Cheers season 9 non-episode special listed as 2 episodes

JoeSullivan wrote:
This has grinded my gears on other sites...
A single 1-hour special aired one night of the cast on a stage being interviewed along with past clips of the show.
It is not in episode format, and even the title indicates it's a special.
http://www.tvmaze.com/episodes/51599/cheers-9x08-cheers-200th-anniversary-special-1
http://www.tvmaze.com/episodes/51600/cheers-9x09-cheers-200th-anniversary-special-2

thetvdb has listed this as a special ( https://thetvdb.com/?tab=season&seriesid=77623&seasonid=13264&lid=7 )
tv.com has it as an episode, but only a single episode rather than 2. imdb does it the same way.
I'm thinking this should become a single listing, marked as an extra rather than an episode, in the same way thetvdb does it.
Can't really say I know how to go about doing this being a newb editor, or if it needs some kind of approval.

I am not familiar with the show, but the "special" in the name indicates that this is not a normal episode, anyone else with some insight on this?

The first half hour was a "regular" episode (the 200th), the next hour was the cast interviews to commemorate the airing of the 200th episode.

That they have the same date is kind of a giveaway. :) Even if TVMaze lists them both at the same (default) time of 2100 hours. In syndication it is separated into two half-hour episodes, because that's what the time slot is. But when it aired originally, it was a single one-hour episode. I couldn't tell you how the credits were inserted.

The actual episode wasn't particular "special." The second half sort of was. So it was basically half normal and half special.

Gadfly wrote:
The first half hour was a "regular" episode (the 200th), the second half hour was the cast interviews to commemorate the airing of the 200th episode.
That they have the same date is kind of a giveaway. :) Even if TVMaze lists them both at the same (default) time of 2100 hours. In syndication it is separated into two half-hour episodes, because that's what the time slot is. But when it aired originally, it was a single one-hour episode. I couldn't tell you how the credits were inserted.
The actual episode wasn't particular "special." The second half sort of was. So it was basically half normal and half special.

Nope. It was a single one-hour cast interview, with a lot of show clips.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x55kaf0
Not quite legal upload and they screwed with speed of the show but you can see the entire thing there.

The only thing new show-wise was a short cold opening with Woody that's really introducing the guy moderating the panel. Once the intro runs, it goes straight to the interviews (2:05 in the video).

Considering its format and irrelevancy to the actual series, I think thetvdb (as linked in first post) has it listed correctly... 25 actual episodes, and this 1 1-hour special.

"deciding whether an episode should be classified as special is fairly easy: if the premise of an episode significally differs from normal episodes and if you can skip it without missing out on any story arcs, it's a special"

Directly quoting the Episode Policy (which btw has a spelling error, it's "significantly", not "significally"). The entire hour, currently seen as 2 entries here, is a panel interview which has no story arc to miss. So even the policy here would agree with thetvdb way of handling it as a special instead of episodes.