ABC Orders Extra Episodes of Once Upon a Time, Modern Family, Black-ish, Castle, and Three More
This is shaping up to be the most kind and forgiving network television season ever. It's October 23 and not a single new show has been canceled, even though most of them are doing poorly in the ratings. And now, in a rare move, ABC is upping the episode counts of seven of its top hits, according to Deadline. Seven! In October!
On the comedy side, the network has ordered two additional episodes of each of its Wednesday-night sitcoms—The Middle, The Goldbergs, Modern Family, and Black-ish. That means all four of those shows will air 24 episodes this season.
And on the drama side, fairy-tale fashion show Once Upon a Time and romantic cop procedural Castle will each add an extra hour to their seasons, bringing them both to 23 episodes. Meanwhile, the whip has been cracked on stalwart medical soap Grey's Anatomy, with ABC ordering two more episodes for a total of 24.
[UPDATE] Initially, Resurrection was also supposed to get an extra episode, bringing its Season 2 total to 14 episodes. However, the network apparently changed its mind and felt that 13 was enough.
ABC did not ask for more Scandal or How to Get Away With Murder—probably because they're heavily serialized (what, no clip show?), and in Murder's case, Viola Davis's contract stipulates that she'll only do 15 episodes per season. The network is apparently also content with a standard 22 episodes each of Nashville and Revenge, neither of which is as much of a stud as the network's other programs.
Why the bonus episode orders? I'll take a few guesses. More episodes = fewer repeats, which could mean some extra money. Or maybe ABC is overloading on known quantities in order to compensate for upcoming vacancies because it knows it won't be ordering full seasons of many of its new shows. OR maybe the network is just in a really good mood. What do you think?
