Ode To A Winter Hiatus Soon Ended
WELCOME BACK!
HOW WAS YOUR “WINTER HIATUS”?
ARE YOU READY TO GET BACK INTO THE MONDAY NIGHT SWING OF THINGS?
I don’t know about you, but… allow me to take a tiny bit of pride in saying that most of my Christmas stuff is now put away…
OK, some of it’s still hiding in plain sight but I promise you that all these things that used to hold multiple varieties of holiday sweets are now EMPTY. (sigh) And clean.
A sure sign that we’re now in the bottom half of January!
And geared up for the rest of The Good Doctor Season 6!
What do you miss most when TGD goes on hiatus?
Let’s see how similar our thinking is on this… I miss:
The steady trickle of info as the next new episode approaches…
The pit of mixed emotions swimming in my stomach on Monday night, waiting for 10PM… excitement, worry, anxiety, depending on the info gleaned thus far
Deciding whether or not it’s worth having the ABC show preceding TGD on— with the sound muted, perhaps— in case there’s a “new” TGD promo with three seconds of video that we haven’t seen before…
(The show now airing ahead of TGD is The Bachelor… my teenage daughter used to have this on for background amusement while she did homework; she’s away at college now but has asked me to “review” it for her because she can’t watch it until Tuesday night. Hmmm…)
Promotioal shot from The Bachelor, Season 12 or 21 or… look, does it really matter?!
The social media buildup in the hours leading up to showtime
(This one I screengrabbed just a short while ago— 5 hours and counting!)
Seeing Shaun and Lea in the “cold open” immediately after the previous show’s credits come to an end (it’s not every time, but it’s pretty frequent)
The jolt of the 15-second theme song! (Whatever version of it they’re playing that week; I’m not picky)
Hallway walk & talks between Park & Morgan, Asher & Jordan… okay, anyone with anyone
And of course I miss ShaunVision…
I also miss damn near anything that comes out of the mouth of either of these two…
Glancing at the clock during the live airing of TGD and saying Oh, wow, they’re on the last break already?!
And wishing time could fly this fast when you were, say, stuck with an irritating relative in a moving car for six hours trekking across the midwest in January
(10:51 EASTERN TIME is my sad spot on Mondays)
Episode-ending music montages that leave me scrambling for my Shazam app and over-analyzing every single lyric… and who’s on the screen when it’s sung…
The end-of-the-night PROMO freakout…
Continued speculation on what the upcoming spinoff The Good Lawyer will look like, and why Shaun will need an attorney soon in the first place…
The “back door pilot,” which we’ll get to see via an upcoming TGD episode, is said to star Kennedy McMann and Felicity Huffman.
And by the way, about Felicity Huffman…)
Not that anyone asked, but I have mixed feelings about her being part of this spinoff cast. She’s a mighty fine actor; I enjoyed her back in the Desperate Housewives days and— just before it— she was part of ABC’s Sports Night, which I ADORED.
But as you may already know, she was part of the infamous Varsity Blues scandal that landed her (very briefly) in prison. Will people tune into TGL out of sheer curiosity about her first major (?) gig in several years… or are they too soured on her to give it a shot?
(Best bet: not many care one way or the other.)
Continued debate on whether or not TGD is setting up for Lea to die in childbirth–
(Oops, that’s supposed to be on my list of Things I don’t miss at all during winter hiatus)
My quick take, for those who haven’t asked yet: we’ve all got way too much to worry about in our ordinary lives to spend time speculating on Lea’s fate. Promos are carefully structured to lure us in by any means necessary. Never forget that!
