Please no, please no...

[hells_half_acre]

 Judging from this sneak peak: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCG-abq3vQM (SPOILERS!)

The writers may be as comfused as the prop department as to what year it is....I really hope no one actually SAYS it's 2010 on the show...because seriously, am I the ONLY ONE WHO KEEPS TRACK OF THE TIMELINE ON THIS SHOW!?!?! The comment in the clip is completely recoverable from though, just as long as no one says it's 2010, I'll be happy....

Someone needs to petition the show to hire me - they need someone to keep them from making idiotic mistakes....like saying something takes place a year later and yet only placing it 4 months later...ugh.

Comments

[borgmama1of5.livejournal.com]

I did not look at the clip (trying to not do spoilers) but I had a thought about the timeline problem the big 'October 2010' calendar presented in 6.06. I actually thought I needed to run this past you when it occurred to me...

First, the camera shot of that calendar was very deliberate. I have a hard time thinking it was a mistake. So I wonder if it was a message to those of us who take our timelines very seriously. It felt to me like we were being told, "Look, we know we said Sam hunted alone for a year, which would mean he came back in May 2011, but it's just too much work to keep thinking to move everything 18 months later than current time, so we aren't going to bother. Pretend a year went by intellectually but we're only going to worry about six months and ignore the paradox."

The only way to timeline this would then be to have everything up to Swan Song as year 2010-A, and then Exile on Main Street takes place in 2010-B, with 2010-B theoretically 18 months after 2010-A.

I really wish you would be hired to keep things straight for the rest of us...

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

I just think it didn't even occur to them...they always write/make props according to the predicted air-date of the episode...so I think they are just keeping with that habit and not even thinking about the actual time passage in the story...

I'm beginning to think my S6 timeline will have to have a "logical" version and an "as seen on the show" version :P It's either that or I just declare there to be two 2010s, like you did...I don't know. Sigh...

[ramblin_rosie]

I'm leaning toward Season 6 actually taking place on the wrong side of a quantum mirror and RoboSam actually being a Replicator. But I've already got one Stargate crossover AU, so....

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Haha, that is not one of my fandoms, so I'll just take your word for it ;)

[alexseanchai]

No, actually, that one makes sense. The start-of-season infodump said monsters had been acting weird for a while, and that conversation happened mid-2011 story time, so it is not at all implausible that the monsters started acting weird sometime in 2010, nor that the sometime was fairly early in the year. 'Sides, if you think about it, when's the latest S5 monster hunt that doesn't have a direct connection to the apocalypse? For sake of argument, demons and angels are not monsters. So the latest S5 monster hunt is 99 Problems, but she's from Revelation. Before that, the zombies raised by Death, and before that, Famine, so we're talking Swap Meat here, the ghost that got us into the town with the teen witches. When's Swap Meat happen? January 2010? December 2009? And we haven't seen ghosts yet this season and I don't think we've heard about them either, so ghost behavior might be unchanged, so we might actually be talking Interrupted.

We have no data about monster behavior dating between Swap Meat and Exile, save that at some point in between the two monster behavior went squirly. It makes perfect sense to say that that point is late enough in 2009 or early enough in 2010 for it to be understood that squirly monster behavior is a '10 thing and normal monster behavior is an '09 thing.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

True, that makes me feel better...just as long as he doesn't follow it up with the lines "this is 2010, the normal rules don't apply" or something like that.

[ramblin_rosie]

Also, glancing back over your timeline, it looks like the last chance Dean probably had to hunt an actual werewolf was the latter half of '09. *And* it seems to me that if Crowley were speaking of events of the previous year, he would have said "so last year" instead of specifying 2009.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Thanks! You guys are making me more hopeful...I'll have to keep my fingers crossed that the writers aren't dumb - or at least keep it vague enough that I can continue to ignore the prop department and claim it's 2011 like it's supposed to be.

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

I'm beginning to think unless they start harping on it, I'm just going to forget the "one year later" references. They were pretty much limited to the first episode- hey, which was like a pilot! Maybe it's a curse. You know, like the two year/four year thing from the actual pilot! But I digress. Anyway, is there any reason that it couldn't have been four months of intense family bonding between Lisa, Dean, and Ben and four months of hunting and being a robot for Sam? For plot reasons, I mean. Obviously they said differently, but I'm looking for a handwave here.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but it doesn't fit character-wise. No way in 4 months would Dean be where he was...he needed a year to set up that routine, and to be properly outraged that Sam didn't tell him when he was back. Plus, they repeated "a year" way too much for me to ignore. I have my rules, sadly.

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

I think three weeks and he would have been mad.

I'm willing to handwave Dean's domesticity in the same way I accepted his not-four-months-40-years-yet functionality. Obviously, the boy's got a magic psyche.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

:P

Fair enough. I wish I were like you and could reconcile it in my head like that...but alas, I guess I'm too fond of the idea of it being a whole year.

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

I've not yet reconciled it. I'm just throwing stuff out there;) Plus, I like the idea of Dean having a magic psyche. Along with Bella's idea about his secret super power being ManPain (it lets people beat posession!)

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

LOL

Oh man...it's funny because it's true. *still laughing*

[galwithglasses.livejournal.com]

Thought of you when I saw the event posters in the alley outside the lair in the Twihard episode. The event was for Nov. 6, 2010 but I figured maybe it could be that the posters had been up for a year. Hmmm.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Ooo, I had missed the event posters in that episode! Thanks for pointing them out (even if the date on them is ridiculous).

What I've been doing so far is taking the month and day from the props (such as calendars and event posters) and ignoring the year...but yeah, if anyone actually SAYS it's 2010, I'll have to stop doing that and go with the alternate universe angle or something.

[risenshine22.livejournal.com]

I think the props department made a mistake, but just for the logic of the show: there are people, like myself who have calendars from previous years hanging around. Maybe the girl loved the calendar so much that she wanted to keep it and ignored the wrong weekdays (lame, I know).
What I would love to see on the show? Another 2010 calendar or poster and Dean and Sam making fun of it! Someone should point that out on the next convention!

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Haha, yeah...believe me, I've debated whether I want to be crazy enough to send a letter to the props department to tell them about the mistake.

Sadly, it wasn't just the calendar. The date was also wrong on the missing persons reports that Dean looked at in the vampire episode.