An early episode filmed out of order?

(I posted this originally on the MovieChat forum (https://moviechat.org/tt0058815/I-Dream-of-Jeannie/5f40a9e65946791cc04bddf9/An-early-episode-filmed-out-of-order), but no one has replied to it yet, not to mention how many posters there are actively hostile to the show...)

My memory of the 1st-Season episode My Hero? made me think that either Tony was fine with being unfaithful to his fiancé, or the episode was meant to come after Jeannie and the Marriage Caper.

So, I have watched the whole episode again (original black & white version) and there is no mention ever of Melissa, or of Tony having a fiancé. He even attempts to go out with a "Miss Galaxy" with Roger at the end of the episode (Jeannie thwarts that by blinking his clothing replaced with only a towel).

Currently-numbered Episode-3 Guess What Happened on the Way to the Moon? is then in proper order with only Episode-4 Jeannie and the Marriage Caper of the original first-four episodes.

So, realistically, or at least where Tony is still on his way to marriage with Melissa Stone, the viewing-order for the first four episodes should be as follows:

1. The Lady in the Bottle
2. Guess What Happened on the Way to the Moon?
3. Jeannie and the Marriage Caper
4. My Hero?

That order would then also segue better into Episode-5 G.I. Jeannie before going on to the rest of the season.

I don't know why, after all these decades of watching the show, that this didn't occur to me until just recently :)

I noticed the odd order to the Melissa as fiance plot line too.

Filming completion dates were (per the book "Diary of a Jeannie" by Richard Barnes):

1. The Lady in the Bottle - December 4, 1964
2. Guess What Happened on the Way to the Moon? - April 1, 1965
3. Jeannie and the Marriage Caper - April 13, 1965
4. My Hero? - May 10 1965

Other episodes were filmed around these 4 as well.

I noticed the odd order to the Melissa as fiance plot line too.

Filming completion dates were (per the book "Diary of a Jeannie" by Richard Barnes):

1. The Lady in the Bottle - December 4, 1964
2. Guess What Happened on the Way to the Moon? - April 1, 1965
3. Jeannie and the Marriage Caper - April 13, 1965
4. My Hero? - May 10 1965

Other episodes were filmed around these 4 as well.
Ah. No wonder.

I have that book and will have to update my other records on episode-order. I never saw the shows when they originally aired (though I'm old enough to have watched them back then). Were those four aired out of order, too?

Ah. No wonder.

I have that book and will have to update my other records on episode-order. I never saw the shows when they originally aired (though I'm old enough to have watched them back then). Were those four aired out of order, too?


Original broadcast was

The Lady in the Bottle -September 18, 1965
My Hero? - September 25, 1965
Guess What Happened on the Way to the Moon? - October 2, 1965
Jeannie and the Marriage Caper - October 9, 1965

Putting Tony's breakup with Melissa 3 weeks away from the last time we saw her almost makes you forget about her.

I have scoured the internet for Barnes’ “Diary of a Genie” - it of course is long out of print. I think a complete listing of production order would be interesting and informative. I do recall a few IDOJ fan sites over the past couple decades which did indeed have an episode listing. Sadly, it appears that every single such fansite has disappeared and is now defunct. I would gladly resurrect one if I knew how. :( I’m sure the Richard Barnes book had quite a few tidbits lost to time about the show that a comprehensive fansite could include, least of all completion of filming dates (the BEWITCHED Wikipedia includes that information inclusively on episode guide).

I have scoured the internet for Barnes’ “Diary of a Genie” - it of course is long out of print. I think a complete listing of production order would be interesting and informative. I do recall a few IDOJ fan sites over the past couple decades which did indeed have an episode listing. Sadly, it appears that every single such fansite has disappeared and is now defunct. I would gladly resurrect one if I knew how. :( I’m sure the Richard Barnes book had quite a few tidbits lost to time about the show that a comprehensive fansite could include, least of all completion of filming dates (the BEWITCHED Wikipedia includes that information inclusively on episode guide).
I'll see what I can do for making a list. I do suggest that once it's done that people save the text to their own computers as a file (txt, rtf, docx, etc) so that it doesn't get lost to the ever-changing nature of the Internet.

One detail I noticed, and which I'll include, is the production number. I don't know how they are generated, but they are more than just numbers 1 through 139 :)

Well, after working on this for a bit, I have discovered that Barnes' book only has production-number and end-of-production dates for the first season. The rest of the entries in the book do not include that info. Just air dates, which doesn't tell us when it was filmed or in what order.

I'll post what I compiled anyway, and then y'all can save it however you like :)

IDoJ Episode Production-Dates
In chronological order by production date
(Source – Diary of a Genie by Richard D. Barnes)

_______Season One_______

Production Number •
End of Production Date__________Air Date
#4065•December 4, 1964___________September 18, 1965
The Lady in the Bottle

#4201•April 1, 1965_______________October 2, 1965
Guess What Happened on the Way to the Moon?

#4211•April 7____________________October 16, 1965
G.I. Jeannie

#4219•April 13, 1965______________October 9, 1965
Jeannie and the Marriage Caper

#4218•April 20, 1965______________November 6, 1965
The Americanization of Jeannie

#4202•April 23, 1965______________November 27, 1965
Whatever Became of Baby Custer?

#4214•April 29, 1965______________November 13, 1965
The Moving Finger

#4213•May 5, 1965_______________October 23, 1965
The Yacht Murder Case

#4212•May 10, 1965______________October 30, 1965
Anybody Here Seen Jeannie?

#4220•May 10, 1965______________September 25, 1965
My Hero

#4210•May 17, 1965______________November 20, 1965
Djinn and Water

#4226•October 7, 1965____________December 11, 1965
Russian Roulette

#4222•October 14, 1965___________December 4, 1965
Where'd You Go-Go?

#4227•October 21, 1965___________December 18, 1965
What House Across the Street?

#4232•October 28, 1965___________January 22, 1966
Is There an Extra Jeannie in the House?

#4229•November 4, 1965__________December 25, 1965
Too Many Tony's

#4224•November 9, 1965__________January 8, 1966
Get Me to Mecca On Time

#4231•November 12, 1965_________January 15, 1966
The Richest Astronaut in the Whole Wide World

#4223•November 18, 1965_________January 29, 1966
Never Try to Outsmart a Genie

#4234•November 25, 1965_________February 12, 1966
Jeannie and the Kidnap Caper

#4236•December 2, 1965__________February 5, 1966
My Master the Doctor

#4237•December 10, 1965_________February 19, 1966
How Lucky Can You Get?

#4238•December 15, 1965_________February 26, 1966
Watch the Birdie

#4239•December 22, 1965_________March 5, 1966
Permanent House Guest

#4240•January 7, 1966____________March 12, 1966
Bigger than a Bread Box and Better than a Genie

#4243•January 13, 1966___________March 19, 1966
My Master the Great Rembrandt

#4241•January 20, 1966___________April 2, 1966
My Master the Thief

#4244•February 3, 1966___________April 9, 1966
This Is Murder

#4245•February 10, 1966__________April 23, 1966
My Master the Magician

#4246•February 17, 1966__________May 7, 1966
I'll Never Forget What's Her Name

Production numbers are a useful tool and many of them are missing on the internet for older shows. Re post 5 there is an internet archive of many defunct websites (for example that's been documented on here--unfortunately I don't remember much more.

I think I found the site. However someone would have had to archive it here:

http://web.archive.org

IDoJ Episode Production-Dates
In chronological order by production date
(Source – Diary of a Genie by Richard D. Barnes)

_______Season One_______

Production Number •
End of Production Date__________Air Date
#4065•December 4, 1964___________September 18, 1965
The Lady in the Bottle

#4201•April 1, 1965_______________October 2, 1965
Guess What Happened on the Way to the Moon?

etc.



For example look at a site that will probably be reliably on the internet permanently:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_I_Dream_of_Jeannie_episodes

...no sign of production numbers. I didn't check IMDb.

Some older shows do have them documented, such as Leaver it to Beaver or I Love Lucy.

Well, after working on this for a bit, I have discovered that Barnes' book only has production-number and end-of-production dates for the first season. The rest of the entries in the book do not include that info. Just air dates, which doesn't tell us when it was filmed or in what order.


Even though it is just the first season, I appreciate your time and research anyway! That does shed more light on some of the broadcast order choices. Interesting that a whole handful of episodes were shot between “Marriage Caper” and “My Hero” despite how they aired. Still am curious about the rest of the series though naturally.

And, I assume that production number has little to do with the actual shooting and more to do when the script was numbered and put into pre-production stages with all the various departments. Any tech-savvy person willing to upload these filming dates to Wikipedia? ;)

Re post 5 there is an internet archive of many defunct websites (for example that's been documented on here--unfortunately I don't remember much more.

I think I found the site. However someone would have had to archive it here:

http://web.archive.org

Yes, I know of this site as well. Unfortunately, I couldn’t recall exactly the URLs of all those old IDOJ fansites, making the archive database fairly useless in this case. It was a shot in the dark as it were hoping they had filming dates to begin with.

Even though it is just the first season, I appreciate your time and research anyway! That does shed more light on some of the broadcast order choices. Interesting that a whole handful of episodes were shot between “Marriage Caper” and “My Hero” despite how they aired. Still am curious about the rest of the series though naturally.

And, I assume that production number has little to do with the actual shooting and more to do when the script was numbered and put into pre-production stages with all the various departments. Any tech-savvy person willing to upload these filming dates to Wikipedia? ;)
You're welcome :)

The use of the production numbers being for the scripts was my assumption, but the Barnes book doesn't mention them (that I saw in print). There was a supplement book he put out, titled "Jeannie Guide - Silver Anniversary Edition" and there is one page with all of the dates and production numbers on it. Again, only for the first season, which sucks, but that's all the info we have. I have scanned that page, so I'll post a link to the image.

https://imagizer.imageshack.com/img922/2686/leiKFT.jpg

The "Jeannie Sisters" was one fan-page which had lots of info though it was started as a way to collect all of their fanfic stories together.

Here's their "Episode Production List" page:https://web.archive.org/web/20091027224001/http://www.jeanniesisters.com/factfiles/epiprod.html

As you can see, I had to use the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to get to it again. I thought I had it bookmarked, but because I can't find that in my bookmarks folder, I'm "archiving" it again, including all of the links from their main page. Because if you click on the side buttons, they take you to a separate page that is way out of date and doesn't give you an Internet Archive page. I recommend doing something similar if you want to gather the info from their pages :)

This is the link to their main page if you're interested:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180329100008/http://www.jeanniesisters.com/

As the former webmaster of Jeannie Sisters, I had not realized that the Wayback Machine also still existed. Nice to see my old stuff again. I wish I had time (and $) to get the site up and running again, but with moving into a new house (not in CA anymore, despite my online name), that's not a possibility right now.

Another problem is trying to locate now-defunct IDOJ sites is the fact that many of them were run from Geocities, Tripod, and other free webspace. Jeannie Sisters started that way. One of the sites most memorable to me was Carpet1934's site, run on free webspace. Then she started to pay for part of the space, and when she passed away (cancer), the entire site went down. Or so says my memory - that was over 16 years ago.


Donna

As the former webmaster of Jeannie Sisters, I had not realized that the Wayback Machine also still existed. Nice to see my old stuff again. I wish I had time (and $) to get the site up and running again, but with moving into a new house (not in CA anymore, despite my online name), that's not a possibility right now.

Another problem is trying to locate now-defunct IDOJ sites is the fact that many of them were run from Geocities, Tripod, and other free webspace. Jeannie Sisters started that way. One of the sites most memorable to me was Carpet1934's site, run on free webspace. Then she started to pay for part of the space, and when she passed away (cancer), the entire site went down. Or so says my memory - that was over 16 years ago.
Donna

Hi Donna :)

The Wayback Machine will likely never go away because the Internet Archive is well-supported around the world. They even set up secondary back-up servers in Canada some years ago. Even so, they still don't have everything ever posted online, but I'll see what I can do to find Carrie's/Carpet's pages.

IDoJ Episode Production-Dates
In chronological order by production date
(Source – Diary of a Genie by Richard D. Barnes)

_______Season One_______

Production Number •
End of Production Date__________Air Date

#4202•April 23, 1965______________November 27, 1965
Whatever Became of Baby Custer?
....

This explains Billy Mummy's availability to guest star - it was the last thing he did before "Lost in Space" went into production for it's first season (29 episodes) (It's also his last non-"Lost in Space" appearance - TV or Movie for the duration of his series.)

Remember, IDOJ started production earlier than any other show for the 1965-1966 season due to Barbara's Pregnancy. Which also explains why episodes were aired out of production order - easier to hide that fact. :)

and It also explains why the episode that writes out Melissa and General Stone didn't air sooner.

An early episode filmed out of order?

(I posted this originally on the MovieChat forum (https://moviechat.org/tt0058815/I-Dream-of-Jeannie/5f40a9e65946791cc04bddf9/An-early-episode-filmed-out-of-order), but no one has replied to it yet, not to mention how many posters there are actively hostile to the show...)

My memory of the 1st-Season episode My Hero? made me think that either Tony was fine with being unfaithful to his fiancé, or the episode was meant to come after Jeannie and the Marriage Caper.

So, I have watched the whole episode again (original black & white version) and there is no mention ever of Melissa, or of Tony having a fiancé. He even attempts to go out with a "Miss Galaxy" with Roger at the end of the episode (Jeannie thwarts that by blinking his clothing replaced with only a towel).

Currently-numbered Episode-3 Guess What Happened on the Way to the Moon? is then in proper order with only Episode-4 Jeannie and the Marriage Caper of the original first-four episodes.

So, realistically, or at least where Tony is still on his way to marriage with Melissa Stone, the viewing-order for the first four episodes should be as follows:

1. The Lady in the Bottle
2. Guess What Happened on the Way to the Moon?
3. Jeannie and the Marriage Caper
4. My Hero?

That order would then also segue better into Episode-5 G.I. Jeannie before going on to the rest of the season.

I don't know why, after all these decades of watching the show, that this didn't occur to me until just recently :)

Actually, Jeannie and the Marriage Caper should have been the second episode. At the beginning of the episode Guess What Happened on the Way to the Moon?, Tony finds a picture of some brunette girl (not Melissa) in the desk drawer and asks Jeannie why she put it there. She later puts a beard on the face of the woman in the picture. Judging by Jeannie's behavior, it's obvious it is a picture of a girlfriend of Tony's. I actually noticed that (in relation to Melissa) even more than Roger trying to get him to go out with Ms. Galaxy (though I certainly noticed that too).