El Sid

Up until now, most episodes have followed a somewhat predictable structure: slide into a world, find trouble, then either overthrow the world order or slide out before the trouble catches up with you. But what if the trouble is dumb enough to follow you into a mysterious swirling hole? That's one of the questions "El Sid" seeks to answer.

The main adventure takes place in a world where the entire city of San Francisco has been turned into a maximum-security prison. Why would the government throw away such a beautiful city? Because it’s located right on top of a fault line in the earth’s crust. The Big One is coming and if people are going to die, it might as well be undesirables.

Fortunately, the Sliders picked up a pair of undesirables on the last world—Sid and Michele. Sid, who probably could have built a solid career as a pro wrestler due to his considerable mic skills and impeccable delivery, is a ne’er do well thug while Michele (Rebecca Chambers) is his punching bag of a girlfriend. Quinn, never one to stand idly by when he can rush blindly into a situation, interrupts their lovers' quarrel/beatdown over Arturo's objection. She slides with them to escape and Sid, being an imbecile, follows them.

Ah, Sid. Played nicely by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Sid climbed his America's food chain by violence and ruthlessness. The ease with which he repeatedly physically dispenses with Quinn would be frightening if I didn't secretly delight in Quinn getting tossed around a bit. Is he a bad guy? Absolutely. But he and Michele are also the products of their miserable world. She's so scarred that it takes her the entirety of the episode to even consider the possibility of life being anything other than misery. She does what she has to in order to survive, and if that means staying with a psychopath, so be it. "That's the point," Wade tells her. "You're not on your world anymore."

Since the threat of an earthquake isn’t quite enough to drive the episode, an added twist to life in prison is added. Each inmate is teamed with a buddy. As their new prison friend, LJ (Claude Brooks), explains, it’s up to the buddy to keep tabs on the other to make sure they continue walking the straight and narrow. The incentive for such behavior is shared punishment, and the punishment is always immediate death. Quinn is buddied with Sid. You see where this is going.

Arturo has had it with what he refers to as Quinn's "penchant for the quixotic rescue" and the two clash repeatedly during the episode. Tensions build brick by brick, act by act. After Quinn follows LJ's plan/trap to enter a subway station in an earthquake zone, Arturo declares it "another strategic gem" and Quinn snaps on him. Strong directorial work in the fourth act keeps the focus on Arturo as he processes the threats against him and what should be done. By the time Arturo feigns selling them out, it's almost believable. "I'll get you for this. I swear I will, you bastard! This isn't over!" Quinn rages.

While the ruse fails, our team does manage to win because none of the prison guards bothered to check if the prisoners were armed. That's just how conditioned they must be to a San Francisco without crime! We also get one more fun scene of Sid tossing Quinn and Rembrandt around like ragdolls before Michele puts an end to him. And so Michele joins Ryan, Henry, David, and Diana in the great sliding abyss, never to be spoken of again.

Though a strong idea on paper, the finished product is handicapped by a few forces beyond its control. If you didn't notice, it was run out of its intended order. I don’t want to get into the wacky world of second season production codes here, but it is important to show that "El Sid" was both produced and intended to air before Love Gods. In the course of this episode, Arturo and Rembrandt revisit the argument held during Luck of the Draw over the dangers of bringing extra mass into the vortex. But thanks to Fox, this scene now has no bearing. After all, didn’t Wade drive a van through the vortex just a few episodes ago?

This uncertainty over what Fox will do denies them the opportunity to pay off Michele in a future episode. It would simply be too much of a risk that she'd appear in an aired episode before being introduced. Whatever they may have had in mind for her, her arc must end here. As a viewer, this is unsatisfying.

Some wounds, however, are self-inflicted. It isn't at all clear why LJ would be selling bootleg buddy bracelets inside the prison. Speaking of buddies, where is LJ's? And if there's a big earthquake coming, why are the custodians/guards sticking around? Are they trapped here, too? And why, for the love of god, is there an ATM inside of a prison for Sid to rob?

Some have also criticized the pacing, but a big plus of taking in the sights is when you have the sights to take in. "El Sid" has truly excellent location shooting. The campus where our team is housed is shot predominantly at the Plaza of Nations, a remnant of a World's Fair (Expo '86) held in Vancouver a decade prior. It is stunning production value that really gives you the sense of being in a parallel Earth, so much so that it makes you forget the final two acts take place almost entirely in a tunnel and a cell built into a cave.

Going forward, the show continues to do a good job creating doubts about Arturo. It is largely thanks to John Rhys-Davies that the character became both leader and moral center of the team throughout the first season, and not the more flawed man he was intended to be. This season the shift is clearly in favor of turning Quinn into the go-to guy. And to build up Quinn, we need to break down the Professor. Of course, Arturo doesn’t actually betray his companions, but it’s starting to look reasonable, isn’t it? If he does turn on them, hopefully Fox airs that episode where it belongs.