Date of airing: February 27, 1999 (CBS)
Nielsen ratings information: 10.57 million viewers, 6.9/13 in Households
written by: Rick Mittleman
directed by: Jim Quinn
There is a movie premise hiding in this episode, and maybe even a Hallmark Channel movie premise, as long as you exclude all the gratuitous shots of women in underwear. A bickering ex-couple with an eleven-year-old kid growing closer together, because said kid decides to play matchmaker to their separated and constantly fighting parents, in the hopes for all of their lives becoming better again. I am certain that this premise has been played out multiple times in the feature film business (sometimes not just with one kid, but with twins), but it is still a good premise, especially since writers were able to put it into so many different genres, from simple romantic comedy to something more tense and violent like a slasher horror (maybe the kid's plan to get their parents back together involves murdering the competition). I mean, put that premise in a horror movie and you might get INSIDIOUS-level box office receipts that make Jason Blum a very happy man.
And because the premise is so versatile, you can easily include it into a television drama that does not care a lot about continuity and instead focuses on telling its stories in an anthology-like fashion – you know, those syndicated action-adventure shows from the 1980s and 90s, in which the singular main character travels from one town to the next and play the justice warrior, or is part of a team solving crimes and stopping terrorists from blowing up boat houses. Like Angus MacGyver and Michael Knight, just to name the two most famous main characters in such shows, although QUANTUM LEAP fits that narrative as well. Especially the latter is a funny thing because QUANTUM LEAP and EARLY EDITION are somewhat similar shows.
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| Gary discovers a weird kid who has fallen in love with a girl. |
The episode was okay. There is not much to write about really, because there was not a lot that either Francesca or Addison brought to the table story-wise. They were both annoying and stereotypical characters, and the writers forgot to include some backstory about why the two were fighting and how they got separated in the first place. Not to mention that both of them were crappy people in general, since they were treating their daughter like collateral damage in their fight against one another. If they did not know who they were hurting while throwing insults at each other, maybe they should be standing before a court and losing custody of their child. Francesca and Allison almost killed multiple people, just because they could not see the world outside of their constant bitching and moaning. That made them an unsympathetic bunch, but I guess that was the kind of pair Gary needed to go in between to save them, to change the headlines they were creating with their arguments, to break his back while saving the lives they were about to hurt or end. I did find it funny though that Francesca and Addison decided to spy on each other and commit corporate espionage via their closest assistants, instead of doing the job themselves (both assistants had to be saved by Gary, too). Talking about standing before a court...
Meanwhile, the little kid love story between Henry and Dominique seemed like added on, because the writers realized they only wrote a 30-minute episode and they could not spend all that time on two people yelling at each other. But who knows, maybe it was a planned story, or maybe it was the prologue story to be used for the climax, so that Francesca and Addison create a way to get back together in the end. Fact is, it felt like the story did not really affect anyone but Francesca and Addison, and it did not even give the two kids anything to feel useful, as they both essentially became plot devices in the story of the two guest characters. Erica did not seem to be bothered by her eight-year-old kid being in love, and she never thought about talking to her son about that, maybe starting it off with a bit of a life lesson about romance and relationships. I would have hoped that this kid romance would have had a bigger impact on the characters, considering Dom and Henry came from different families, but still experienced similar circumstances when it comes to distant parents, but there was nothing in that regard.
Heck, the story – and Henry's sudden plight – did not even lead to Gary and Erica embracing like a couple, as Francesca and Addison did after Dom started breathing again. I thought that Gary and Erica were a couple now, since they kissed at the end of the Valentine's episode, but since then, they never had a scene together that showcased their love for one another. They never embraced each other, they never held hands, and they never made it look like they were in love. For more than half the season, the writers were carrying Erica through Gary's story, in the hopes that she will end up being his woman, and when they finally kissed, nothing followed after that.
That makes me question if some things were happening behind the scenes, and if scenes with Kyle Chandler and Kristy Swanson were deliberately scaled down because maybe the two actors did not particularly care for each other either. Would the character of Erica have been treated better by the writers if the producers had cast it with Leslie Bibb, who was originally hired for the role and was replaced with Swanson almost last-minute by CBS president Leslie Moonves? Bibb later guest-starred in "Lt. Hobson, USN" as something of a 'sorry about losing your job' move.
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| The family has reunited. |
One question remains after I finished this episode: Where the heck did Henry and Dom get all the rodents and insects from which they set free all around the backstage area of the lingerie modeling show? The two kids came with a big spider, a snake, a bunch of ants, and a white mouse, and who knows what kind of animals they set free that were not captured by a camera? How do you, as a kid, get a snake in Chicago this quickly? Are there rodent pet shops you can frequent that will sell you these animals willy-nilly? Did the kids become criminals by stealing those pets, just to get Dom's parents back together? This is great, because now, the building has a rodent infestation to deal with, which should cost a couple of thousand dollars to clean up. That is what Dom and Henry have done.
