From MadCap's Couch - "Sliders: Summer of Love"

"Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuude..."

Get your tie-dye and your Jimi Hendrix vinyls out, it's time to go back to the 1960s...okay, not really. It's more time to go back to a world where the 1960s never actually ended.

...just...go with me here.

This episode is actually the second one, something I don't believe is a problem after the first season, hence part of the reason why I'm not overly worried about it. Still, studio meddling is apparently a massive problem with them, absolutely no idea why. The show's co-creator, Tracy Tormé, had wanted to have the episodes lead into one another to give a sense of continuity, but FOX told him to stow it and aired them in their own order.

Once again, FOX does everything it can to kill a science-fiction series.

But the airing order of episodes aside, we still have quite some time before the entire series goes to pot, so let's get on with "Summer of Love".

We open in the room of one Conrad Bennish, a fellow student of Quinn's back on Earth Prime. A 90s hippie, he's surprisingly not chilling out in his room with some Purple Haze blaring on his speakers when three men and a woman in trenchcoats coming knocking at his door - the FBI.

...really? You guys couldn't spring for a Mulder and Scully cameo?

"Yeah, we couldn't get them, but here's some other guys..."

They take him down to Quinn's basement as seen in the Pilot episode, where Bennish geeks out over Quinn's equipment set up before being shown file folders about the four Sliders who have since all gone missing. After seeing one of Quinn's VHS tapes, Conrad determines that Quinn and the others have travelled to another universe.

We smash cut to the Sliders arriving on a relatively empty street, the Slide timer being broken in the fall. As Arturo complains about his ribs, Quinn begins to work on fixing it and they try to figure out where they are. Oddly, they find that no one is around. In fact, the whole of San Francisco is completely abandoned, something that becomes all the more frightening when a siren blares and a voice booms across the silence to declare that the "Swarm is approaching from the South". Apparently, the city has been evacuated...

The group learns from a television (because there is almost always a television around in Sliders for exposition as we'll soon learn) that a swarm of South American Spiderwasps is coming their way. As far as reactions go, I'm with Rembrandt - "Don't tell me that." We knew that monstrous creations of science were bound to happen eventually on one of the worlds we visited (oh, and it does later, too), but Spiderwasps are just a little bit too nightmare fuel-y.

Needless to say, the Sliders don't need to convince Quinn much to prematurely activate the timer, Wade and Rembrandt heading through...and then the wormhole snaps shut behind them. As the swarm gets closer, Quinn finally gets the portal open again and he and Arturo jump through...bringing three of the Spiderwasps along with them.

When they arrive, the two groups are separated - Wade and Rembrandt arrive at what appears to be Woodstock, surrounded by many hippies of the 1960s variety who begin to worship them as "Prophets". Quinn and Arturo, meanwhile, arrive at a construction site...and find no trace of their comrades. However, Arturo apparently has something he needs to get off his back - one of the Spiderwasps. Quinn gets a hold of a rock and reveals that he once was a quarterback in High School, throwing it and...striking his mentor over the head and killing him.

...okay, that doesn't happen. Arturo gets struck over the head and falls to the ground, but is presumably no worse for wear.

Meanwhile, Wade and Rembrandt mourn the loss of their comrades who have not yet joined them and the realization hits them that, without Quinn, they're stuck. They quiz the hippies to learn where they are, finding out that they are still outside of San Francisco and that Pete Wilson is the governor in the year 1995, thinking that they're home until they ask who the President is...and learn that it's Oliver North.

For those who don't know who Oliver North is, imagine Edward Snowden if he didn't have to go into exile in another country...and had actually done something wrong. Which he did by selling weapons to Iran.

But political commentaries aside, Wade and Rembrandt are disheartened by this news but the hippies offer to take them into their commune so they can get some rest.

Meanwhile, Quinn and Arturo find themselves in the same San Francisco, but in a different part. Arturo makes quips about how the 1960s sucked when they were the 1960s and as in a foul mood about the whole thing.

The hippies discuss Wade and Rembrandt and what they're going to do with them when they wake. Interestingly, they don't decide to have an orgy or to chop them up and eat their brains to gain their knowledge and power. Rembrandt gets tended to by a quartet of sexy concubines like the true player the Crying Man is. He decides to go looking for the others, just in case, and the hippies offer him one of their nine cars and the use of the mansion that one of their fathers' owns.

They are into modern Earth and spiritual values, but they're not stupid.

So Remmy takes a souped up, peace sign-covered Cadillac and goes out looking for Quinn and Arturo...only to come to a house where he used to live and stepping out, finding some kind of party going on there. To his shock...Rembrandt walks into his own wake. Apparently, this universe's Rembrandt went missing in action while serving in the military, leaving behind a wife and a son. And a brother, who says a few words about how he forgives him for being the underachiever of the family, Rembrandt making snide comments from the other room...until his brother insults his musical talent...whereupon he angrily outs himself.

As Rembrandt settles into what seems like a loving family, Quinn and Arturo are heckled by cops for Arturo's headband (which was used to bind the injury Quinn inflicted on him earlier) and they meet Bennish who in this universe is a clean-cut die-hard young Republican for the War. A rather humorous aside given his double on Earth Prime, leaving both Quinn and Arturo with mouths agape over the sight.

Meanwhile, Rembrandt's wake has turned into a wild party and he and his brother have a little aside where Remmy gives some background. His wife in this universe, Sharon, is apparently a girl that he had a crush on in high school but never had the guts to ask her out. Yes, he just outright tells his brother that he's not from this universe. Luckily, he thinks Remmy is just winding him up instead of the logical jump that his brother has completely gone off the rails.

Remmy learns some of the differences in the universes, including his wife's belief that his duplicate has been fooling around with other women at...wherever he was stationed, but he's going to be getting some "home cooking".

Back with the hippies, Wade learns that astrology does not exist on this world much to her dismay...so she teaches the way of random star alignments actually meaning something in the grand scheme of things. Which is to say, not at all.

Quinn and Arturo, meanwhile, are working on putting their collective genius together to repair the Slide timer and continue their journey. They find a listing for lodging and have to pass a very strict patriotism test given by an old lady before being allowed to rent an apartment.  Unfortunately, their bluffing gets the better of them and the old lady is suspicious nonetheless and later goes to call the government.

Apparently, she fears they've come to kill the President...who is coming to San Francisco this week.

Quinn and Arturo get to work on formula schematics, taking shifts.

Rembrandt, meanwhile, finds that his domestic life is not remotely what he pictured. Apparently, he's whipped and his wife is a frighteningly domineering, heartless harpy and his son is a disrespectful, smart-mouthed little twerp.

Wade continues to "enlighten" the hippies, who are hilariously idiotic and anvilicious to the point of brain trauma. But hey, that was the 60s...or so I'm told.

Back at the Casa di Brown, a telegraph arrives that reveals that the Rembrandt Brown of this universe...is alive! Apparently, Remmy's wife doesn't take the news well at all and comes after him with a shotgun.

Ah, the bliss of married life.

Returning to the Apartment of Science, Quinn and Arturo eat breakfast and get dressed in some new threads...before the FBI rushes in to put them all at gunpoint. Thanks to Arturo wanting to verbally backhand the lesser intelligent types, they manage to sink themselves into even more trouble when the FBI thinks the formula they have scrawled on a wall is for some sort of pipe bomb.

But Quinn sees Rembrandt driving around after just being shot at - apparently in good spirits once more as he's singing - and Arturo gets the drop on the female agent and takes her gun, holding her a gunpoint so that they can beat a retreat. Catching up with the Crying Man, they ride away from the FBI who rather stupidly try to catch them on foot.

Back at the Hippie Commune, Wade continues to fall into the role of Hippie Yoda and is overjoyed that Quinn and Arturo are back with them. The timer is repaired, thankfully, and there are a little over two minutes before the slide...and because we actually have two minutes left in the episode, we need some last minute drama.

The FBI shows up in their one car instead of an entire SWAT team. But the group escapes before they get to so much as fire off a shot, and they arrive on the same abandoned street from the beginning of the episode...on a different Earth. There is an ominous rumbling that can be heard, and upon turning a corner they discover the cause...a massive tidal wave heading their way...

Hehehehehehe...wipeooooout...

...yes, this episode was supposed to be the lead in to "Prince of Wails".

This episode is very humor heavy, which is pretty good and makes a nice contrast whether you're watching the episodes in the order Tracy Tormé intended or not. It's a relatively light-hearted romp that pokes fun at the uber-Conversative Right and 1960's hippie counterculture in pretty much equal measure. It also has the first (chronological, anyway) instance of the Sliders "getting involved" for reasons that don't involve saving one of their own as in "Pilot", Wade trying to convince the others that if they can bring a little bit of the good things of their world into other worlds they visit, Sliding could actually do some good, something that was touched upon in "Fever".

Next week, however, we're going to delve back into the darkness. It's time to get braingerous!

...yeah, I'm never saying that again.

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