Gone but not forgotten: Sliders
During high school, I had a pretty sweet weekday routine. It went something like this:7:30AM-2:30PM Waste time in manner that could possibly be described as "learning"
2:30PM-3:00PM Trek home from school
3:00PM-4:00PM Gorge self on crackers, Coke, and salami
4:00PM-5:00PM Lois and Clark reruns on TNT
5:00PM-6:00PM Sliders reruns on SciFi
6:00PM-6:30PM Catnap on living room couch, possibly with drool
6:30PM-6:35PM Wake angry from catnap to noise of Mom maliciously banging pots and pans in thinly disguised attempt to "make dinner"
Ahhh...memories. What - you don't remember Sliders? In it, a pre-Rebecca Romijn, post Stand by Me Jerry O'Connell plays a happy-go-lucky genius who accidentally opens a portal between dimensions. He and an unlikely trio of companions (including pre-Gimli Jonathan Rhys-Davies) are sucked into the portal and thrown into a long, tumultuous journey, traveling (aka 'sliding') between alternate realities of Earth. The crew has a limited window of time in each dimension, at the end of which they can stay or jump to another dimension. They never know where they'll jump to next, and it's no surprise that they're always hoping their next jump will take them back home.
The four main characters (l-r) Wade, Rembrant, Arturo, and Quinn (sweet names!) managed to get into all sorts of predicaments, not knowing the customs, culture, or climate of the places they jumped into - which varied from the life-threatening (hungry dinosaurs) to the lame (again, hungry dinosaurs). Using quick wits and a flair for BS, they managed to adapt to their surrounds and talk themselves out of some pretty dire and embarrassing situations. The Sliders crew sometimes encountered alternate versions of themselves in the other dimensions, which led to the expected potential for both farce and self-realization.Sliders didn't have the highest production values, or the best writing, or the most logical of plots, and I was much more a fan of the Sabrina Lloyd years to the Kari Wuhrer years. That being said, the characters were likeable, it was light-hearted and funny, and I enjoyed even the more outlandish storylines. Plus, Jerry was an affable, attractive companion for an hour every weekday afternoon. (Too bad he's looking a bit angsty here.)
What marginally shameful programs did you watch during your formative years?
posted by Veltman @ 6:05 PM
1 Comments:
I was a huge fan of Sliders.
Being a member of Generation X...my formative years were the 1980's. There are so few decent televison shows from that decade.
A few shameful and guilty pleasures were: Cagney & Lacy, WKRP and The Hitchhiker on HBO.
I wound up watching mostly TV from the 60's and 70's. Gilligan's Island, Hogan's Heroes, MASH, etc. Pretty much the only current show then that I watched regularly was Late Night with David Letterman.
It wasn't until the 90's that I found some programs I could fall in love with. The X-Files...Homicide: Life on the Street.
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