Love Gods

Season 2
Airdate: 3/8/96
Rating: 3.5/5

The Sliders arrive on a world where most of male population has been eradicated due to a biological weapon.

Three days, six hours, is the time the Sliders have left on this world upon arrival. They arrive at a store called “Brooks Sisters” while Wade eludes that perhaps women are gaining an upper hand on this world. A clever beginning to this episode is where a girl runs out of the store just staring at Rembrandt blank in the face, almost seemingly terrified. It’s a nice touch just to give us a hint that something bad is about to go down. It’s only a matter of seconds until the Sliders are overrun by a mob of women.

The police soon take our guys into custody while Wade is separated from the rest of the team. They’re hurried off in a lone van, and approach a “facility” with a large group of women and reporters (also women). The behind the scenes staff of “Sliders” could’ve at least had some cop cars around the van to make it look more authentic, after all Rembrandt, Quinn and Arturo are suppose to be a matter of national security. I’ll get to that in a bit.

The Sliders soon find out that they are prisoners and as Quinn puts it they’re in “some bizarre baby making facility.” The country it seems is in a race to repopulate the United States with men. What’s nice about this episode is that it doesn’t throw in sex scenes, because it simply isn’t needed. Too many TV shows would take advantage of this just to boost ratings. Sliders relies on story and intellect in this episode not cheap sex scenes and that’s something I like.

As the Sliders arrive they’re put through various tests and discover to find out that Trevor Grant is the “Breeder of the Month”. Why? Well, two hundred and fifteen confirmed pregnancies in one month. If you haven’t forgotten Trevor Grant was also seen in the season one episode “Eggheads”. That’s something that’s nice about Sliders too, there’s reoccurring characters from other episodes. The Bureau of Repopulation, is given the task on this world of repopulating the earth due to a biological war which wiped out most males. Hence, the reason for these breeding facilities and the importance of the Sliders. Other countries would kill for these men.

In a stream room they meet a breeder named David, and as he explains it Australia is a superpower because they escaped the most causalities from the Y Chromosome biological weapon. The Sliders realize how important it is to escape from this breeding prison and reunite with Wade. With David’s help they soon escape from the prison breeding camp and reunite with Wade at his home.

There’s some pop culture references in this episode and that’s something that made Sliders different and interesting by taking ordinary things from our culture and tweaking them ever so slightly. It’s not long before the police arrive and they soon have to flee which yet again separates the Sliders. Arturo, Rembrandt, and Wade are all eventually captured while Quinn is taken in by an apathetic woman named Jane Hills. She explains, you can indeed repay her back, but as Quinn states he obviously doesn’t want to father her child, and never see it.

In the end Wade tries to barter a counterfeit deal between the Australian captors and the Americans. The deal entails trading Arturo, Rembrandt and David’s wife for the “Breeder of the Month”, Trevor Grant. Time is cut close as the Sliders try to reunite with Quinn before the slide. Overall this episode is not bad, but I feel it lacks in certain areas and gets lost in a choppy storyline with the Sliders separated twice in this episode. It would’ve also been nice to see more of how the society operates under rule of women. Yet then again, I guess we saw that last season in “The Weaker Sex.”

Oh and by the way, did Quinn have a child? Well, that’s left open ended. But, in the final scene looking at Quinn’s photo, couldn’t it be a possibility Jane was married to Quinn’s double? Now there’s a couple interesting questions… I’ll leave that for you to decide.