JRD mentions possible new Sliders project

I think it was lost to the old board, but some may remember a post I made about Universal’s habit of rebooting shows around 25 years after the original.  Well, next month will see us 24 years out from the debut. We’re due.

The logic of the rule?  That’s about the length of time it takes for a child or teen who loved the original show to grow into a position where they could sell an idea in Hollywood.

yeah, I always figured having the possible child that Quinn may of had from the planet where women were in the majority.  He would have only his dads  photo, and the legend he was a Slider, maybe his Mom passed away, and she didnt feal that his living in secrecy would be a good life, so he constructs the sliding device to search for his dad.

I would wager it goes to a streaming service if anywhere - Hulu, Amazon, Apple.  There’s also Netflix, but I doubt that one.  I believe Netflix would have went for Sliders by now if they were interested.

Using Sliders strikes me like a company trying to use a brand name to play catch up and get some attention.  Under that thought, Apple makes the most sense as a candidate.  Also don’t forget that Apple already has an announced series mining old Universal Studios sci-fi - “Amazing Stories”:

https://deadline.com/2018/12/amazing-st … 202513882/

If Apple was already talking to Universal, it’s pretty easy to believe Universal slid the rest of their catalog over and said “look at these too and see what you think”.

The issue may be St. Clare Entertainment. If it had an ownership interest (which is possibly the case), then it creates a problem because St. Clare is now a defunct production company.  If the company doesn’t exist now, then where did those rights revert?  The company was founded by Robert Weiss, John Landis and Leslie Belzberg - would each have a 33% stake in St. Clare’s share of Sliders now?  So instead of dealing with one company and one president / chairman; NBC would need to get all three to agree separately?

I’m not sure about any of it except that St. Clare doesn’t exist now (it hasn’t produced anything since 2002).  But talking to Bob Weiss would be the place to start on figuring it out; and you would think that at least Jerry and JRD would know that.

I don't understand. Ireaction, you make it sound like your father died. I mean I love Sliders and it sucked when the Professor was killed off, but was like what you describing. If it was then his would be an incredible thing wouldn't it?

If it comes back at all, it would be great. If the original characters (and actors, ala X-Files) it would be Amazing!

Same information already presented here, but this is the first time I’ve seen some sites pick up on a Sliders report:

https://www.bleedingcool.com/2019/03/18 … t-revisit/

https://tvweb.com/sliders-reboot-reviva … ys-davies/

https://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/slid … s-revival/

https://geektyrant.com/news/john-rhys-d … rs-revival

Seems to be a small snowball effect happening which is good in bringing Sliders back to social awareness.

In Season 2 of COMMUNITY, there's an episode where Abed traipses about the cafeteria in a cape to pay tribute to his favourite TV show that week, THE CAPE. His cape knocks over Jeff Winger's lunch. "Show's going to last three weeks!" Jeff shouts at him. Abed, running away, cries back: "Six seasons and a movie!" In the Season 6 finale (also the series finale), Jeff lightly protests Abed leaving town for a job. "But Abed," says Jeff imploringly, "six seasons and a movie."

"Jeff," says Abed, "I know it comforts you to look at things through that meta lens, but this is reality. TV’s rules aren’t based on common sense, they’re based on the studios wanting to milk their properties dry." And Abed would also point out to me that no matter what my relationship with SLIDERS may be, it is not and never was based on my trauma; that's something I applied to the show.

In the spirit of letting go, I once again present Temporal Flux's SLIDERS REDUX.

When I was 15, Temporal Flux told me how he would rebootquel SLIDERS in a feature film. It's weird; rebootquels came into vogue with STAR TREK (2009), but TF was (as always), a decade ahead of the game. Every 4 - 5 years, I update TF's original idea, so here's the latest iteration.

Originally, TF's idea was that Quinn would be working on his doctorate, Wade would be running the Doppler's, Rembrandt would be a music teacher and the Professor would be about the same. I just like to update the jobs. Also, in TF's version, these were older doubles whereas I have made them the original sliders with amnesia. Transmodiar had some ideas for SLIDERS REBORN that I didn't use, but they are in the web content points.

TF also wrote some imagined ad copy for SLIDERS and I like to update that every 4 - 5 years, too:

Judging from interviews, my read on John is that he has an obsessive knowledge of Season 1 - 2 scripts but may not have ever seen a full episode of the actual show. As for Jerry O'Connell's mindset, I noticed that he wrote the moderate masterpiece that is the "Narcotica" comic but on Twitter, referred to "Love Gods" by the wrong title ("The Weaker Sex") and he blatantly indicated that he has barely any memory of Seasons 3 - 5 in his Funny or Die improv/sketch (because he was wasted for most of it).

John wants to see SLIDERS as a full-fledged science fiction franchise akin to STAR TREK although he'd accept being THE ORVILLE. Jerry, however, just wants to hang out with the equivalent of his college buddies again and re-engage with those years as a more mature adult.

As a result, I'm not sure what this means for SLIDERS if they shepherd a revival. I can't tell if it's a shift back to what I like to call 'our' show about an unlikely group of misfits who formed friendships and a strong proficiency for saving the day under unlikely and increasingly impossible circumstances or if it's a move to repackaging SLIDERS as a serious science fiction drama engaging with modern day allegories involving capitalist critiques and suspicion towards establishment figures and institutions and questions of how the sliders get money and secure housing without identification or work and credit histories.

Or maybe it'll be a shift towards questions I find more compelling such as what would Wade and Arturo order in a restaurant and who is Quinn Mallory as he approaches 50 and could someone as high-energy as the Professor ever be happy with retirement and what would Rembrandt do if he had to consider that his career will never regain the high point of his original fame and what is reality, what constitutes sanity, what does one consider normal when traipsing across the multiverse, and is Michael Mallory really dead because the Pilot set up the idea that he faked his death and I'd like the gang to really get to the bottom of that sooner rather than later.

I can only be certain that it is definitely a dismissal of questions other fans seem inordinately interested in like whatever happened to Colin and the Kromagg spy plot and will we ever catch up with Logan St. Clair and are Kaldeen and Thomas still living in the slidecage? That will not happen.

Well, I should never demand that SLIDERS verge away from serving as wide an audience as possible. It's called broadcasting for a reason and good shows Chang. I mean they change. I meant to say that good shows change. I've been rewatching COMMUNITY with audio commentary.

I would like Corey Fogelmanis (GIRL MEETS WORLD) to play Quinn, Isabel May (ALEXA AND KATIE) to play Wade, Keith David (Elroy from COMMUNITY) to play Rembrandt and Victor Garber (LEGENDS) to play the Professor. I would like Quinn 2.0 to be trying to build anti-gravity based on video journals made by his deceased father Michael (Jerry O'Connell). In future episodes where the sliders encounter doubles of their families, I'd like Wade's mother to be played by Sabrina Lloyd, Rembrandt's father to be played by Cleavant Derricks and Arturo's father to be played by John Rhys-Davies and I think Jerry and John should direct episodes and act as story consultants and acting coaches.

I don't doubt that a revived SLIDERS would be different from the show that aired in 1995, but 2019 has had over two decades of refinement and advancement in television storytelling and over 20 years of culture and societal upheaval and technological development for SLIDERS' satirical perspective.

I wouldn't want SLIDERS to come back fixated on the Berlin Wall and the Summer of Love; I wouldn't want SLIDERS to lack running plotlines or see characterization evolve only between season finales and premieres; I wouldn't want SLIDERS to have guest-stars leap into the vortex at the end of one week only to not be mentioned the next week. And if SLIDERS in 2020 has different priorities and goals than the 1995 incarnation, then it's being exactly what it needs to be because good shows change to face the issues of the era in which they air.

I once asked Temporal Flux who his dream showrunner would be for a revived SLIDERS. He said ANYONE could do a great job with SLIDERS because the format is so wide, so varied, so full of boundless potential with a new universe to explore every single week in every single episode. Not everyone has a FRINGE story to tell or a COMMUNITY episode to pitch but absolutely anyone and everyone has at least one amazing SLIDERS story in them.

Transmodiar has left SLIDERS behind emotionally and I confess that over time, I have come to do the same; I no longer have to see it as a representation of my childhood traumas. I don't need the show any more, but television needs SLIDERS and the world needs Quinn and we all need the Professor.

In a world of streaming services and home theatres and digital filming and affordable CG and high polygon effect counts, TV needs SLIDERS to show the limitless platform of its anthology format matched with its vivid and lovable characters who represent every person struggling to cope with a world of constant and confusing change. And on a planet faced with endless conflict environmentally, socially, economically and politically, we need Quinn Mallory and Professor Arturo to show us that every problem can be confronted with knowledge, teamwork, analysis and understanding.

I recognize and respect that Transmodiar has outgrown the show, but SLIDERS is so much more than what Transmodiar or I have ever needed from it and without it, I fear for the future of our civilization and the continued existence of our universe.

For the sake of it, let's just propose that a reboot / revival / continuation / spin-off / whatever, happens. The more important question becomes: what structure and concessions would be made in order to facilitate such a show nowadays. And what would you personally be prepared to give up in order to let the show succeed?

I mean, are there even any direct comparisons that can be made with other modern sci-fi shows that change locations and a large ensemble cast every week? (Sans Doctor Who, which is a unique beast in of itself). Would we be forced to contend with several two-parters within every series in order to save budget and set costs?

Would we have more regular / familiar guest characters reappearing within every other world in different guises?

Would they even consider changing the premise entirely? Have a return to Quinn's basement (and the constant reuse of that and the surrounding sets) at the end of every episode's adventure, with only the cliffhanger of series 1 being where things go wrong?

What if they try a gimmicky live-time feature? Where the time of the slide is the time remaining until the episode ends, or strict 30 minute slides, with that world playing out as you see it? No time jumping or event skipping?

They will want a staple villain, something recurring. What would you be prepared to be added to the ongoing story and the script? The Kromaggs? FBI agents chasing after them? Rogue sliders? Insane doubles?

What if they changed up the characters and the cast dynamics? What if Quinn and Rembrandt had both dated Wade - creating a love triangle? What if the Professor had originally discovered, but not perfected, sliding? With all of his accolades having been gathered from other worlds?

Just like the show itself, there is so much that could be changed in a reboot or revival, but what would you be prepared to see change, or be adamant that must remain untouched and sacred?

I haven't outgrown the concept and have selfish reasons to not see this go forward (which you know ALL about). I just don't think there needs to be a parallel universe series called "Sliders" out there, with all the baggage that goes along with it. Because no matter how you slice it, the name/brand has a TON of baggage.

Transmodiar sent me a VHS cassette of the DOORWAYS pilot awhile ago. I watched it. It's one of the worst things ever made and it also broke my VHS player.

There may not be a market for lots of shows about parallel universes. But you have plenty of ideas for other shows about other subjects. Marvel executive Joe Quesada was once asked, why should creators ever offer their ideas to Marvel on a work for hire basis with royalties instead of self-financing their ideas and owning all profits?

Quesada replied that Marvel could bring those ideas to life with infrastructure and resources while creator-owned work would be self-financed. He advised that creators always find a good balance between work for hire and self-owned projects and he disagreed with the attitude that one should hoard ideas strictly for creator-owned projects, saying that creators who do so take the view that imagination is finite and then spend more time obsessing over past ideas rather than developing new ones.

If your concept is no longer competitive, if you can't reconfigure parallel worlds into time travel or underground cities or alien planets or virtual realities, then you can always cycle to the next idea.

Robert Patrick had scheduling issues; he was written to appear in the Season 11 premiere, but he couldn't make it and was replaced with Christopher Owens. Annabeth Gish did return; she was in four episodes of the revival. Admittedly, fans weren't happy with her character's portrayal...

The only thing I would insist upon: the sliders are lost in the multiverse, they're trying to find a way back home. This rules out returning to Quinn's home Earth on a regular basis as SLIDERS' drama functions on being away from any sort of reliable home environment. This rules out strict 30 minute slides as after a few worlds, the sliders would simply stop sliding as 30 minutes isn't enough to search for a way back home. If you lose the platform of exploring an unfamiliar new Earth every week while searching for the familiar, it's not really SLIDERS.

Outside of that, I think any showrunner could tailor SLIDERS to their talents and interests whether it's recurring villains, altered backstories and relationships, two-parters, etc..

Transmodiar once informed me that his car had been totalled in an accident (he was not at fault, don't raise his rates). At another point, he informed me that he had been laid off from his job. He announced both instances of financial and professional devastation in a cool, solution-oriented, good-natured fashion and explained that he'd been receiving care packages at his office and he wanted to inform his social circle that it was no longer his office.

He then went about securing a new vehicle and new employment in a somber, goal-driven, emotionally healthy approach. I assume he took the same route when SLIDERS lost three-quarters of its original cast and was cancelled with Season 5. Should SLIDERS return and interfere with his professional creativity, Transmodiar will create another concept in another market and do so in a positive and appropriate manner. Transmodiar always moves forward.

Transmodiar sees television and film with high definition clarity, very much like a TV producer. He can see that a SLIDERS revival would simply be an exercise in cycling through an archive of a presently unused copyright and making an effort to monetize its existence. It's a perfectly valid perspective from a person who views things as they are without becoming overly sentimental over anything other than his wife and children and a scattered assortment of family and friends. I think we should welcome such perspective.

And on the subject of story structure, since Slide Override raised it:

There's some other stuff with Transmodiar and Slide Override that I... "dislike" is a mild term and would still be too strong a world. Transmodiar and Slide Override will often declare that elements of plot and characterization are "ridiculous" because the story doesn't meet a standard of plausibility that they have personally defined and they take the view that this standard is an objective measure universally agreed upon by all rather than a subjective perspective.

I'm not knocking it; I'd just say it's an area where we have agreed to disagree. Slide Override declared PARALLELS ridiculous because he said that a building that can travel the multiverse is a ridiculous concept. Transmodiar said he disliked the Claymation episode of COMMUNITY because a sitcom offering a Claymation story is ridiculous. Neither have ever offered any clear rationale for where they draw the line between plausibility and absurdity or how this subjective scale could be applied by others, so it's clearly a personal view on which we shall have to agree to disagree.

When working on SLIDERS REBORN together, Transmodiar would often tell me that plot points were "ridiculous" and I took the view that if Transmodiar felt something was implausible, it didn't mean he was telling me not to do it; it meant he was telling me that my writing needed to do more to earn the Transmodiar's suspension of disbelief.

Transmodiar would inform me that no, he was genuinely telling me not to write a script where Mallory exists as an individual entity within Quinn's subconscious mind. I ignored that part but appreciated that his words were delivered out of sincere concern.

This happens with all friends whether close or distant. There are areas where Tracy Torme and I agreed to disagree in 2000 (I think SLIDERS could totally do monster movies and horror stories and Torme does not). There are areas where Robert Floyd and I agreed to disagree (he voted for Trump). There are areas where Slider_Quinn21 and I agreed to disagree (he doesn't like the line in SLIDERS REBORN where Smarter Quinn tells Quinn, "Everything around you is just mediocre fanfic that doesn't matter and doesn't count").

I think true friendship is where both parties can find it fun to debate these disputes. I think Transmodiar should continue to express his lack of interest even if SLIDERS is revived and that his ideas go well-beyond distaff SLIDERS pitches.

Doorways was rubbish, plus it's possible Martin doesn't have the rights on it or whatever.  I would counter Transmodiar's angst over Sliders baggage though, as probably 0.0001% of viewers have any clue what went on BTS during the show like we do.  I think one problem they might have is budget, unless they deviate from how Tracy wrote the first season especially.  The issue there is that the old characters are already established.  The great novelty of early Sliders was that we didn't know the characters, so it was fun to see their alternates and how they interacted.  I think it could work, for sure, though they may have to go more into comedy.

It is absolutely a ridiculous concept, but you might need to re-read that thread if you believe that my only issue with it was because of a multiverse traveling building. There were various - much of them significant - reasons why I disliked it. And yes, on many objective and measurable levels which can define 'good writing', it falls far short. You don't have to agree with that, but that's fine. Opinions and all that. Not everyone agrees that the Wizard of Oz is the definitive young woman's coming of age story, but you'd certainly raise some eyebrows in pretty much any serious literary circle if you try to say otherwise.

But this is all by the by. I'm not going to get back into the discussion, as I don't care about Parallels to even want to talk about it again. So, back to the subject at hand?

The part that concerns me about the news is that they seem to be looking at it as a NBC network show.  Networks tend to have a house style - everything from film stock to lighting to overall production design are often a finger print that identify it as ABC, CBS or NBC.  That’s what people flip to those channels for; and once there, the house ads feed into that idea promoting that flavor to keep you watching that channel.    To use an analogy, people don’t go to Burger King looking for a Big Mac.

Look at NBC.  Do you see Sliders fitting there?  In the best case scenario, it would fit in the lonely slot NBC holds for shows like Timeless and Revolution.  In the worst case, it would fall in the hole Knight Rider was buried in.

I would love to see NBC try to recapture what they used to be; back in the 80’s, NBC was *the* sci-fi destination which reached its apex with Quantum Leap.  But NBC hasn’t been that network in a long time; and I see no indication that they want to make an effort to recapture that flavor.  Even in this case, it’s someone from the outside going to NBC to try to convince them; the reality is that NBC wasn’t seeking it out.

If Sliders were to come back, I would much rather see it in a situation like Amazing Stories on Apple.  Streaming is still young enough that companies are allowing experimentation.  Sliders needs that.  When done correctly, Sliders is a new experiment in story telling every episode; it’s the sideways look at reality we had in the Twilight Zone except with the camera following Rod Serling each week as he tries to survive the world he’s in.

Your continued fixation on the observations that I made about a single back-door sci-fi pilot will never lend you any aid in understanding my metric. A metric which absolutely has no relevance or bearing on the questions that I posed to the board.

I did not ask people to present their perfect version of Sliders, my perfect version, or even a Sliders that I would personally deem would be good enough. I asked, knowing the trappings and format of TV in today's climate, and with the unique setup of the show, what would you personally be prepared to see change or altered to accommodate a revival/reboot? And what would you define as the core aspects of the show that you would demand would need to remain?

Again, you do not need to know or understand my metrics to answer that. Again, move on. I ain't discussing Parallels. Next.

Hunnh. Robert Greenblatt quit NBC last year. Moved to Warner Bros. I guess all bets are off with NBC, but we should probably trust TF's assessment.

Artist Joe Quesada once advised that people always be free and open with ideas and I agree with that, but it makes me nervous to offer ideas in response to a question when the person asking that question may excoriate those ideas based on reasoning that, to the uninformed observer, looks suspiciously random.

Anyway. I'm going to offer a vision of a SLIDERS reboot done to Slider_Quinn21's specifications, built on ideas offered in this community, and I'll hope Slide Override won't be mean to me about it. This is a reboot, not a rebootquel, not a revival and it is an effort to do it in Transmodiar's style and play it completely straight.

No monsters! No crossovers! No superhero elements! No multiversal crises! No psychodrama! No Kromaggs! No continuity with the original show! Transmodiar won't have anything to complain about with this vision (aside from its existence). In fact, he will love it. The goal here is to make something Transmodiar would love.

Writing to Transmodiar's tastes has been a really fulfilling exercise. Maybe... maybe I'm now equipped to write original fiction.

NBC/Universal also owns SyFy...

https://bunnyears.com/sliders-jerry-oco … avid-bell/

Jerry and Mac Culkin chat while munching on "Sliders."

Uploaded with surfmypictures

Starts goofing about Sliders around 30 minutes in.

Well, I saw Jerry perform in person off Broadway (American Hero), and he was terrific.  Very funny, all the goofy mannerisms but he also had great timing.  He would/could be a terrific sitcom actor, and I'm not sure why he hasn't made it into that realm.

Carpoolers was terrible

His latest show, Carter, is not bad

Specifically, that's armchair psychoanalysis, a term which specifically emphasizes how the analyst is amateur, untrained, unaccredited and has no professional grounds on which to offer any genuine assessment whatsoever.

I watched one episode of CARTER, Jerry O'Connell's TV show and it's... not terrible. I'd actually been avoiding watching Jerry in anything for years because I was writing a lot of dialogue for Quinn in my scripts and I didn't want Jerry's persona interfering with his character, preferring to instead use Tom Welling's body language and Tom Cruise's voice (from the fifth MISSION IMPOSSIBLE movie). I knew he'd gotten better because he was terrific in the MUNSTERS reboot and in his guest-appearance on SAMANTHA WHO, but yes.

Anyway, CARTER's gimmick is that Carter (O'Connell) is an actor who plays a detective on TV and now he thinks he can be a detective in real life. It's at this point that I fail to grasp or explain what CARTER's joke is -- CARTER is a TV cop show where the lead cop character is... regularly informed that he is not actually a police officer at which point he... performs the role of a leading man in a cop show... and is reminded periodically that he is not really a police officer and... and... what?

I don't get it. CARTER seems to draw a lot of humour (?) from having characters comment on how Carter isn't the character he plays, but given that this is the only time we've ever seen Carter onscreen and have no scenes of him in his TV show, there is no comparison to be made. There's a lot of noise from this cop show about how life is not a cop show and it's blatantly hypocritical.

Certainly, not all roads of comedy lead to COMMUNITY, but when COMMUNITY did an homage to LAW AND ORDER, COMMUNITY had all the lead characters behaving with deadly serious demeanors as they systematically and analytically sought the truth in investigating the murder of... a smashed yam. At one point, Abed and Troy discuss a suspect behind plate glass and the suspect yells that the wall isn't actually soundproof and the glass isn't one-way. At another, Shirley admonishes Troy and Abed for overstepping, regarding them like a police chief character in a procedural as she intones, "You're not really cops." COMMUNITY took a very silly crime very, very seriously. With CARTER... it's really clueless as to what the joke is unless this is some sort of extended pisstake of Jerry's CROSSING JORDAN role (which I've never seen).

That said, Jerry O'Connell's performance is engaged and sober and he has tremendous charisma as a leading man. On one level, the joke (if there even is one) could be that despite having regularly been criticized for only playing himself, Jerry is mocking his own career trajectory as he plays Harley Carter, a Hollywood TV actor who is slightly less successful than Jerry O'Connell himself, somewhat past his prime and grudgingly accepting that he has to settle for less in his career.

However, the ending of the first episode suggests that Harley Carter became a fake detective because he couldn't be a real one in order to solve the disappearance of his mother when he was a child, a crazily exaggerated, irony-free revelation that Jerry plays with oddly stirring sincerity and... yeah, I'd agree that CARTER is not bad but surely humanity should aspire to heights beyond not bad.

Surely Jerry's talents would be put to better use playing Quinn Mallory in a SLIDERS revival.

I've watched a few more episodes of CARTER and it continues to be not horrible at all, but one longs for more. It is a cop show where the supporting cast tell the lead that he's not a cop and life isn't like cop shows, followed by standard cop show fare in which our Jerry O'Connell does everything expected of a cop.

CARTER calls out procedural tropes like detectives using guesswork and crime scene technicians performing days of analysis in minutes -- but then has them work as they would in any procedural.

One wishes for Danny Pudi's detailed acting and Abed spouting the procedural tropes he wants to re-enact as scripted by Dan Harmon -- except Jerry O'Connell is perfectly capable of all of that. Jerry could have played Abed. Jerry's hypermaniacal, goofball enthusiasm would be perfect to play a leading man obsessed with living the conventions of a detective show. But the scripting never sets up situations to show Carter trying to re-enact a scene only for reality to conflict.

Jerry is, I assume, completely familiar with the structure of police dramas after an astonishing NINETY-THREE appearances as Detective Woody Hoyt on CROSSING JORDAN and LAS VEGAS. Jerry's played a police officer more than he ever played Quinn Mallory and he is a very fine writer ("Narcotica" is a great comic). Jerry's fought more TV crime than you've fought colds.

Jerry should be completely capable of remoulding CARTER from the generic cop show that it groundlessly claims it isn't. He should offer a focused product where Carter is more interested in roleplaying as a detective with zingers, chase scenes, posing, costumes, slang and such than he is with solving crimes.

Why isn't CARTER better? Why isn't Jerry making CARTER better? My theory is that CARTER is an extremely low-budgeted show with showrunner Garry Campbell churning out scripts but distant from the set, meaning the writing isn't being tailored to capitalize on the actors' performances and hasn't been given the be refined and developed. It's made on a tight timeframe and budget with 10 episode seasons and not many calendar days to write and film it. The emphasis is on being functional and airable.

I don't think CARTER's a Season 5 of SLIDERS situation of witless half-assery; it's more like the end of Season 2 of SLIDERS' production where the cast and crew were extremely tired. "The Young and the Relentless" staggered into production with a decent standard of professionalism but limited energy. Jerry is likely filming 10 episodes of Carter a year between other commitments and doesn't have time to revise the writing. He's there to be on set, perform the scripts to the best of his ability and high-tail it back to LA to play Sheldon Cooper's brother, do voice acting as Superman and pester Torme and NBC about SLIDERS.

CARTER strikes me as a faded photocopy of another mediocre cop show, PACIFIC HEAT. PACIFIC HEAT is animated, but it has the ARCHER-esque comedy towards cop shows that CARTER seems to want: PACIFIC HEAT opens with a team of police officers about to storm a building of criminals, but leading man Todd grumbles about who gets to say "lock and load" and protests wearing a helmet because he likes how his hair looks. After bursting into the building, Todd's partner Zac hesitates before a firefight to get a soda out of a vending machine. Todd barks out questions when interrogating people of interest, and when they answer, he has to ask them for a pen because he can't remember the addresses they've given him. En route to pursue a suspect, Todd gets distracted by a pretty girl, drives around in circles and gets lost.

PACIFIC HEAT shows its cop characters as frivolous and incompetent for comedy purposes; CARTER would have a reason for Jerry O'Connell's character to be so unprofessional.

It's funny. Jerry O'Connell once thought he'd be playing Spider-Man in globally released superhero blockbusters. Now he's proudly headlining an affable cable show that produces 10 episodes a year. It says something. It says that he has advanced to the John Rhys-Davies stage where, like John, he's never too proud to turn down smaller projects with good work (not great work, but good), not seeing TV and indie film as being beneath him, and never giving any script less than his all because for all of CARTER's many mediocrities, Jerry's performance is thoughtful and hyperenthused..

I was worried about watching Jerry in anything because I have such fondness for Quinn, but Jerry's performance as Carter is nothing like Quinn. Carter is a childish man of impulses who talks before he thinks and everything he says is regurgitated from a script for a generic cop show than the character presumably performed once as an actor. Jerry plays Carter as a manic innocent who doesn't entirely understand that reality has consequences because he has grown accustomed to living life on TV sets. Carter has nothing of Quinn's calculating intelligence or cunning; Jerry is careful to make Carter guileness without being foolish.

It's a performance from an actor who has thought through the material and done his best to put himself in it. This is a actor who is happy to be working. This is an actor who hopes for more but will settle for less and has made his wife and children his joy rather than any rewards from his career. This is a man who could lead a SLIDERS revival.

Somewhat related, but Ms. Lloyd is not only more active online (https://www.instagram.com/sabrina.lloyd_/) but she's moved back to British Columbia, Canada!

For reference, here's Jerry's IG (https://www.instagram.com/mrjerryoc/)