
Political correctness strikes again.
TVRage readers will recall that the horrific tragedy in Newtown, CT led to several TV related preemptions and/or postponements last weekend. The most high profile of those being Syfy's decision to pull the penultimate third season episode of "Haven" from its planned Friday at 10pm broadcast, and FOX's call to remove new episodes of Family Guy and American Dad from last Sunday's schedule.
Unfortunately, today brought both some good news and bad news for fans of the aforementioned shows. FOX announced that the previously pulled Family Guy episode (a Christmas special entitled "Jesus, Mary and Joseph!") will now air this Sunday night. That's the good news. The bad news is that Haven and American Dad fans are being left out in the cold for now, as neither of their respective networks would confirm a new premiere date for either preempted episode.
There is some speculation, but take this with a grain of salt for now, that the Haven episode (entitled "Reunion") will finally hit the airwaves in mid-January. As was previously reported, the episode's plot involves murders taking place at a high school reunion, and it was deemed too inappropriate to air on the same night as the massacre at Sandy Hook. The American Dad episode was also a Christmas special, called "Minstrel Krampus". It is said to contain scenes of gun violence in particular, which is most likely the reason why Family Guy was rescheduled so soon after, and American Dad was not.


Further complicating things for Haven fans is that Syfy has not postponed this Friday's airing of the third season finale. Haven viewers will know that the show is heavily serialized, and each episode usually contains some amount of further development of the overall series mythology. That holds true for now especially, since the last episode to air ended with a quite dire cliffhanger for a major character, and now viewers are being forced to completely jump over the resolution to that storyline, into a season finale which will probably directly follow the ending of the postponed episode.
I could completely understand the decision to pull the episode on Friday, but there is absolutely no reason why it couldn't have been aired in front of the finale, effectively creating a two hour event. Now, Haven fans like myself will have to spend a whole hour going huh, as we try to figure out what plot developments we missed in episode twelve. That's really lame, to put it mildly.
I now turn to you, our fine readers. Do you agree with Syfy and FOX's decisions to further delay these episodes of Haven and American Dad? Or is the whole thing an overreaction?
I'm with the others...Syfy should air the pulled episode before the season finale.
I just checked and as of today (the 18th), found conflicting information for up here in Canada. According to the recording software I use (MythTV), "Reunion" and "Thanks for the Memories" (the season finale) are scheduled to air back-to-back this Friday, starting in Haven's regular time slot. However, according to the program I use to peruse TV listings (FreeGuide), "Thanks for the Memories" and last year's special "Silent Night" are scheduled to air back-to-back this Friday, starting in Haven's regular time slot. In either case, that would put the season finale airing on the same day as it's scheduled to air on Syfy, which is unusual...to this point, episodes have been airing in Canada a week later than they aired on Syfy. What's even more confusing about this is the fact that both programs get their TV listing data *from the same place*, so why they say different things is beyond me.
Adding to the confusion, the website for Showcase (who airs Haven in Canada) indicates that the *only* episode airing Friday is "Silent Night", in Haven's regular time slot. Given that Showcase is the broadcaster, I suspect this is actually the correct information, but I guess I won't know for sure until Friday.
Heh, I'm glad you left that second comment, I saw the first one right after it was posted, and was like "Where did I call him a troll?" Although you're right, I probably did go on the defensive too quickly there. All I can tell you is that I have never personally deleted a comment for anything but the posted three reasons, if another site admin deleted a perfectly benign comment you made on multiple occasions, then you have my sincere apologies. We value the right to free speech here, and I'm sorry if some instances have made you come to believe otherwise. If I knew the content of the specific comments, I would look into it personally.
As news editor, I'd like to respond to the last comment. Now granted, I'm not the only person who oversees the comments section, but I have never, ever personally removed a comment simply for expressing an opinion someone might find offensive. The only times I have removed comments have been in the following instances:
1. The comment is openly racist. I've seen commenters use the n-word and various anti-semitic slurs before, and I'm really hoping I can speak for a good 99% of our readers when I say that type of bile has no place on our site.
2. The comment is obvious trolling, such as comments I have deleted that contained graphic depictions of sexual acts, that had zero relevance to the article in question. Why should somebody read an article, scroll to the comments, and have to be confronted with unrelated depictions of fellatio?
3. The comment is spam, or promoting something. This should be self-explanatory.
If you took a journey through our archives, you'll see many examples of the fact that we don't censor opinions. I myself have been personally attacked in the comments on several occasions, in a rather vicious manner. Did I delete those comments? Nope. Commenters have left harsh statements criticizing the site on many occasions. Do I delete them? No. All that said, I see zero hypocrisy in what I wrote above. Thank you.
I agree that they should definitely show the pulled episode before the season finale, weather they show both this friday or pull the season finale aswell and then show both in january is fine with me but as you said Haven is very serialized and each episode has clues leading into the next episode so to air the finale with an episodes missing would completely mess that up and leave the viewers a big questionmark