"I'm In A Worn Out Nervous Condition Over You" (First Impressions - "Closet? You'll Love It!" Season 6, Episode 17)

The press release for this episode finally showed up on SpoilerTV today.  To say that I was not thrilled when I read it is a serious understatement.


OK, so I didn't have the highest of expectations for Alex's role in this episode already, as I've noted before.  But little did I expect how bad the news would be.

First of all, even with a fourth story confirmed in the release, Alex doesn't have a part in any of them.

But to make matters worse, all the other kids (except Joe, who's not really a regular character yet) are mentioned as having roles to play in some of the stories (no, I'm not mad they do - I'm mad Alex is the only one who doesn't).  So, in all likelihood, at best Alex will only get to make a token appearance (i.e. she 's basically going to be little more than scenery once again), and at worst this will be her second week off of the season (and the first episode where's she the only missing kid in quite some time).  (Mitch is also not mentioned in the press release, but he won't be shut out - surely he'll at least play a part in Lily and Cam's story)

We also get confirmation (not that this was a surprise) that the Haley/Andy relationship is back in play - which could push Alex's senior year stories even further onto the back burner for the last seven episodes.

And Elaine Ko (who did such a great job with writing "Under Pressure") is writing this one (which will probably make this episode as a whole better than I expect, even if Alex isn't there), unfortunately leaving it less likely she'll be writing any major Alex-centric episodes later this year (the only other episode she's written this year was "Marco Polo"), and I wanted her to be the one doing those episodes.

So it's definitely going to be at least March 25th (when "Spring Break", the next new episode, airs) before anything important happens for Alex (and I'm not even optimistic about that either).  This is going to be a long five (or probably even more) weeks.