#539367
"Another Mother"
Original air date: January 10, 1990
Written by: Deborah Pratt
Directed by: Joseph L. Scanlan
Leap date: September 30, 1981
This time: Sam leaps into a mother preparing breakfast while kids are arguing. Tween Susan and teen Kevin are arguing over a Queen T-Shirt while family dog Wookie ate the head off toddler Theresa’s doll. Theresa calls for her mother, apparently able to see Sam for who he truly is. Susan looks after her sister while Kevin tries to have a moment with his mother.
The kids go off to school for the day, leaving Theresa to Sam. It appears she can see Al, too. They send Theresa off for a moment, but Al says Kevin will disappear within twenty-four hours. Sam does not know how he can keep up with Kevin since there is a full schedule, but Al can keep an eye on the boy.
Spying on, er, observing Kevin, Al finds that his entourage is trying to set him up with a fellow student named Jackie, but Kevin is somewhat inexperienced in wooing. Sam burns dinner, so the family goes out to eat.
Coming back, Sam plays table tennis with Kevin, to moderate success. He then tries to turn the subject to romance, including a brief mother-son dance, though that is somewhat less successful. Not being able to talk with his mother, Kevin talks to his sister. That does not go well either and he begins heading out to his friends, but Sam tries to keep Kevin at home to avoid fate.
Grounded Kevin sneaks out and goes to Jackie. She tries to be friendly, but Kevin proves too inexperienced causing her (and his hidden entourage) to laugh. Embarrassed, he runs off unknowingly followed by a creepy van. Afterwards, Jackie expresses regret. Sam comes and finds out what happened. He goes off in search of Kevin.
Kevin is bound and gagged by duct tape in the creepy van. There are two creepy guys driving with no good intentions. Sam catches up with them and causes a stop. It does not take Sam too long to dispatch the two leaving ‘mother’ and son to reunite.
Sam tries to calm Kevin down, but it does not seem to work too well. At school, Kevin enters nervously and gets teased, but Jackie kisses him, rendering the point moot. There is not much left for Sam to do, though Al is able to have one last moment with Theresa. Sam leaps …
… into the football field at the start of a play.
Stop talking to yourself: Sam remembers fighting with his siblings.
Only Sam can see and hear: Al gets lots of opportunities to shine spending time with Theresa and Kevin. One of his best moments comes when Kevin’s friend mocks Kevin for being a virgin and Al looks it up and tells him that the young man himself is still a virgin.
Mirror images that were not his own: While the kids are arguing, an exasperated Sam sees an exasperated single mother in the kitchen mirror. One of the creepy guys sees her in the rear-view mirror and mistakes her for an easy mark.
Let’s up the rating: One of the creepy guys rips opens Sam’s blouse to get a view of her chest. Of course, we ironically get to see Bakula’s chest.
One more time: “That’s not my mommy, that’s a man. So’s the guy in the yucky shirt.” “This is my favorite shirt. This is cutting edge stuff” “It’s yucky!”
Al arguing fashion with a four-year-old
Trivial Matters: Despite a young Michael Jackson, this is the first instance of kids being able to see Al being specifically called out. It is a good gag but requires Al to appear without the requisite sound effect.
Having her parents appear two episodes prior, Troian Bellisario plays Theresa.
The show Magnum P.I., another Donald Bellisario production, gets mentioned and shown, Susan does not want to miss it, but Sam assures her it will run for eight years.
Put right what once went wrong: “Your mommy had to go away for a little while but she’ll be back real soon.” This is a surprisingly fun little episode. Sam and Al get to play Mister Mom(s) and they do an effective job. There is a good balance of both making sure everything gets done and the ever-looming presence of something bad happening. Joseph L. Scanlan does a great job by interspacing the creepy van to remind us what is going on. It first makes an appearance after Sam finds out Kevin will go missing but before we know the creeps driving it.
As much as the episode is Sam and Al trying to fix things, Kevin gets a lot of screen time. The teeny bopper bits come off as well as can be expected, but the actors are young though top notch. Granted they do not have huge stretches of acting, but the entourage is believable, and Jackie does seem regretful for what she puts Kevin through. Michael Stoyanov plays Kevin perfectly. There is the smarminess and the cockiness only a fifteen-year-old boy can get away with. He plays well both with his peers and his mom.
Theresa is absolutely adorable. A child actor can be rough, to the point where writers will use them almost as a prop, but she has already spent time around the set in general along with Bakula and Stockwell specifically. She is not a prodigy but says her lines and plays off her co-stars well. Al in particular takes quite a shine to her, to then point where Sam cannot leap until they have a final moment.
Stuck in the middle is Susan who just does not get all that much to do, but has some key points in the plot and has her moments. Plus, juggling three kids is a whole heck of a lot more work than two and it would be odd to have a teenage son and toddler, so Susan helps thread that needle.
A nice change of pace with suburbia becoming a focus for an hour. Al has a lot more to do than usual from watching Kevin to watching Theresa, but he is smarmy in the former and sweet in the later.
Original air date: January 10, 1990
Written by: Deborah Pratt
Directed by: Joseph L. Scanlan
Leap date: September 30, 1981
This time: Sam leaps into a mother preparing breakfast while kids are arguing. Tween Susan and teen Kevin are arguing over a Queen T-Shirt while family dog Wookie ate the head off toddler Theresa’s doll. Theresa calls for her mother, apparently able to see Sam for who he truly is. Susan looks after her sister while Kevin tries to have a moment with his mother.
The kids go off to school for the day, leaving Theresa to Sam. It appears she can see Al, too. They send Theresa off for a moment, but Al says Kevin will disappear within twenty-four hours. Sam does not know how he can keep up with Kevin since there is a full schedule, but Al can keep an eye on the boy.
Spying on, er, observing Kevin, Al finds that his entourage is trying to set him up with a fellow student named Jackie, but Kevin is somewhat inexperienced in wooing. Sam burns dinner, so the family goes out to eat.
Coming back, Sam plays table tennis with Kevin, to moderate success. He then tries to turn the subject to romance, including a brief mother-son dance, though that is somewhat less successful. Not being able to talk with his mother, Kevin talks to his sister. That does not go well either and he begins heading out to his friends, but Sam tries to keep Kevin at home to avoid fate.
Grounded Kevin sneaks out and goes to Jackie. She tries to be friendly, but Kevin proves too inexperienced causing her (and his hidden entourage) to laugh. Embarrassed, he runs off unknowingly followed by a creepy van. Afterwards, Jackie expresses regret. Sam comes and finds out what happened. He goes off in search of Kevin.
Kevin is bound and gagged by duct tape in the creepy van. There are two creepy guys driving with no good intentions. Sam catches up with them and causes a stop. It does not take Sam too long to dispatch the two leaving ‘mother’ and son to reunite.
Sam tries to calm Kevin down, but it does not seem to work too well. At school, Kevin enters nervously and gets teased, but Jackie kisses him, rendering the point moot. There is not much left for Sam to do, though Al is able to have one last moment with Theresa. Sam leaps …
… into the football field at the start of a play.
Stop talking to yourself: Sam remembers fighting with his siblings.
Only Sam can see and hear: Al gets lots of opportunities to shine spending time with Theresa and Kevin. One of his best moments comes when Kevin’s friend mocks Kevin for being a virgin and Al looks it up and tells him that the young man himself is still a virgin.
Mirror images that were not his own: While the kids are arguing, an exasperated Sam sees an exasperated single mother in the kitchen mirror. One of the creepy guys sees her in the rear-view mirror and mistakes her for an easy mark.
Let’s up the rating: One of the creepy guys rips opens Sam’s blouse to get a view of her chest. Of course, we ironically get to see Bakula’s chest.
One more time: “That’s not my mommy, that’s a man. So’s the guy in the yucky shirt.” “This is my favorite shirt. This is cutting edge stuff” “It’s yucky!”
Al arguing fashion with a four-year-old
Trivial Matters: Despite a young Michael Jackson, this is the first instance of kids being able to see Al being specifically called out. It is a good gag but requires Al to appear without the requisite sound effect.
Having her parents appear two episodes prior, Troian Bellisario plays Theresa.
The show Magnum P.I., another Donald Bellisario production, gets mentioned and shown, Susan does not want to miss it, but Sam assures her it will run for eight years.
Put right what once went wrong: “Your mommy had to go away for a little while but she’ll be back real soon.” This is a surprisingly fun little episode. Sam and Al get to play Mister Mom(s) and they do an effective job. There is a good balance of both making sure everything gets done and the ever-looming presence of something bad happening. Joseph L. Scanlan does a great job by interspacing the creepy van to remind us what is going on. It first makes an appearance after Sam finds out Kevin will go missing but before we know the creeps driving it.
As much as the episode is Sam and Al trying to fix things, Kevin gets a lot of screen time. The teeny bopper bits come off as well as can be expected, but the actors are young though top notch. Granted they do not have huge stretches of acting, but the entourage is believable, and Jackie does seem regretful for what she puts Kevin through. Michael Stoyanov plays Kevin perfectly. There is the smarminess and the cockiness only a fifteen-year-old boy can get away with. He plays well both with his peers and his mom.
Theresa is absolutely adorable. A child actor can be rough, to the point where writers will use them almost as a prop, but she has already spent time around the set in general along with Bakula and Stockwell specifically. She is not a prodigy but says her lines and plays off her co-stars well. Al in particular takes quite a shine to her, to then point where Sam cannot leap until they have a final moment.
Stuck in the middle is Susan who just does not get all that much to do, but has some key points in the plot and has her moments. Plus, juggling three kids is a whole heck of a lot more work than two and it would be odd to have a teenage son and toddler, so Susan helps thread that needle.
A nice change of pace with suburbia becoming a focus for an hour. Al has a lot more to do than usual from watching Kevin to watching Theresa, but he is smarmy in the former and sweet in the later.
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