"You're Simply The Best. Better Than All The Rest."

OK, let's take one more trip in the (almost) way back machine before Season 10 approaches.

No, I'm not going to pick apart any more past comments that blew up in my face (for now) - instead, I'm going to answer the question of which season's first, second, third, etc. episode was the best of all of the first, second, third, etc. episodes.

Each list is in chronological order - I'm not going to rank each episode in each group from 1 to 9 (1 to 6 for Episodes 23 and 24), but in each list I will highlight in green which episode of that group was the best, then make a few brief comments about the list (also, for the masochists in the audience, I'll mark the Alex-less episodes in each group in red).  This is mainly because I don't remember a lot about many of the episodes where Alex had a minimal role.

Usually the best episode will be the one with my favorite Alex story or Alex moment within the group.  However, there is one exception where the best episode wasn't nearly as Alex-centric as some of the others.  Which one was it?

"Happy Anniversary, Baby - Got You On My Mind."

I wish I had more to say today, given that it's the fourth anniversary of this blog's beginning (and because it's unlikely, but  not impossible¹ that there will be a fifth one), but there really isn't much to say.  That and a couple of other distractions (nothing earth-shattering or life impacting) is why you haven't heard from me in almost three weeks.

I am a bit worried about the opener in one sense - on my typical social media channels I saw no sign of Ariel on set during the first week of filming (but she and others did post some pictures during the second week).  I'm not in panic mode by any means (any official word about what might happen in the opener is still probably about 2-3 weeks away), but if, somehow, the opener turns out to be Alex-less (which sounds preposterous until you think back to how close we came to last season's finale being so), don't say you weren't warned.

There is also one more episode title out for the third episode ("A Sketchy Idea"), but so far it doesn't appear to have much for Alex, either.
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¹ Even though it's one of the co-creators talking about possibly continuing beyond Season 10 in that link, for now my money is still on this being the final season.

"The Love Parade Is On Even Against All Odds"

Based off this tweet from the first table read of the season (production starts tomorrow), it looks like the tentative title for the opener is going to be "I Love A Parade" (freeze the video at about 12 seconds when Eric pans over to the script):

"I'm Not Going Through The Motions(?)"

Finally, some actual news:  Season 10 starts on September 26th.  So, as of now, nine more weeks until we see Alex again.

And, speaking of nine - just how did my predictions for what would happen last year work out?   About as well as the ones for Seasons 6-8, probably.

Unlike the first three prediction threads, there were actually some footnotes in this one - I left them in as they were:

"Too Blind To See It"

Well, it's finally mid(ish)-July, so it's time for me to look back at my wild guesses on what I thought would happen to Alex in Season 8.

"I Don't Know Why Love Has Set Me Free"

Time for Round 2 - let's see how my predictions for Season 7 turned out.  As before, the updated comments are in green.  I left in most of the original formatting though (I took out one link at the beginning).

"Somewhere Back In Time, You Became A Friend Of Mine"

Ah, the dog days of summer (not dog years, although sometimes it seems that long) are here.  And so far re-run season has been less than enthralling (tonight it's another Alex-less episode, "Tough Love", and next week is the one-and-done "Brushes With Celebrity"), and with the final season still more than three months away (and probably any spoilers at least two months away) there really isn't much to talk about right now.   So, for those of you new to this blog,  don't expect to see a lot of posts in June and July, and only a little bit more in August.

But I don't want to leave this blog totally dormant, so I've come up with an idea for a series of (approximately) semi-monthly posts.  It's far from the most original idea around, but I'm going to go back and repost my pre-season prediction posts for the past four seasons, with additional comments about how well they went (hint: usually pretty badly) and other little snide remarks.

I'll leave the original formatting as is (there might be some links that may or may not still work) and add my thoughts today in [bracketed bold and italicized green like this].

Today, we start with what was going to happen in Season 6 (the first season of this blog), the season when Alex graduated from high school and got accepted into CalTech.