From MadCap's Couch - "Sliders: The Prince of Wails"

Oh, God...the Sliders found Hoenn!!!!

I'm an American, a proud American, and I honestly do love my country and don't really want to live anywhere else. But, of course, I'm not going to shove my love of my country down your throat, because let's face it, it'll probably make you ga-I mean, it would just be improper. Thus, I really don't understand what the obsession with the Royal Family of England is. Really, our ancestors fought a war to free us from the shackles of British oppression and you morons are more than happy to welcome them back if they say a few kind words and wave and smile at you? I can hear George III spinning in his grave having wished he'd tried that tactic to woo the colonists into servitude.

No offense to my British readers. Please don't stop making Doctor Who. Oh, and Iron Maiden, keep them going for at least another ten years, please.

However, some of the more hardcore Sliders fans will immediately chastise me for jumping to this episode instead of doing them in the "proper" order. You see, much like with Firefly, FOX aired the original episodes out of order. So, after the two-part "Pilot" was not "Fever" but an episode dubbed "Summer of Love", which is listed as the fifth episode by the order that FOX aired them in and on the Netflix instant Que. So, I'm doing them in that order. Why? Convenience. So, with that, let us prepare to hop into a world across the pond.

The episode begins with the Sliders clinging to life from a building in a flooded San Francisco, apparently having slid into a world where the polar ice caps had melted. As they cling to life, Rembrandt does some more whining about his inability to restart his career and Quinn rightly tells him to stuff a sock in it. After a not terrible CGI shark and the title sequence, the group manages to slide away before becoming shark food and fall right into a fountain. As they resolve to keep themselves low-key, a man bows to Arturo in a rather over the top fashion...how strange.They also notice the "Benedict Arnold Savings & Loan" and a British-style telephone booth.

Not, a blue telephone box, but we can't ask for miracles.

As they pass, more individuals bow to Arturo specifically, something that unnerves the Sliders a bit. After Wade is nearly run over and chastised by an overly polite British motorist, the man completely folds at the sight of Arturo and apologizes profusely for his "reckless driving" and offers him the use of the nearby hotel completely with the Royal Suite. Once settled in, Arturo reads the script, learning that this San Francisco is part of the "British States of America". Apparently on this Earth, the Americans lost the Revolutionary War and the monarchy still holds power.

They believe that they're manage to get through their time on this world in anonymity due to the British desire to mind their own business...until they see Arturo as the "Sheriff of San Francisco" on television.

Times the Sliders Have Run into Parallel Versions of Themselves: 5

Arturo in this universe is not only the Sheriff of San Francisco, but is apparently the acting Regent over the British government until young Prince Harold can be crowned the following week. Deciding to head out into the wild to avoid someone discovering that Arturo is not Arturo, the Sliders use his status one last time to get a car loaded down with various loot.

Remember, kids...everything he says is right.

They head out into the woods of downtown Oakland and apparently have some car trouble, forcing the others to push the car while Arturo touts more exposition. Apparently, not only the American Revolution did not happen, but also the French and Russian didn't either, leading the world to be ruled by a handful of monarchies rather than the governments that would rise in the wake of their respective falls. As the group takes a break from pushing and Wade brings up several quotations from newspapers to question why exactly Harold should be king, the military shows up.

Once more, Arturo uses his duplicate's status to bluff his way past the commander - another version of Quinn and Wade's asshole boss at the computer store - and tries to get the group to not interfere when it becomes clear that the military is up to something shady under the Sheriff's orders. Quinn, however, convinces the group to investigate.

Thus we are introduced to Prince Harold, apparently out hunting when the military swoops in. The Sliders rescue him. Once more, Arturo gets the military off their backs and the group escapes. Arturo attempts to explain that he is not the Sheriff...but Harold is a blithering idiot who thinks he's joking. They return to the car from earlier, apparently hoping it repaired itself by magic, and find that it's been completely stripped clean.

...well, that's downtown Oakland for you.

No, apparently, the car has been stripped clean by a guerrilla group known as the Oakland Raiders...something something sports joke here...who hold them all at gunpoint. Quinn improvs the hell out of the situation, claiming that they've come to join up with the resistance movement, presenting them with Arturo and Harold. Captured, they're taken into the rebel hold. Quinn does his best to get them to keep Arturo and Harold alive as Harold continues to be completely oblivious to the realities of the situation before them much to Arturo's exasperation.

Then we get a scene with the Sheriff, where his television show has a segment where he claims to be opening up to his critics for criticisms...but is in reality only setting things up to make himself and the monarchy look good by having only those who speak well of the establishment be heard and those who dissent being hissed by an electronic audience produced by a machine.

Thank God this show came out before Twitter or he would have just callously blocked all the "trolls".

So, going from a monarchy to a totaltarian state. However, the commander from earlier meets with the Sheriff and the jig is up about Harold still being alive following a message from the Raiders about having both him and Arturo in custody. In response to this, Sheriff declares that he wants Harold dead. He wants his family dead. He wants the woods burned to the ground. He wants to be able to go to the woods in the middle of the night and pis-okay, you get the point. Scorched Earth.

Back with the Revolution, we get a scene with Harold and Wade where he impresses upon her the knowledge that the tabloids about him aren't true and she upon him that the Sheriff might not be acting in his best interest. He denies that he's been set up for assassination...until he finally makes the mental leap that, being the last of his line, the person who would succeed him in the event of his death is...the Sheriff.

Meanwhile, I'm still trying to figure out how San Francisco became so important to the British monarchy, but let's press on.

The Palace is revealed to have rejected all the demands the Raiders have given, so they decide to make an example of Arturo and Harold with bullets to the head. At the last minute, Quinn manages to save them with the power of television, revealing that the Sheriff is doing a live broadcast and thus cannot be Arturo, who is right there. The rebel leader is convinced by Quinn after a speech made of fortune cookie sayings that somehow gets the rebels into action. What follows is a montage of the rebels robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, martial law being declared by the Sheriff.

It's also important to keep in mind, they're doing this in all of about a week.

The Sheriff does a public service announcement to try and calm public fears and threatens the Raiders with their annihilation.

Wade and Harold have a moment where Harold flirts with her mercilessly and Wade shuts him down. Whereupon he brings up her rather obvious love of Quinn, which leads into Wade and Quinn having a not at all civil conversations about their respective love lives...with people they've only really known for about a week (three days actually, as we later find out). And since the feelings are abundantly obvious between the two and Jerry O'Connell and Sabrina Lloyd have a surprising amount of chemistry in this scene in particular and seem right about to, I'll go ahead and say it.

HEY! Quinn! Wade!

Seriously...geez...

Later, however, there's trouble afoot as Prince Harold has escaped - apparently not being the complete moron that everyone thought he was. With him escaped, however, Quinn goes out to try and recapture him before the Sheriff kills him - giving Wade the Slide Timer just in case he doesn't make it back in time.

In the meanwhile, Prince Harold walks among the poor and destitute of San Franciscso, likely seeing for the first time how utterly oblivious he has been to the problems of his people. If it weren't for the hard rock guitar theme blaring through the background, it could actually be a very powerful scene as Harold looks absolutely horrified at what he has discovered.

To keep the plot going and leaving Harold no time to ponder his actions, Quinn gets arrested by the Sheriff's men and dragged off.

The Sheriff hops on the tube to reveal that Quinn is being held at a maximum security prison, apparently having become a big name terrorist in three days, and will be executed by midnight...seventeen minutes before the window for Sliding opens. The rebels resolve to make Quinn a martyr and devolve into violence, seemingly lost without the wise Fortune Cookie words of their lord and savior.

To the surprise of all, however, Harold returns and refutes their words of violence. Apparently, he somehow wandered back into the heavily fortified rebel structure because...the plot needed him to, I guess. He speaks of how naive and foolish he was and the rebels decide to try and rally the people to storm the prison due to his support of them.

That's right. We're at the ten minutes before the end of the episode mark, as Arturo has a plan.

We get an ominous scene of shadowy men preparing the electric chair, which will be broadcast live for...convenience. The rebels take the TV station and set up Harold to speak up so they can pardon Quinn, expose the Sheriff, and introduce democracy to the world at long last. Rembrandt and Arturo run him through the Bill of Rights as it exists on their world, getting through to the sixth amendment before telling him to "wing it".

As the Sheriff begins his broadcast, the rebels hijack the signal and the Prince lets the cat out of the bag. Quinn is freed just in time and somehow gets to meet the rest of the group just in time for their slide out, giving Harold some last minute advice to with things as well as the rough draft they worked up of the Bill of Rights,  including the acknowledgment that "James Brown is the godfather of soul."

Oh, Remmy, you so wild!

This is actually not a bad episode, though the story is a little bit rushed in it's resolution and the pacing is all over the place. While the Sliders say they have six days on this world, it only ends up feeling like maybe two at the most, montages aside.

To give due credit, Harold's transformation into someone who cares seems quite genuine even over the short period of time. After seeing the plight of his people, having been cooped up and kept away from the realities of the world, he is really horrified and wants to use his power to make things change. He's not malicious or cruel, just oblivious, and so he sees the need to fix what is broken when it's revealed to him. Bravo!

Also, due to the nature of the show, we don't really see the consequences of the Sliders actions after introducing the noble virtues of democracy and self-government...though under the monarchy (or, at least, the Sheriff) it was an utterly totalitarian police state, so it's perfectly fine. Or some other justification for completely eschewing the established social order (nobody ever said being a hero was a good thing, see also: Dune).

Next week, we're going to a world that's FOX News would love to be in, and Hippies that wish they were here.

For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, be sure to follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.