"57 Channels And Nothing(?) On"

A quick scheduling note or two first.  Titles for Episodes 9 and 10 have been released.

Episode 9 is titled "The Alliance".  I have zero clue what this means for Alex, unless it could mean an unlikely connection with Sanjay or perhaps Maisie.

And Episode 10's title,"Snow Ball", sounds like it's for a story for any of the kids except Alex.  It sounds like some sort of school dance title, which would mean probably a story involving Luke and/or Manny, or Lily.  Or, it could involve Haley and that weatherman she's dating.  But Alex?  The only highly improbable scenario I'd see would be if her upcoming dalliance with Dwight is more than a one-off, and it somehow affects the high school football team - i.e. the "Ball" refers to some big game or something - but then where would "Snow" fit in - some sort of highly bizarre SoCal weather event, or maybe they go up to the mountains for the game?   (Yes, I'm not grasping at straws, here, I'm grasping at slivers of straws.)  I'd think it's much more likely this one turns Alex-less.

Here's my best guess for how the scheduling will go for the rest of 2016 and the start of next year (the first two are definite, barring election shenanigans causing a pre-emption):

Next week (11/9): Grab It
11/16: Thanksgiving Jamboree
11/23: Re-run
11/30: Sarge & Pea
12/7: The Alliance
12/14: White Christmas (re-run of last season's Christmas episode - the rest of ABC's Wednesday line-up is airing new Christmas episodes that night)
12/21 and 12/28: Re-runs
1/4/2017: Snow Ball

Anyway, speaking of scheduling, now to the main part of this post.

A couple of weeks ago I posted my latest version of what I'd program as an Alex marathon if I were running USA Network.  Well, now I'm putting on my "what if" hat again, and proposing how I'd schedule special showings of "Under Pressure".  Now keep two things in mind:  1) If I were running the network, I'd try to move heaven and earth to get to run the uncut version of this episode (strange as it sounds I've only watched this episode once on USA because of the editing - I want the full thing, even if it meant losing a commercial or two), and 2) in this fantasy world, where my schedule would conflict with ABC's airing of a Modern Family episode, they might not be happy with me (although, as I'll explain it may or may not be a big deal).

So, without further ado (about nothing?), here are the days and times when, if I were running USA Network, I would go out of my way to air "Under Pressure":

1) January 15th at 9:00 PM.  Obviously I'd want to run this on the anniversary date and time it first aired.

2) January 28th at 10:00 PM.  A birthday shout-out to Ariel Winter - actually this would be part of an Alex marathon in Ariel's honor.

3) Super Bowl Sunday, at half-time.  I'd definitely want to jump on the alternate halftime programming bandwagon here.  This would be a special airing, with only one quick commercial interruption halfway through (i.e. right after the dodgeball fight) so after it ended (about 22 minutes) people could get back to the game.

4) Any Wednesday at 9:00 PM when either a) Modern Family is pre-empted (like last night¹) or b) ABC airs a re-run of an Alex-less episode.  This is what I meant when I wasn't sure whether or not my airing of an episode conflicting with ABC would be a big deal to them.  Since they'd be either not airing an episode at all or airing a repeat I don't know if they'd care what I did.  I'm not that worried about 1/15 or 1/28 BTW - by the time either of those dates falls on a Wednesday (2020 and 2026, respectively)  the show will probably be done anyway,

If I think of any others I'll let you know.

¹Now it's just as well that last night was already pre-empted - given how the other networks changed their lineups to get out of Game 7's way (man was that game wild or what) I'd bet ABC would have done the same with their lineup (and, since the next episode has an Alex story you know I'd be less than happy if that happened).