Chats with Robbie Thompson
Mar. 6th, 2017 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hells_half_acreHello!
I still haven't watched last week's episode. I'll do that sometime today, promise.
The REASON that I haven't watched it is because I was at Emerald City Comic-Con since Thursday, and I literally haven't had the two hours minimum uninterrupted down-time that I would need to watch and post about an episode.
Emerald City Comic-Con was really fun! I don't go there for the celebs, so I can't tell you anything about Jeremy Renner or Millie Bobby Brown or Tom Felton - but I can tell you that Kelly Sue DeConnick and Matt Fraction remain awesome, that Johnnie Christmas is a great guy, that Ngozi Ukazu makes makes me smile by calling people "silly beans" much like I'd imagine Bitty would... and that there are tons of really creative people out there making super awesome things.
So, one guest at Emerald City Comic-Con this year was Robbie Thompson. I kept missing him on Thursday, but managed to find him on Friday. His booth wasn't that far from Matt Fraction and Kelly Sue's ... and he's just as great as I remember from when I got an apportunity to chat with him at VanCon in the summer between S8 and S9 (I think that's when it was anyway.) The first time I stopped by his table, I hadn't thought of any questions or anything - mainly because I was used to having to get things signed quickly and get out of the way, and also because I'm just not very good at coming up with questions on the spot or even being able to think of what to say to anyone. (For the most part, at ECCC, I follow my far more outgoing friend around and just listen while she talks to everyone.)
General Stuff
So, in that first visit, we just talked generally about the show and how much Robbie enjoyed working for it and how wonderful the crew and Jared and Jensen are - and how it's not like they fired him, it was his decision to leave, because he was getting too busy and something had to go, and he wanted to put his concentration into non-SPN things... which was a hard decision, but he thinks it was time, and although he misses it, he doesn't regret leaving.
Oh, also, I found out that his favourite episode he wrote was Pac-Man Fever (or at least, that's the one that's most special to him) because his parents also read him the Hobbit growing up, so Charlie's speech about how that decision made her who she is, and opened up her world to her, was basically Robbie's feelings and gratefulness towards his parents and The Hobbit. So, yeah, he's sentimental about that episode.
As we were leaving, he told me to stop by his table any time if I wanted to chat, so being me, I took that sincerely and the rest of the weekend, if I had some time to kill, I'd swing by his table and see if he was free to chat - sometimes he wasn't, but I did manage to catch him two more times, those times with questions prepared.
DISCLAIMER: PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THIS IS ME REMEMBERING OUR CONVERSATIONS... THIS IS NOT VERBRATIM. Even if I put something in quotes, it's just what Robbie said to my best recollection - but I'm probably not using the same words that he used. So, if you want any point clarified, or you take huge offence to something, please don't blame Robbie, blame my shitty reporting skills and then ask him the question yourself. I didn't even write any of this down at the time, this is just me remembering 1-3 days later.
Timelines
Robbie was well aware that officially at any given moment SPN is "somewhere between 18-22 months in the furture" - him telling me that warmed the cookies of my heart, because he took it the step further to narrow it down to months! I always just say "two years" but he had it more exact with the months and that's just awesome. He said he'd often write it as the intro to his scripts "The year is 2018..." but on the other hand, characters saying the year never came up, and when it came down to it, it was production who continued their tradition of putting the current date on any props/texts/computers etc, and then they WOULDN'T be in the future.
Robbie said that from a fan point of view, it really does bug him that they messed up the timeline, because he's that kind of fan too - the one who likes the universes to follow a strict internal logic and time frame. From a writer's point of view though, he was kind of glad that it didn't officially matter, because it would have been a constraint on the writing, and he hates having constraints on his writing.
An example he gave was when someone added a really great line, but maybe it was a popculture reference that very much dated the episode as happening currently, rather than the future - but it's a great line... so, the decision comes down to do you want to leave it in because it's awesome? Or take it out just to preserve a timeline that doesn't REALLY matter?
He DID say that was mainly production though that put the times on things. He said that he got a bunch of tweets after one episode because Sam sent Dean a text and it was dated on Dean's birthday (I'm assuming this was LARP and the Real Girl) and a bunch of fans were asking him why Sam never wished Dean a happy birthday in the episode or why they didn't celebrate it at all. And Robbie was like "That wasn't me! That was production putting the date of when they filmed or when it aired or something like that") So, these kinds of things happen when you have a lot of chefs in the kitchen working on different aspects of the meal - someone might put a garnish on that the person who wrote the recipe might not have intended to go with the dish (analogy mine.)
The part of Timelining that really drives Robbie crazy when it comes to SPN was when they would find a hunt in a town across the country, and then in the next scene they were there. And Robbie would be like "what about all the time it took to drive there? Where is that mentioned? What happened in those days?" And that was one of his main drives for writing Baby - he wanted to show the journey, and write what he called a "sleepover" scene. (Awww, cute.) He even double-checked with Production to make sure they still had the Impala with the removable roof, because if they couldn't get that overhead sleeping shot, then Robbie felt the scene would be worthless.
Writing Assignments - How they Work
I asked Robbie about how episodes get assigned in the writer's room - because I notice that certain writers often write a lot of exposition - so, are they purposefully given the exposition episodes? Or is it just happenstance?
It's happenstance, Robbie told me. Writing assignments get handed out in a certain senority-based order on a skewed rotation. So, if Robbie's got episode 4, he knows he'll also have episode 17 or 18. There are 4 high myth points they have to hit in a season - the premiere, the mid-season finale, the "sweeps" episode, and the finale - and most of those high points are usually written by the show-runner or the most senior writers, and then they're assigned away from that according to seniority. (So, Ross-Leming.Buckner always getting the 2nd episode in the season or 3rd or 2nd to episode before a climax point is because they're the non-showrunning writers who have been there the longest).
When they give out episode assignments, there's no topics given or necessarly any "musts" - usually it's "pitch me three ideas" and then sometimes they'll have something like "we're building to this point, so include some set-up" or "we don't have Mark for this episode, so you can't use him." Or "Jensen is about to have a kid, so write Dean light in case it happens then." Or on another show, Robbie gave an example of HAVING to use actors, because they had already paid for them, so it was about pitching his idea and then figuring out where he could stick in these actors so that production got it's money's worth out of the contracts.
Robbie also talked about how sometimes you want to use actors, but you don't have access to them. Like their contracts are only for a maximum number of episodes, so you have to be sparing with which ones you use them in - or they've decided to do a play and are no longer available at all. Robbie explained that's why they had to "kill" Frank in S7. Robbie loved the character, but the actor was no longer available. They didn't show a body, both because they didn't have the actor, and also because Robbie was hopping they might be able to bring him back in the future. But, what that constraint did was allow Robbie to come up with Charlie, because they needed someone LIKE Frank who wasn't Frank. (This is also, I know, how Bobby Singer came into being, because they wanted to get Missouri back, but the actress was no longer available.) I think it's funny how in both cases the replacement character went on to being a Fandom favourite. (Depending on who you ask, anyway, I do know some people who don't like Charlie - and some people who would have preferred Missouri to Bobby back in the day.)
Anyway, I thought that was interesting, as I know a lot of fans complain about characters being killed off or episodes that don't have Castiel in them (for example)... but all that is down to contracts and availability, and not actually the showrunners or writers choice at all.
How far ahead do they write an episode?
Robbie says that Supernatural is the most efficient machine that he's ever worked on. He explained that the older a show is, the less budget they get from the network, so they have to be really strict about things. If you can use a location for two episodes back-to-back, it's best to know ahead of time so that you can film those scenes back to back too and not have to rent out the location twice. Or as we had already discussed, when you know you can only use an actor for a certain number of episodes, and they've got a busy schedule, you want to book them as soon as possible, because they might not be available last minute.
Usually, the writer's start writing the next season starting in May. He said that by now, early March, they'll already have finished or are just finishing writing the current season. By the time Baby got announced at SDCC in July, Robbie had already written it four months previously and had actually forgotten about it until they brought it up at the panel. "What? Oh yeah! Wow, that was four months ago." And then they were filming it by August. So, basically between writing an episode and filming it, it's four-five months.
We didn't talk about re-writes or amendments, but I'm guessing any rewrites based on production issues occur in the two week prep before they start filming. So it goes...
Pitch & Writing
4 months later - 2 week prep (probably final writing changes - my guess)
4.5 months later - filming begins (8 days).
4.5-5 months - Post-production begins - (I think Jules has done some interviews with the post-production team for what the timeline is there. I know that VFK often is working on the Finale right up until it airs.)
~8 months since pitching/writing the idea - episode airs.
Robbie says it's one of the reasons he finds it really funny when he would sometimes get tweets like "Thanks for listening to my complaint last week and fixing it for this week!" As though they wrote and filmed the episodes in the 7 days between when they aired rather than 4-8 months before.
And I think that's it!
Robbie is the nicest... and I told him I had wanted to buy Silk while I was there, but hadn't been able to find it yet, so he just GAVE me his last copy and signed it for me! So, yes, the absolute nicest.
Okay, now that's it. :)
I still haven't watched last week's episode. I'll do that sometime today, promise.
The REASON that I haven't watched it is because I was at Emerald City Comic-Con since Thursday, and I literally haven't had the two hours minimum uninterrupted down-time that I would need to watch and post about an episode.
Emerald City Comic-Con was really fun! I don't go there for the celebs, so I can't tell you anything about Jeremy Renner or Millie Bobby Brown or Tom Felton - but I can tell you that Kelly Sue DeConnick and Matt Fraction remain awesome, that Johnnie Christmas is a great guy, that Ngozi Ukazu makes makes me smile by calling people "silly beans" much like I'd imagine Bitty would... and that there are tons of really creative people out there making super awesome things.
So, one guest at Emerald City Comic-Con this year was Robbie Thompson. I kept missing him on Thursday, but managed to find him on Friday. His booth wasn't that far from Matt Fraction and Kelly Sue's ... and he's just as great as I remember from when I got an apportunity to chat with him at VanCon in the summer between S8 and S9 (I think that's when it was anyway.) The first time I stopped by his table, I hadn't thought of any questions or anything - mainly because I was used to having to get things signed quickly and get out of the way, and also because I'm just not very good at coming up with questions on the spot or even being able to think of what to say to anyone. (For the most part, at ECCC, I follow my far more outgoing friend around and just listen while she talks to everyone.)
General Stuff
So, in that first visit, we just talked generally about the show and how much Robbie enjoyed working for it and how wonderful the crew and Jared and Jensen are - and how it's not like they fired him, it was his decision to leave, because he was getting too busy and something had to go, and he wanted to put his concentration into non-SPN things... which was a hard decision, but he thinks it was time, and although he misses it, he doesn't regret leaving.
Oh, also, I found out that his favourite episode he wrote was Pac-Man Fever (or at least, that's the one that's most special to him) because his parents also read him the Hobbit growing up, so Charlie's speech about how that decision made her who she is, and opened up her world to her, was basically Robbie's feelings and gratefulness towards his parents and The Hobbit. So, yeah, he's sentimental about that episode.
As we were leaving, he told me to stop by his table any time if I wanted to chat, so being me, I took that sincerely and the rest of the weekend, if I had some time to kill, I'd swing by his table and see if he was free to chat - sometimes he wasn't, but I did manage to catch him two more times, those times with questions prepared.
DISCLAIMER: PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THIS IS ME REMEMBERING OUR CONVERSATIONS... THIS IS NOT VERBRATIM. Even if I put something in quotes, it's just what Robbie said to my best recollection - but I'm probably not using the same words that he used. So, if you want any point clarified, or you take huge offence to something, please don't blame Robbie, blame my shitty reporting skills and then ask him the question yourself. I didn't even write any of this down at the time, this is just me remembering 1-3 days later.
Timelines
Robbie was well aware that officially at any given moment SPN is "somewhere between 18-22 months in the furture" - him telling me that warmed the cookies of my heart, because he took it the step further to narrow it down to months! I always just say "two years" but he had it more exact with the months and that's just awesome. He said he'd often write it as the intro to his scripts "The year is 2018..." but on the other hand, characters saying the year never came up, and when it came down to it, it was production who continued their tradition of putting the current date on any props/texts/computers etc, and then they WOULDN'T be in the future.
Robbie said that from a fan point of view, it really does bug him that they messed up the timeline, because he's that kind of fan too - the one who likes the universes to follow a strict internal logic and time frame. From a writer's point of view though, he was kind of glad that it didn't officially matter, because it would have been a constraint on the writing, and he hates having constraints on his writing.
An example he gave was when someone added a really great line, but maybe it was a popculture reference that very much dated the episode as happening currently, rather than the future - but it's a great line... so, the decision comes down to do you want to leave it in because it's awesome? Or take it out just to preserve a timeline that doesn't REALLY matter?
He DID say that was mainly production though that put the times on things. He said that he got a bunch of tweets after one episode because Sam sent Dean a text and it was dated on Dean's birthday (I'm assuming this was LARP and the Real Girl) and a bunch of fans were asking him why Sam never wished Dean a happy birthday in the episode or why they didn't celebrate it at all. And Robbie was like "That wasn't me! That was production putting the date of when they filmed or when it aired or something like that") So, these kinds of things happen when you have a lot of chefs in the kitchen working on different aspects of the meal - someone might put a garnish on that the person who wrote the recipe might not have intended to go with the dish (analogy mine.)
The part of Timelining that really drives Robbie crazy when it comes to SPN was when they would find a hunt in a town across the country, and then in the next scene they were there. And Robbie would be like "what about all the time it took to drive there? Where is that mentioned? What happened in those days?" And that was one of his main drives for writing Baby - he wanted to show the journey, and write what he called a "sleepover" scene. (Awww, cute.) He even double-checked with Production to make sure they still had the Impala with the removable roof, because if they couldn't get that overhead sleeping shot, then Robbie felt the scene would be worthless.
Writing Assignments - How they Work
I asked Robbie about how episodes get assigned in the writer's room - because I notice that certain writers often write a lot of exposition - so, are they purposefully given the exposition episodes? Or is it just happenstance?
It's happenstance, Robbie told me. Writing assignments get handed out in a certain senority-based order on a skewed rotation. So, if Robbie's got episode 4, he knows he'll also have episode 17 or 18. There are 4 high myth points they have to hit in a season - the premiere, the mid-season finale, the "sweeps" episode, and the finale - and most of those high points are usually written by the show-runner or the most senior writers, and then they're assigned away from that according to seniority. (So, Ross-Leming.Buckner always getting the 2nd episode in the season or 3rd or 2nd to episode before a climax point is because they're the non-showrunning writers who have been there the longest).
When they give out episode assignments, there's no topics given or necessarly any "musts" - usually it's "pitch me three ideas" and then sometimes they'll have something like "we're building to this point, so include some set-up" or "we don't have Mark for this episode, so you can't use him." Or "Jensen is about to have a kid, so write Dean light in case it happens then." Or on another show, Robbie gave an example of HAVING to use actors, because they had already paid for them, so it was about pitching his idea and then figuring out where he could stick in these actors so that production got it's money's worth out of the contracts.
Robbie also talked about how sometimes you want to use actors, but you don't have access to them. Like their contracts are only for a maximum number of episodes, so you have to be sparing with which ones you use them in - or they've decided to do a play and are no longer available at all. Robbie explained that's why they had to "kill" Frank in S7. Robbie loved the character, but the actor was no longer available. They didn't show a body, both because they didn't have the actor, and also because Robbie was hopping they might be able to bring him back in the future. But, what that constraint did was allow Robbie to come up with Charlie, because they needed someone LIKE Frank who wasn't Frank. (This is also, I know, how Bobby Singer came into being, because they wanted to get Missouri back, but the actress was no longer available.) I think it's funny how in both cases the replacement character went on to being a Fandom favourite. (Depending on who you ask, anyway, I do know some people who don't like Charlie - and some people who would have preferred Missouri to Bobby back in the day.)
Anyway, I thought that was interesting, as I know a lot of fans complain about characters being killed off or episodes that don't have Castiel in them (for example)... but all that is down to contracts and availability, and not actually the showrunners or writers choice at all.
How far ahead do they write an episode?
Robbie says that Supernatural is the most efficient machine that he's ever worked on. He explained that the older a show is, the less budget they get from the network, so they have to be really strict about things. If you can use a location for two episodes back-to-back, it's best to know ahead of time so that you can film those scenes back to back too and not have to rent out the location twice. Or as we had already discussed, when you know you can only use an actor for a certain number of episodes, and they've got a busy schedule, you want to book them as soon as possible, because they might not be available last minute.
Usually, the writer's start writing the next season starting in May. He said that by now, early March, they'll already have finished or are just finishing writing the current season. By the time Baby got announced at SDCC in July, Robbie had already written it four months previously and had actually forgotten about it until they brought it up at the panel. "What? Oh yeah! Wow, that was four months ago." And then they were filming it by August. So, basically between writing an episode and filming it, it's four-five months.
We didn't talk about re-writes or amendments, but I'm guessing any rewrites based on production issues occur in the two week prep before they start filming. So it goes...
Pitch & Writing
4 months later - 2 week prep (probably final writing changes - my guess)
4.5 months later - filming begins (8 days).
4.5-5 months - Post-production begins - (I think Jules has done some interviews with the post-production team for what the timeline is there. I know that VFK often is working on the Finale right up until it airs.)
~8 months since pitching/writing the idea - episode airs.
Robbie says it's one of the reasons he finds it really funny when he would sometimes get tweets like "Thanks for listening to my complaint last week and fixing it for this week!" As though they wrote and filmed the episodes in the 7 days between when they aired rather than 4-8 months before.
And I think that's it!
Robbie is the nicest... and I told him I had wanted to buy Silk while I was there, but hadn't been able to find it yet, so he just GAVE me his last copy and signed it for me! So, yes, the absolute nicest.
Okay, now that's it. :)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2017-03-07 01:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-07 01:36 am (UTC)And yeah, the writing stuff is interesting to think about.
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Date: 2017-03-07 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-07 03:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-07 05:07 am (UTC)Don't suppose Robbie would contemplate coming back though? Miss him so much...
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Date: 2017-03-07 06:22 am (UTC)But yeah, ever evolving TV show and constraints on writing that the audience isn't aware of... so, yeah, there are many reasons why an episode might not be what it could be, and I think very few of those reasons have to do with writer decisions.
I think if you're trying to pick out writer issues, you have to look for consistent failures across episodes, rather than specific "decisions." Though, given how much Robbie argued against killing Charlie, I'm still chalking that disaster up to a poor writing decision backed up by nepotism and I'm never forgiving it. ;)
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Date: 2017-03-07 07:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-07 07:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-07 08:27 am (UTC)Fascinating stuff!
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Date: 2017-03-07 10:02 pm (UTC)Glad you enjoyed it! :)
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Date: 2017-03-07 11:36 am (UTC)(and hence the random friending. Your posts have been linked to me a couple of time *g*)
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Date: 2017-03-07 10:01 pm (UTC)Glad you enjoyed the post!
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Date: 2017-03-07 11:44 am (UTC)Thank you for sharing (I hope you don't mind me stopping by, I saw a link to this post on my flist. Do you mind if I friend you? I love to get my hands on ep reactions and posts like these) Take care :)
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Date: 2017-03-07 10:01 pm (UTC)I'm glad you enjoyed it! It's really fascinating to hear what happens behind the scenes that the fans never really know about.
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Date: 2017-03-07 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-07 10:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-07 12:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-07 09:59 pm (UTC)I went to the panel for their company too, and they have some great projects coming up. Including a TV pilot that Kelly Sue is trying to get off the ground.
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Date: 2017-03-07 12:48 pm (UTC)I will be reccing the post on Supernuthome if you don't mind?
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Date: 2017-03-07 09:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-07 02:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-07 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-07 07:32 pm (UTC)Thanks for sharing!
Ana
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Date: 2017-03-07 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-07 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-08 02:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-08 12:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-08 02:41 am (UTC)I'm glad you liked the post. :)
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Date: 2017-03-09 02:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-09 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-11 11:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-12 02:37 am (UTC)He was really awesome to chat with me so much.
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Date: 2017-03-12 06:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-03-12 07:06 am (UTC)And yes, of course my go to first question is always going to be about timelines... I've been rewatching another older series with a friend (my first fandom) and timelining as I go. Who am I even timelining for? The series is over 20 years old! I just like timelines. :P
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Date: 2017-03-12 11:58 pm (UTC)Thank you for asking him about the timeline discrepancies. They drive me crazy as a fan-fic writer, and I'm so glad one of the show writers feels that way too. It's nuts trying to decide whether to write a birthday party scene (is Dean turning 38 or 40?!) and then just leaving it out because it's not canon-compliant feels so restricting!
Anyway, fascinating insight into the show and the process from writer's room to filming to post-production. Interesting that shows gets smaller budgets as they age? I always thought the stars got bigger and bigger raises each year, so maybe that's why the rest of the budget shrinks? Of course, the J's were young and virtually unknown at the beginning, so they must have been fairly cheap.
Thanks again! So much to think about!
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Date: 2017-03-13 06:25 am (UTC)I'm right there with you grieving Robbie's departure. He was one of my absolute faves and I was so upset to see him go.
For my own fic, I tend to add the two years - but that's personal preference. I know some writers who, much like the writers of SPN, just decide what is most convenient for their idea and then use that timeline.
I didn't ask why the budget shrinks, but I have a feeling that it's a lot of factors - my guess is that probably it also has to do with the idea that shows, as they continue, probably traditionally need to build less sets and buy less wardrobe, etc. Except, SPN had no standing sets for years and was a different beast altogether. My other guess is that it's the network just seeing what they can get away with - "can you make the show with this much money? Oh, you did, what if you had less than that? Oh, you did that too... okay, what about even less?" But again, those are all guesses on my part. You could be right and it's also about having to stay competitive with salaries, but keeping the same operating budgets, so it's more about the distribution of wealth rather than the acquiring of it. Who knows... certainly not me! Haha, I suppose if I ever run into Jim Michaels around town, I can try to ask him. :P
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Date: 2017-03-16 06:11 pm (UTC)Thanks for this write-up!
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Date: 2017-03-16 06:27 pm (UTC)Glad you enjoyed the write-up!
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Date: 2017-03-25 12:41 pm (UTC)I think I'm confused about dates though...
a) There's usually ~8 months between writing the script and episode airing. - but
b) the current season is being finished by March.
Shouldn't the season be finished in October or November according to a)?
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Date: 2017-03-25 05:20 pm (UTC)It could very well be the same with the writing, that as the season progresses, the time between writing and airing gets shorter. That's my best guess. I didn't include it in the post, because it's not something Robbie and I talked about - we just talked about the timeline using Baby as an example, and it was an early-in-the-season episode.
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