Good Witch Season 2 request

Additionally, the reason this episode should be called Season 2 Episode 0, is because this episode was advertised at the time as the Season 2 premiere of Good Witch, both on television and on the web site: http://web.archive.org/web/20151005000012/http://www.hallmarkchannel.com/good-witch/original-premiere-good-witch-halloween Plus this episode does not significantly differ from normal episodes and you cannot skip it without missing out on story arcs.

Then in April 2016 they aired a second episode which they also advertised as "Season 2 premiere" which they called episode 2001: http://www.crownmediapress.com/Shows/PRShowDetail?SiteID=268&FeedBoxID=845&NodeID=302&ShowType=series&ShowTitle=Good%20Witch%20Season%202&episodeIndex=2001 That's why this is episode 0 even though Hallmark Channel never explicitly gave it an episode number.

I was told that David and Jan would look at this? Thanks. :)

First of all thanks for weighing in! However, we've already discussed this case in a separate thread back when the episode aired: http://www.tvmaze.com/threads/562/good-witch-halloween-is-a-special-not-the-1st-episode-of-season-2 (You can find it by doing a forum search for "Good Witch Halloween").

The network messed up here by being inconsistent, so there's good arguments for either approach. Because we've had it as Season 2 special for the past 7 months I'd like to leave it at that for now. Though we are aware that the handling of specials needs to be refined; let's reconsider this case once that's done.

Hi David. Thanks for your post!

One thing that JAGUARDOG and I are in agreement on is that Good Witch Halloween is not Episode 1. However I do not agree that it is purely a special since I have read the FAQs on TVmaze and it does not meet the requirements of a special other than the fact that Hallmark now refers to it as a sneak peak. However this also violates TVmaze's rewriting history rule since it was originally referred to as a premiere. Plus Hallmark Channel said something similar about the Season 1 premiere calling it an extended preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4kDSKGxvD8 It goes to show that Hallmark Channel has a habit of using "premiere" and "preview/sneak peek" interchangeably even though almost anyone else would agree they mean different things.

It isn't that I have a problem with it being called a special. It did air at Halloween instead of with the rest of Season 2, and it was 2 hours instead of the normal 1, both which set it apart from the rest of Season 2. But in every other way it was an episode. So special or not, I would like to see it listed as an episode. I agree that calling it episode 0 is may look odd, especially since Hallmark does not call it that. But I think it's the best of all compromises.

Thanks for listening. I'm an avid follower of the show so I'm glad to weigh in. :)

And this is going to happen again as Hallmark specified in their press release about the renewal for season 3 that they'll air a halloween episode again.

Personally, i consider it the first episode of the season with a special length (120 instead of 60). Season 2 contrary to season 1 is made of 40ish minutes episodes that go on and not two parters like season 1. It's less messy, but i understand why for searching purposes David doesn't want to change it.

Tonks wrote:
And this is going to happen again as Hallmark specified in their press release about the renewal for season 3 that they'll air a halloween episode again.
Personally, i consider it the first episode of the season with a special length (120 instead of 60). Season 2 contrary to season 1 is made of 40ish minutes episodes that go on and not two parters like season 1. It's less messy, but i understand why for searching purposes David doesn't want to change it.

TVmaze's FAQ section says that anything called a "sneak peek" should be classified as a special. However it also says that it is an episode if it does not significantly differ from normal episodes or you cannot skip it without missing out on story arcs. So unfortunately there are arguments for both here. Of course I think that the episode argument always trumps the special argument. But since Hallmark Channel classifies it as a sneak peek and they do not list it with the rest of Season 2 episodes, and because TVmaze has listed it as a special for 7 months now, they are not changing it.

David mentioned that in the future handling of specials needs to be refined. What I suggest is that if a special is not significantly different from other episodes or it is part of the normal story arc, that it should be able to be listed as both, and we should be able to assign it an episode number. 0 in this case. :)

Another thing I want to point out to David and Jan:

A new character, Ben, was introduced in the Good Witch Halloween who is important to Season 2.

Not only that, Good Witch Halloween is the episode where Stephanie, another important character, first meets Ben, her love interest, and they start to date.

If that's not an argument that it's an episode, and should be treated as an episode, I don't know what is!

I think that this episode was categorized as a special by mistake 7 months ago, not realizing that it was going to be a regular episode, and now it's time to correct the mistake. Better late than never!

dpratt wrote:
Another thing I want to point out to David and Jan:
A new character, Ben, was introduced in the Good Witch Halloween who is important to Season 2.
Not only that, Good Witch Halloween is the episode where Stephanie, another important character, first meets Ben, her love interest, and they start to date.
If that's not an argument that it's an episode, and should be treated as an episode, I don't know what is!
I think that this episode was categorized as a special by mistake 7 months ago, not realizing that it was going to be a regular episode, and now it's time to correct the mistake. Better late than never!

But it's not an episode!! We always list things according to the official site and they don't have it listed as an episode with an episodenumber but as a special therefore it is and should be listed as a special on here.

I am not convinced myself either to add it as regular. I remember a chat about BBC's Doctor Who. Their specials are incredible important to watch as they contain new and useful information for the upcoming season, but as the Network classifies them as special, we decided to stick to them as being specials. We can't just make exceptions simply because you prefer it to be listed as regular :)

Thomas wrote:
I am not convinced myself either to add it as regular. I remember a chat about BBC's Doctor Who. Their specials are incredible important to watch as they contain new and useful information for the upcoming season, but as the Network classifies them as special, we decided to stick to them as being specials. We can't just make exceptions simply because you prefer it to be listed as regular :)

My argument is that it is not a special. If you have seen the episode then you will see immediately that it is a regular episode. The network even classified it as a season premiere at the time. They also called the April 17th episode a season 2 priemere and it wasn't listed with the rest of the Season 2 episodes which is rewriting history. However I guarantee you that it will be a regular episode on the Season 2 DVD

Hallmark Channel definitely goofed on this one. But they did call it an episode and a season premiere at the time which trumps whatever they call it now.

This isn't like Dr. Who. This is like Pretty Little Liars which sometimes airs Halloween episodes in October when the show is not normally airing.

dpratt wrote:
My argument is that it is not a special. If you have seen the episode then you will see immediately that it is a regular episode. The network even classified it as a season premiere at the time. They also called the April 17th episode a season 2 priemere and it wasn't listed with the rest of the Season 2 episodes which is rewriting history. However I guarantee you that it will be a regular episode on the Season 2 DVD
Hallmark Channel definitely goofed on this one. But they did call it an episode and a season premiere at the time which trumps whatever they call it now.
This isn't like Dr. Who. This is like Pretty Little Liars which sometimes airs Halloween episodes in October when the show is not normally airing.

Stitchers did that too and it was also called a special by the network :)

JuanArango wrote:
Stitchers did that too and it was also called a special by the network :)

Speaking of. Stitchers Halloween special is categorized on their site as Season 1 Episode 11:

http://freeform.go.com/shows/stitchers/episode-guide/season-01/11-when-darkness-falls

This is a good example of how sometimes the word special is used to mean a regular episode with a holiday theme. Clearly episodes such as this should be listed as episodes, not as specials. This one needs to be fixed as well.

dpratt wrote:
Speaking of. Stitchers Halloween special is categorized on their site as Season 1 Episode 11:
http://freeform.go.com/shows/stitchers/episode-guide/season-01/11-when-darkness-falls
This is a good example of how sometimes the word special is used to mean a regular episode with a holiday theme. Clearly episodes such as this should be listed as episodes, not as specials. This one needs to be fixed as well.

No episodes should always be listed according to the official site as that takes precedence. Stitchers list their special as episode 11 so it should be listed as such and Good Witch list theirs as a special not a regular episode so that's how it should be listed here. I really don't see why it's so hard to understand that we should follow the official sites listing.

dpratt, have you contacted Hallmark about this?

If not, I suggest you do so that you can determine if it's a mistake or not.

MTQueenie wrote:
No episodes should always be listed according to the official site as that takes precedence. Stitchers list their special as episode 11 so it should be listed as such and Good Witch list theirs as a special not a regular episode so that's how it should be listed here. I really don't see why it's so hard to understand that we should follow the official sites listing.

Hallmark doesn't call Good Witch Halloween a special. It never did. It just doesn't list it under Season 2.

TVmaze's FAQs say that TVmaze should honor the original airing when a network rewrites history and later lists an episode as something different than what it was when it originally aired. Good Witch Halloween originally was advertised as the Season 2 premiere and 2 of 12 episodes.

TVmaze's FAQs also says that when determining if an airing is a special or an episode, if the premise of an episode significantly differs from normal episodes and if you can skip it without missing out on any story arcs , it's a special.

Again this is like Pretty Little Liars when they aired Halloween episodes when the show was otherwise on hiatus. They were normal episodes. The only thing that made them special was that they aired them in October.

dpratt wrote:
Hallmark doesn't call Good Witch Halloween a special. It never did. It just doesn't list it under Season 2.

Which is exactly why it shouldn't be listed as a regular episode here either. And it is actually listed under the movie section which we list as specials, so that also shows that we have it listed correctly.

MTQueenie wrote:
Which is exactly why it shouldn't be listed as a regular episode here either. And it is actually listed under the movie section which we list as specials, so that also shows that we have it listed correctly.

We're gonna just have to agree to disagree! Specials should only include rare cases of recaps and such. Not normal episodes that are part of the continuing story arc.

As I said before, considering that TVMaze wants to do it how the official site lists it, you should contact them and ask them if it should be listed as part of season 2 (and if so, would it be considered as episode #1), or as a special. I don't know enough about the show to ask them myself.

There's no point in arguing about it here.