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| John Winchester had a rough go of it in the 90s... |
...okay, that's not true. It's actually not a bizarre thing that I wish would go away and give me my two hours back. It's a pretty decent episode all told, though it highlights one of the problems I have with a certain character. More on that when we get to it. But to begin, we open on a truck blazing its way through a war-zone as guns are fired wildly about. The camera pans over and through some scaffolding to show the Sliders running to safety. With two minutes before the Slide, they stow themselves away in a warehouse, failing to realize a blonde woman - Michelle - watching them curiously from a hiding place.
And who is she hiding from? Why, John Winchester himself - that is, Jeffrey Dean Morgan - as the character of Sid, her leather jacket wearing abusive boyfriend. He makes his way in, demanding to know where she is and upon finding her begins to berate and beat her for not listening to him. The Sliders watch, horrified, and Arturo even comments on how much of a pathetic scum pile Sid is. However, Quinn is the only one to actually do something, charging out of cover with a pipe to save Michelle. However, Quinn's quarterback skills are no match for the skills of Papa Winchester and so the Crying Man has to come in with an assisting wooden plank to the back of Sid's head and a witty one-liner.
They run off to make the vortex and Sid actually manages to get up to follow without too much problem. Arturo gives some protest to the idea, but Michelle soon does come with them through the vortex. Sid is left to stare in confusion and, unlike many before him, is not left behind looking at the utter nothingness as he manages to jump through before the portal closes, leading into the main title sequence.
The Sliders and their two plus ones show up in a far, far better looking version of San Francisco than they were in moments ago. In fact, it almost looks utterly pristine. Before they can do a lot of walking around to explore, however, they're accosted by a man by the name of LJ - who Sid and Michelle know from their world. Sid puts Quinn against a post in an attempt to kill him, but is talked down and Arturo explains to him the concept of parallel Earths. Overhearing this, LJ gets them all to follow him away and out of sight.
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"Hey, you wanna buy some deathsticks?"
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Inside, they find that government housing is ritzy as all get out, looking more like a fancy hotel done up to the nines. Sid, however, is ready to leave and demands that the Sliders take himself and Michelle to his world when he returns. Though Arturo attempts to explain that prematurely activating the timer was what got them into this in the first place, it ends with Sid pushing Quinn against a post and choking the life out of him...until Arturo explains to him that if he kills Quinn, they'll be stuck there being that he's the only one who stands a chance of getting them back home.
Quinn heads out after Sid does to get some air, being approached by Michelle. She thanks him for trying to help, even though it's caused a lot of trouble, and gives him a rather smoldering kiss before LJ shows up with the paperwork and an authority figure who registers their Buddy Bracelets. The system registers the bracelets, causing them to light up. "Buddies" are bonded, namely Arturo and Rembrandt, Wade and Michelle...and Quinn with the still distant Sid.
Ha! Irony.
The man begins to explain how the Buddy System works, but an alert gets his attention. Someone has violated curfew, which he solves by heading out to the balcony and shooting a man in the back on the street below, then calmly returning to explain the system while the others watch in horror. Apparently, if someone's Buddy commits the crime, they do the time right along with them - or, in this case, get a bullet through the back. Not being complete morons, they fear about Sid committing a crime out there that Quinn would pay for as well. Michelle reasons that Sid would go where the money is, so Quinn and LJ go out to look for him before he does something stupid.
As they're driving around, LJ drops a plot point about a mega-earthquake that's coming that will likely destroy the prison. When Quinn asks why they don't all just leave if they know it's coming, LJ reveals that nobody can - San Francisco is a maximum security prison.
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| "I swear, by the tears in my 'fro, I will shank you..." |
However, philosophies will have to wait another day as a street punk decides to try and mess with Arturo on the grounds that he's...around? No real idea, but nonetheless he throws a knife at a sign near his head to taunt him. Of course, Gimli son of Gloin gives absolutely 0% of a damn and talks him down with the power of his Bluff skill. With the Neighborhood Watch nearby, the punk decides that it's not worth it now but promises to come back.
Elsewhere and later (apparently night), Wade and Michelle attend group therapy as Wade explains why they can't just take her and Sid home so easily, bringing up that they have been trying to get home as well and haven't managed it. They also argue the merits of Michelle staying with Sid versus leaving him. Wade, of course, taking the strawman approach of "he's an abusive jerk, so you should leave", though Michelle has the no better retort of "once you're with them, they all do it" and says that she's better off with Sid than without him, given the state of their world. She's just doing what she has to do to survive.
Nevermind that that's no longer the case, as Wade points out, but more on that later.
After a chuckle-worthy scene where Wade gets asked to confess what she's in for, Quinn and LJ are still driving around in the dark as LJ inquires as to the nature of sliding and Quinn gives a bit of detail about the unpredictability of sliding. They finally managed to come across Sid as he's about to knock over an ATM, which he does at gunpoint and LJ decides that he and Quinn need to get out of there - there's no stopping him now.
The Deputy Warden from earlier arrives at the scene of the ATM just as Sid's bracelet and Quinn's bracelet get activated in spite of LJ's attempts to separate them as much as possible. He is told by his superior to deal with Sid in spite of him having a hostage. LJ kicks Quinn out of the cab and tells him to hoof it, cover the bracelet up and hide for a while before coming to meet him at a nearby Bart Station later.
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| "Oh no! Not in the back! Not again, you bastards!" |
Quinn heads out and an earthquake sees his bracelet revealed to some snipers who try to take advantage of it...at least until the quake resumes and the show becomes Cloverfield for a few minutes which causes a panic among the populace and allows Quinn to escape sans bullet wounds. He actually escapes back to the housing and explains the situation to Michelle and Wade. Quinn and Wade decide to head off in spite of Michelle's insistence that Sid will come back for her...but she decides to go with them. They meet up with Arturo and Rembrandt and Quinn explains what he's learned of San Francisco being a maximum security prison. They meet up with LJ at the Bart Station, Michelle pulling Quinn aside to bring up that the LJ on her world was a double-crosser...which the writers take for a moment of self-awareness that she didn't bring that up before with Quinn's retort.
They head down the tunnels for Wade and Michelle to have another scene of what they were talking about before. Wade bringing up the "I have friends" argument when Michelle asks her why she's so damn happy.
Honestly I'm wondering where she's getting "happy" from, seeing that she seems more a scornful mouthpiece of the writers, but whatever.
Getting back to the plot, LJ reveals the hidden world of the Fraggles to the Sliders and company, as well as the hiding place of an underground movement in the warehouse from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Apparently, the criminals LJ is working with have been promised the timer. After LJ demands it, Arturo hands it over...though not before rendering it unusable by any hand but their own in a subtle manner. Quinn tries to play that card, but LJ puts Wade at gunpoint to persuade him to see things their way. He begins to agree...but dancing their cares away is put on hold as the Five-Oh shows up.
A firefight breaks out, ending with Michelle killing LJ, and Quinn retrieving the timer. They escape back through the tunnels only to find the police outside the Bart Station waiting for them...Sid apparently having joined forces with the Deputy Warden in a double-cross of the rest of the group - shock and awe on that one. They are taken to a holding cell where Arturo once more berates Quinn for getting involved in the affairs of other people on other worlds, citing it as the whole reason they're in this mess.
The Deputy Warden comes in with an ultimatum - one of them comes forward and offers to control the timer so they can escape, or they start executing them all one by one. When they bring up the very logical point that if he kills them all, there's no way he can get the device to work, he doesn't care because we're in the last ten minutes of the episode and we need to wrap things up with no super advanced motivations or logic.
Michelle tells the Sliders that the Warden is using a tactic of Sid's, and that it almost always works once he killed someone to put some teeth behind his words. Quinn tells Michelle not to blame herself when she tries to apologize and another quake hits, disturbing them all as they try to decide what to do.
Meanwhile, Sid and the Warden twirl their mustaches. The scene ends with the Warden getting a note - apparently someone has agreed to help.
Cutting back to the cell, we find out that Arturo has apparently broken and agreed to help Sid and the Warden. The other Sliders protest, but Arturo retorts that it's better that one of them survive than all of them die. Arturo also brings up some very cutting remarks to Quinn, namely that he should have perfected Sliding before he imperiled the lives of all of them, which he plans to do upon returning to their world and take credit for the idea. As he leaves, Quinn swears to get him back for his betrayal. Nevertheless, Arturo and Michelle go and Arturo is given the timer to work with.
He checks the timer and claims that it's been reconfigured - he'll need Quinn's help. Though Sid tries to call him out on pulling a trick, Arturo tries to assure him otherwise though Michelle puts a fine enough point on it by actually holding him at gunpoint until he lets Arturo go. Back at the cell, it is revealed to have indeed been a trick as Michelle and Arturo return with only thirty seconds to spare before the vortex needs to be opened. Back in the office, Sid and the Warden have been tied up, but Sid gets free once more and is in pursuit.
As the Sliders start to make their way through, Sid pulls a Kruge and attacks Quinn. Rembrandt gets involved but is thrown aside...and then Michelle puts the man at gunpoint once more. Sid tries to get cocky...and she shoots him through the stomach. He bleeds out on the floor as she nonetheless mourns the death of her boyfriend and spends his final moments with him. Wade convinces her to leave with them, and they all go through the wormhole just as the Big Quake hits and brings the whole place down...ending the episode.
And now, we can finally get to the problem that has been bugging me since the first scene with Wade and Michelle. I do not condone abusive behavior towards anyone - be they woman or man or child - it's one of the most pathetic and cowardly acts one can commit upon another person. My problem comes with Wade trying to force her own views upon the people of the worlds that she and the others visit.
The Sliders are going to get involved in the affairs of other places and peoples, I understand that by this point (after all, we wouldn't have a plot if they didn't), and they are always going to try to get involved for the better rather than try to active cause malice and harm to people because that's who they are and what they do. Arturo may have some concerns about Quinn's "bravado", but he even acknowledges within the episode that Quinn couldn't have just left Michelle to have her head beaten in by Sid. Because, in the moments where he's written properly, it's not in his character to do so. Neither is it in Arturo's to not see reason when it's presented to him, even if he does not like that said logic demands he respond differently than he's so inclined.
My problem with Wade is that the writers have not given her character that ability to see things from other viewpoints as every other Slider is able to. She is there solely to be a mouthpiece by the writing staff on what they think are social issues that need attention, or a straw(wo)man feminist who is there to roll her eyes at the testosterone-poisoned men-folk. A more egregious example of both those was back in "The Weaker Sex", where she is literally so one-dimensional as to be completely and utterly transparent. That is not good writing and Sabrina Lloyd deserved a great deal better than to be a pretty mouthpiece.
And again - I'm in no way condoning abusive relationships. And while abuse is still a great problem on our world for both genders, the fact is that Sid and Michelle's world is very clearly not our world. From the short look of it it is, at best, a world where social order has begun to collapse entirely if indeed it hasn't already - likely due to the "War" that Michelle mentions during group therapy. While it's still not a good thing, Michelle points out that she's just doing what she has to in order to survive. She doesn't like it, but that's the reality of her world and while staying is clearly not a good thing for her physical or mental state, she is doing what she feels she must in order to survive.
Wade trying to force her views on a situation and environment that she knows all of squat about is really rather insulting and proof that the writers did not bother to think the message of this episode through, preferring instead to just hammer it in (though admittedly far less anviliciously than in other episodes) without appraising the entire situation. It should be Michelle's choice, not Wade's influence, that gets her to do so. And while they do have Michelle do her retorts as to why she stays with Sid, she's wrong due to the virtue of Wade having to be right because of smug moral superiority and Sid being a completely irredeemable, sociopathic asshole to her and everyone else that we actually want to see die.
And die he does when Michelle kills him, which I think makes for the good ending of her small but poignant arc when she finally kills him in spite of her feelings for him so that he doesn't hurt others. Her future is uncertain, but at least she is now free. She has made her choice and now she has to live with those consequences. Only get used to never knowing what happened to her, because like many people who have left with the Sliders at the end of an episode this season...she never appears again and never gets mentioned.
Next time, the Sliders witness a grizzly murder on one world...which leads to a social upheaval on another world...because...reasons?
For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, be sure to follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.
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