"Call Me, If You Need Someone To Talk To"

Promo photos for "The Closet Case" have been released, and there's good news and bad news.

[UPDATE (10/3):  Actually the bad news isn't so bad as I explain in this later post.  I'll leave in my original thoughts without striking through but a lot of this post is now outdated.]



The good news is Alex is in one of them, so again we can breathe - no early shut-out (yet).

The bad news? It shows Alex on a laptop display (with a girl whom I'm not sure is her roommate - that could be an interesting development in itself), obviously using Skype to talk to someone in her family.  I'm not surprised, but I am disappointed that it looks like that's the direction they're taking with her - mostly showing only brief snippets of her college life via computer screen, just like they did with Haley three years ago.  Let's hope when they do have stories on campus they are memorable ones (and for good reasons).

And can they keep doing this for 4 years (or fewer, depending how much longer the show runs)?  It was one thing to use this to as a temporary stopgap to allow Sarah to recover from her health issues, it's quite a stretch to use it on a long-term basis (of course if Ariel goes away from California for college next year they wouldn't have much choice if they keep her on the show).