globes and an overrun football game on Fox, not really that bad! Hopefully, they will go back up again this coming week.

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

This week’s spoilers were a bit messy, sprawling and controversial, so I’ll do my best to keep it clean and streamlined, here. First, lest they get buried, there’s an interview from last week with Sera Gamble about the production challenges for 7.12; some 7.15 set photos of Sam and Dean in raincoats in Kootenai, Idaho (Guess that’s the location for the episode); some general (non-spoilery) CW promos, and a preview for 7.13 (which airs February 3). Yes, that’s nekkid Dean you’re seeing in that very silly promo. And yes, he does have a daughter for a day, too.

There was, of course, the ongoing flap over the People’s Choice Awards. In a nutshell: The People’s Choice Awards ceremony is aired on CBS. Supernatural won both of its categories (Favorite Network TV Drama and Favorite Sci-Fi/Fantasy Show) and the CW put up some online and TV congratulations. The latter is not usually aired on the PCA show, but is, instead, mailed to the winners or given offstage. However, the former is usually a capper of the evening. So, imagine everyone’s surprise (Well…I wasn’t, but I’m cynical) when the awards were totally ignored during the broadcast, with only a prerecorded video from Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles aired online. Puzzling? Only if you didn’t know that Supernatural was up against CBS’s critical dahling, The Good Wife.

Predictably, saltgunners everywhere went ballistic (Hey, it is supposed to be a people‘s choice awards), both Padalecki and Ackles were asked for comment, and CBS was soundly thumped (Ah, Facebook) when it came out that neither actor went down to LA because they were working and they’d already been told the award wouldn’t be given onstage. So, really, why bother to shut down production for that?

I’d just like to point out, though, that just because CBS was a sore loser, doesn’t mean Supernatural fans should be sore winners. Regardless of all the kerfuffle, the show still won two awards, one of them quite a coup. And there’s not much CBS can do about that now. So, think of those shows who are lucky even to get nominated for an award, any award, and feel happy for this show.

The second controversy broke out due to a couple of interviews with Jared Padalecki (who did come down to LA for a Television Critics Association panel last week) and Robert Singer, and a tweet in which it was essentially admitted what was pretty obvious the moment Padalecki announced his baby’s upcoming due date – he’s going to take some time off near the end of the season (Some of us, shockingly enough, can count). To write around this, the show is going to write Sam ending up in a mental hospital and Castiel coming back in some form where he doesn’t quite seem to recognise Dean, and Dean will have a big moral dilemma as to what to do about Castiel. And if Dean’s own constantly-harped-on, catastrophically bad mental health takes a back seat to all this with no resolution, I will be very annoyed. I’m not sure what to think about the Castiel stuff, since there really were no new spoilers, aside from the sort-of-confirmation that it really will be Castiel and he won’t have lost his powers.

Now, I’m going to be honest, here – if this were happening with Jensen Ackles, would I be thrilled at the prospect of less Dean? No, not really (Not too wild about yet more soap-operatic writing of Crazy Sam’s PTSD, either, but Erica Winchester, here we come, anyway). But I’d still congratulate the happy parents-to-be and watch the episodes to see if they were any good. Then I’d decide whether or not I liked those Dean-less episodes, which is definitely not how some fans are reacting. Nope, they’re already threatening a mass exodus, as if that will change a thing, and double/triple/quadruple flouncing out of the fandom. I’m happy for the Padaleckis, but I also saw this situation coming from the moment the announcement came. Production for the season usually ends in March + Baby comes at the end of March = Less Sam at the end of this season, whether anybody likes it or not.

By the way, Padalecki has already confirmed that, if there’s a season eight, he’s contracted for it, so don’t expect Sam to be written out permanently, regardless of what happens. As for the prospect of season eight, CW head Mark Pedowitz admitted they hadn’t made any official decisions about renewals, yet, but it was looking good for Supernatural. Granted, network heads will always tell the public a show’s doing just fine, right up until it gets axe. But all the other external signs indicate that the show is in no danger, so he’s probably not fudging on this one.

Padalecki’s small sabbatical could end up a good thing for the show. In fact, it may very well be a good thing for the show. The insistence on having both leads on every single week has made the format a bit stale and the previous mytharc focus has always been on Sam, which is very stale. And it’s not necessarily the beginning of the end for Sam as a character. As someone pointed out to me the other night, Gillian Anderson’s pregnancy forced the writers of The X-Files to write around it in such a way that they had to get a lot more creative with her character and put much more of the mytharc focus (which had previously been All About Mulder) on Scully than they would have, otherwise. And I say that as someone who used to be a much bigger Mulder fan than Scully fan. So, Padalecki’s absence (and relatively lighter load this season) can’t hurt the show if it forces the writers to give Dean the mytharc all the way through a season, for once. And it won’t hurt Sam as a character if it gives the writers the step back they need to generate some new story for him. Because he really, really needs new story.

Either way, Padalecki’s going to be taking time off to be a daddy pretty soon (from the breakdown they’re giving Sam and the dead silence about him in the spoilers thereafter, it could be as early as 7.18), he’s entitled to a little paternity leave, and no amount of kicking and screaming will make it not so. So, suck it up, congratulate the guy, and watch the show (or don’t, if it really bugs you that much).

As part of a mostly-forgotten controversy, Jim Beaver gave an interview to TV Guide last week, in which he talked about saying goodbye to the show. Many attempts have been made to reinterpret this interview (including by some on the show) into something where it’s not so final, but the extended mourning in “Adventures in Babysitting” looked pretty final to me. And apparently, “Death’s Door” looked pretty final to Jim Beaver (who is already off filming a story arc on Justified). Bobby’s dead. Even if he comes back as a ghost or a Leviathan or in an alternate reality, he’s dead. Humans who die on this show, and aren’t named “Sam” or “Dean”, don’t come back as regulars once they are killed off.

Finally, ratings for the show took a scary dip to 0.6 in the overnights, but came back up to a 0.7/2 and 1.55 million in the finals. Everyone else that night was down, too, with Grimm dropping to a 1.4 and Nikita taking another header into 0.5 territory. In comparison, The Vampire Diaries had a 1.2 and The Secret Circle 0.8 last Thursday, with Gossip Girl returning from its winter hiatus to a 0.6. So, Supernatural is still doing okay.

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