Yeah -- all Discovery/Scripps programming is a huge pain-in-the-arse to sort through. And whatever you see today may not be the way it is a year from now.
Go to the
main show's web site and you get one set of episode numbering. Go to their
'Watch' site and get another.
Go to Amazon and get a 3rd. Throw in random twitter posts and it may match one of the three -- or none at all. Even worse - assuming you decide to favor one over the other - that site's own logic and rules get broken from season to season - so it's almost impossible to just try to rely on one over the other.
Just recently we had a
serious research thread going with 'Ghost Adventures' and the most recent episode just because the official sites didn't agree with each other on whether it was even a season premiere or not. It's baffling that their sites are laid out as bad with such conflicting information.
On an unrelated note for anybody who happens to wander on this thread -- the topic referenced above should be a go-to example of how to request changes. Edits were made (and then re-made), posts blanked out which fubar'ed the loaded meta like images. But a series of posts between myself and @l0s3r complete with
lots of valid source links -- and notice that none of the sourced links were wikipedia, other TV database sites, IMDB, etc but were instead all official sources (even if they conflicted) -- gave the moderator @Mistywing enough to make a determination on how to proceed.
What the post didn't have was just a list of episodes to delete with no sources ... or because the DVD box set has them different ... or Wikipedia doesn't have them like that ... or because TVMaze or TMDB has them different ... or ...
Did it work out exactly how I would have liked? Nope. I still think the 'specials' determinant is a bit too loose for me - with the production numbering or a random twitter post having too much weight in specials determination when we don't put that weight in regular episode numbering. Even with a go-forward plan, I suspect 'specials' questions will still pop up and need clarification between disparate sources.
But -- my acceptance of every aspect of the solution is not required. All that is required is that I
understand the path for go-forward. I don't have to like it ... but I do have to understand how it is applied. And the series of posts in that thread should be a helpful reference (assuming people in the future even do a search before posting -- God, I'm a freakin' optimist) on explaining why numbering here may be different than numbering elsewhere.
On a personal note: I'm giving up trying to keep up with numbering for this series (and possibly any other Scripps/Discovery series). Because my wife loves this just-horrible TV show -- I've had to keep on top of new episodes and have them available for her in Plex. But because of episode numbering (and the fact that numbering can be fluid when looking at the numbering I had matched up 4-5 years ago to values held then) - I've removed metadata scraping for this series in my library. I'm going to be handling my own media center metadata outside of online databases for at least this show to start with. In the long run, it will just be easier (if harder in the short-term). I've spent a good couple of hours this evening going through and renumbering files to more closely match the Travel Channel 'watch' sites and/or Amazon (where possible -- there's a ton of conflicts that I had to make a judgement call on). Some of the more dubious 'specials' I've placed in their logical order in season numbering. While watching them - there was nothing in many of them to qualify them as a true 'special' other than they were filmed in the same local area. Broadcast opening sequences, title cards, etc looked exactly like any regular episode. Only a production code and/or some random tweet from that douche Zak Bagans pushed it towards specials. The renumbering will make my wife happier as she will more easily be able to locate episodes in context within the 'season' that they aired. It may make my caretaking of the series a bit rougher - but as long as it makes her happier.
.