"You're As Cold As Ice" (First Impressions - "Snow Ball" - Season 8, Episode 9)

Sometimes being right isn't such a good thing - as evidenced by this press release for "Snow Ball".  More on that in a moment.

It's airing on December 14th, the night the other Wednesday comedies have their Christmas episodes.  So it's in effect a substitute for a Christmas episode, since they only air new ones every odd year (I think it's a safe guess that last year's "White Christmas" will now air on the 21st).

I'm not 100% certain, but I believe the season opener ("A Tale Of Three Cities") is repeating on 12/7 (on their professional press page¹  ABC lists the re-air date as 11/7 - I'm assuming that's a typo), which will put the show an episode behind the other Wednesday night shows (and probably means we're only looking at 22 or 23 again this season).

Anyway, getting back to my original premise about being right being a bad thing:

I earlier figured the title would probably refer to a school dance of sorts, involving either Luke, Manny, or possibly Lily.  It turns out I was right about the first two.  But the worse news is this - the parents are all involved in the dance, or at least (Jay and Phil) in trying to avoid it.  So most if not all of the show will be devoted to the dance (there is no story mentioned not involved in some way), and with no mention of Alex in the release, well...

So the next two episodes both have a higher than average chance of being Alex-less (this one more so than next week's "The Alliance", by a small margin), and yes, it is possible for that to happen in consecutive episodes (for those new to this blog I've mentioned before that it happened in both Seasons 2 and 3)².   And even if she's in both episodes, odds are she won't be doing much unless she's in a hidden story.  

It looks like, unlike Cubs fans, we will just have to wait until next year (before we see Alex in that barista job).  Since that won't be until just about the time she's supposed to re-enter CalTech,  that episode could be very interesting.

¹ It's not a site geared for fans - you have to be a "qualified domestic media professional" to actually register to read them from there - and a little blogger like me wouldn't even come close to qualifying.

² "Dance Dance Revelation" (10) and "Slow Down Your Neighbors" (11) in Season 2, "Go Bullfrogs!" (6) and "Treehouse" (7) in Season 3.