As ‘Glee’ season 5 ends, season 6 may receive smaller episode order

When you remember back to when “Glee” was picked up for two seasons last year, the plan was for both of them to have 22 episodes. Well, things have now changed a little bit. Following the death of Cory Monteith last summer, the show lost a few weeks of production and the order was cut to 20 episodes.

Now, it is looking more and more like the final season may be fewer than initially expected, which says quite a bit given that Ryan Murphy had previously insinuated that they may even be getting 24 episodes to make up for the two that were lost this year. Speaking at the Fox upfront, network head Kevin Reilly strongly insinuated that he will push for a shorter season as the ratings fell off a cliff most of this past year:

“The order currently is for 22 but we’re actually going to sit down with Ryan [Murphy] and really talk about how we’re going to end it and figure that out … The advantage of having it on later in the season is that we don’t have to feel the pressure of delivering. We can do [the episodes] in a row. We’re going to sit down and talk about exactly the best way to end the show and how many [episodes] that is.”

In mentioning “later in the season,” Reilly is referencing the fact that the show was not mentioned when the fall schedule was announced today. Personally, we see the show getting around 13-15 episodes rather than 22, and the show ending on a night that could be either Friday or (gasp) Saturday. With the ratings so low, we have a hard time imagining that Fox is going to devote any of its prime real estate to it, especially since it performs so well on DVR machines in the first place and it therefore really doesn’t matter where it comes on the air.

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Photo: Fox