Date of airing: May 3, 1997 (CBS)
Nielsen ratings information: 13.38 million viewers, 8.7/16 in Households
I don’t know if it is a good thing or a bad thing that the writers have decided to go against the TV tropes with this episode. Gary’s visiting father Bernie could have easily used the paper to make some money, proving that he was just like Chuck and that Gary could simply trust no one with the paper (which is why he never asks for help when he really needed it, as he did two episodes ago while on a date). By depicting that Bernie was only interested in the sports or business sections (who really cares about the actual news back then?), the writers could have made the point that Gary was the only one even capable of doing the things he does, that he was truly the only person on this world deserved of getting tomorrow's paper delivered to him today.
Yet the episode didn’t go down that direction at all. Instead, Bernie was a dad of the "nice" type – one who loves and appreciates his son (and therefore annoys him constantly), and one who, as soon as he finds out the big secret that plagues their son’s life, is attempting to assist him in any way or shape he can, without any shrewd thoughts of getting money quick or something like that. Bernie wasn’t the corrupted personality who would want to steal the paper and use it for his own gain. No, he was so friendly and ready to get into the action that Gary almost made me feel envious about him having such a great father. Compared to mine, I would take Bernie any day for the rest of my life. Instead of showcasing Gary’s uniqueness as the recipient of the paper, this episode became something of a father/son story, although a boring one, since there wasn’t much of a conflict between Gary and Bernie.
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| The old man still behaves like a child sometimes. |
There was not a single conflict between these two men. Bernie came to
Chicago and didn’t even give a reason why he would want to travel
through America to see his son (whom he could have visited as soon as he
arrived in Chicago, but that never happened). Yes, he might have said that
his wife kicked him out, but he could have traveled through America a
little longer, and he could have chosen not to travel into the city his
son lives in? Bernie also had not much of a “surprised Pikachu” on his
face when he realized that Gary deals with the future one day at a time.
I’m kind of impressed that no one really goes nuts about the paper, and
everyone who knows about it just accepts it as fact. Maybe it’s to make
sure that the show never goes down the route of the supernatural, or
into the realm of science-fiction (it’s a nice idea to keep the show
grounded in reality, even though there is a big fantasy element to it),
but maybe that is just because it is much easier to write episodes like
this when they are self-contained, with guest characters that don’t have a
lot of depth or purpose, so that every episode follows the same
concept. Then again, this episode did not follow the established rules,
as Bernie was not here to rip off his son. He was here to be a lovely
dad who could crumb his son’s cookie easily.
And still, Bernie was a cardboard cutout character. There weren’t a lot of exciting things about him, and the writers missed the chance to have him realize how either great or awful it is to save the world every day, having to wake up for it every morning at 6:30 am. It’s great, because it’s a wonderful purpose to have, when you don’t have a job and a life, let alone relationships or friends who like to take your time. Awful, because it’s so much responsibility to carry around for just one person. Just look at “The Choice” and “Faith” – if Gary would have to make the same choice one more time, he might just turn crazy, but then again, he is too much of a heroic character to just snap over that, right? But as Bernie has realized, Gary may be the only one capable of doing such feats, and this after Bernie hasn’t even watched Gary do the heavier lifting when Chicago really is in trouble. And in the end, this episode was just a simple father/son storyline, which would have easily worked in any other 1990s television drama, if the show did not have the premise of tomorrow’s newspaper crammed in the middle of it.
In the meantime, I did appreciate that Jennifer’s story was kind of the glue for the episode – the writers haven’t always connected the major theme of the episode with one (or two) of Gary’s lifesaving jobs of the day, so it was nice to see that Jennifer’s father was as much an issue to his daughter of-screen and in-between scenes as Bernie was an issue to Gary throughout most of the 43 minutes, although with different circumstances. Bernie and Nick were different types of fathers altogether, raising their children on different ends of the “how to raise kids”spectrum, showcasing that it can go either pretty good or horribly bad when you realize you may have lost control over your kid. There was some nice mirroring in the script, although that doesn’t necessarily mean that the story of Nick and Jennifer, as tiny as it was, didn’t come with its own fair share of weird trouble.
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| Chicago is full of people with guns. |
For starters, as a 20-year-old woman, Jennifer wasn’t even allowed to date, making me wonder if she was still living at home or not. It continued with the notion that she and Gary randomly crossed paths in Chicago the day after, and she took the opportunity to thank Gary with a kiss on his cheek. While I appreciated that at least someone was thanking Gary for his good deeds, putting it into the episode like this made me roll with my eyes. There was some dizziness involved a few minutes later. And it all ended with Bernie and Nick getting something to eat after the latter took the former’s son as a hostage for a low-speed chase through Chicago. Someone, please explain this to me: Why was this episode not being taken seriously by the writers?
