At the end of “Wilfred” season one, Ryan (Elijah Wood) suffered an existential crisis and was forced to wonder if his time with the dog, Wilfred — whom only Ryan perceives as a surly Australian man in a cheap dog suit as portrayed by Jason Gann — was real or a delusion.
The first new episode of the year appears to directly deal with that cliffhanger, and apparently “Wilfred” will be back as soon as next week.
On Thursday, June 14, FX will roll out a special preview episode of “Wilfred” featuring Robin Williams as a psychiatrist while Ryan comes to grips with not having Wilfred in his life. The episode will be available through Fox’s various video-on-demand partnerships including Hulu, Yahoo! TV, various cable and satellite providers and even the FX homepage. The preview episode will also air on FX itself on Thursday, June 21 at 10:30pm following a repeat of the first season finale of “Wilfred.”
In a strange case of branding, the preview episode (which is entitled “Progress”) is not being billed as the second season premiere. Instead, the following episode, “Letting Go” is the official season two premiere of “Wilfred,” which will debut on its originally scheduled date, Thursday, June 28. The loose description of that episode states that Wilfred begins withholding his help from Ryan after coming to the conclusion that their relationship is too one sided.
“We’ve seen the success FOX had previewing ‘Glee’ and ‘New Girl’ with this type of initiative and we felt this was a perfect opportunity to execute a similar strategy for ‘Wilfred,’” noted John Landgraf, the President and General Manager of FX. “’Wilfred’ enjoyed the most successful first season of any comedy ever on FX and the time is right to capitalize on that success and hopefully grow our audience. This is a special treat for fans of the show to get a jump start ahead of the season two premiere.”
