Guest Author - Dani M. Sanders

The Ugly Betty season two finale ended with Betty trying to decide if she should marry Henry and move to Phoenix or take a whirlwind trip to Rome with Gio. There was a time when we viewers would have agonized over that ending and thought of it as a major cliffhanger. However, in today's climate of spoiler alerts and inside information about actors' contracts, we are pretty sure that Betty will choose Gio. That is the choice that will bring Betty back to New York and give us another season of Ugly Betty, which we already know has been greenlit.

The fact that I even know the term "greenlit" shows that today's viewers have more of an inside look at the television industry than ever before. Sure, there have always been press agents and public relations departments that purported to give us a candid interview or an exclusive look at a star's home. However, in the past that information was always carefully controlled by the studios. Nowadays, bloggers and content-hungry cable channels are finding ways to give us all the inside information that can't be found in official press releases. The studios are starting to release more information themselves just to keep up. But do we really want to know all that stuff?

There are times when inside information can enhance the enjoyment of a particular episode. I am a fan of Doctor Who and I love watching the behind-the-scenes series they produce called Doctor Who Confidential. Knowing that the actress who played the Doctor's daughter in a recent episode is the real-life daughter of an actor who previously played the Doctor is the kind of tidbit that give me a giggle.

The flip side to having access to all this information is that it can take a bit of wonder out of shows. While watching the season finale of House, I correctly predicted that one of the characters was going to die because I knew that the actress had a recurring role on Mad Men. What was planned as a dramatic and heart-wrenching episode was less so because I could see it coming, and that was from just a small amount of information. What about shows where some enterprising blogger has leaked the entire finale online?

There are some shows that have such a following that plot line spoilers and inside information won't deter the fans from tuning in anyway. I doubt that fans of Lost would skip watching an episode even if they had the entire script in their hands. However, there are many shows that don't stand up well to the loss of the surprise factor. Once I found out that the CW decided to skip doing a series finale for its long-running sitcom Girlfriends, I lost all interest in watching the last few new episodes.