Man, even the title is stupid. Here's another quickie review rattled off. There may be errors as I didn't double check the episode, but someday I may be bored enough to catch it on a rerun and refine things. Until then, I'm content with this:

Well, yet another silly episode in a long line of silly episodes with idiot-driven plots. I guess this can best be summarized as a love story about two star-crossed snakes in love and some evil humans trying to keep them apart. That about says it all.

• Oh come on, a vacation! They travel to parallel worlds all the time, presumably not all of which are bad. But even if this is negated, the idea of taking a vacation down south, SPLITTING UP THE GROUP over such a distance and doing so on a world that they have no knowledge of (they didn't even know about the tobacco) to a country they knew even less about is incredibly stupid and incredibly pointless, except to get in some stupid sequences involving planes and the Maggie/Wade + chauvinistic pilot bit.

• Didn't Wade and Maggie team up with Carlos because he knows the terrain? In that case, why is Maggie driving the truck away from the airport?

• Maggie and Wade actually manage to find Quinn and Rembrandt in a jungle in a foreign country after Quinn and Remmy's plane crashes.

• Quinn et al hear the sound of the snake "bellowing" but don't realize it is directly behind them. They neither see it, nor hear it moving through the underbrush as well.

• ANACONDA was the obvious impetus for this snake-based plot as it was released around the same time. Couldn't they find anything better to rip off? Well, given the rest of the episodes of this time, apparently nothing very good was released in theatres at that point (or the producers weren't aware of them if there were).

• Digitally "enhanced" shots from the snake's point of view and some of the music were highly reminiscent of PREDATOR, along with the jungle setting.

• Waving the flares at the snakes looked similar to the sequence in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK with the pit of asps. If JRD hadn't had a bout of common sense and left the show, some humour could have been made on this point, but alas, we will never know.

Whoa, where to start? Examples abound. Generally the lines weren't funny in themselves (they're quite sad/pathetic actually), but the context in which they were used was often hysterical. Maggie also seems to have gone from military woman to complete nymphomaniac in these last couple episodes.
• "That thing's a killer." - Remmy talking of the mystic, magic snake.

• "I hope not, Carlos is really attractive." - Maggie responding to Wade wondering if Carlos' "friend" is a sugar-daddy. That's a pretty lame, tacked on line even for Season 3 Maggie to spew. I guess that is the best way the people responsible for this travesty of an episode could convey that Maggie was attracted to Carlos. We certainly weren't going to get that detail from any of the performances.

• "This has turned into the vacation from Hell!" - Remmy before the commerical break. And a more tension-filled line I couldn't begin to imagine, especially just before the commerical break. *hahaha*

• "That's not my style." - Wade on why she and Maggie should not let Carlos die. I guess that is supposed to be a cool line.

• "We can spend the rest of our lives on the beach." - Evil girl convincing Quinn to ditch Remmy's advice and join her. Sure sold me. *guffaw*

• I love this gem:

  Maggie: "It would do you some good to have a fling on one of these worlds."
  Wade: "What's that supposed to mean?"

  You don't have to be Quinn to figure out what that means. Heck, you don't have to be much of anything to figure that out. Maggie is at her classiest at this point in the show, as that dialogue shows. And this time, we can't blame it on a creature in her stomach.

  As for the writers though...

• Carlos: "I'm drawn to exotic creatures."
  Maggie: "You're so obvious. It's a good thing you're so cute."

  'Nuff said.

• "You're a liar. I can deal with that." - Carlos on the Evil girl. I love the way he was about to kill her for double-crossing him, then changed his mind after she tried (and failed) to blame Quinn et al. On top of trying to rip him off, she lies to him and he seems to think that changes things for the better!!!

• We get treated to THREE (count 'em) sets of dialogue about listening to the opinions of others. Fits in nicely with the pointless lines about listening to opinions in THE BREEDER between Quinn and Rembrandt. Seems like the editor had some hang-up on not being listened to. Maybe Mr. Tormé had a hand in S3 after all... :)

• Wade asks a townsperson if he knows anything about Carlos, after she finds the hand in the sack. I guess the hand wasn't enough to convince her that something was wrong with Carlos.

• "We have something in common, Mallory. When it comes to the opposite sex..." - as said by Maggie to Quinn. I forget the exact words, but this was particularly cringe-worthy. The writers don't seem to think people can put two and two together here and see that obvious parallel. Even the freakin' "magic" snakes were a couple.

• This one's really good. We get to see a bunch of guys at the beginning shooting at Quinn and friends (being completely unable to hit anyone though they're in the open), but manage to squarely hit the lock on the case with the "supersnake" inside. As if that wasn't bad enough, the snake then manages to get out without anyone noticing, then goes into the cockpit (at the height of the headrest) and strangles the pilot before anyone even notices anything.

• Quinn falls for this woman he hardly knows when she's obviously not sincere, then acts stupid around Rembrandt.

• Rembrandt not killing the snake because it is "an endangered species" even though it just killed a man. Why the woman wanted it kept alive is anyone's guess as the snake was of no more use to her. She admitted they couldn't catch it because it was too dangerous, and she couldn't expect to find the snake again later, so why bother? She could conceivably still use the snake if it was dead, but then again, if they killed it we wouldn't have been treated to those wonderful sequences where it gets its pals to harass our heroes, would we?

• Wade and Maggie put the killer in the back of the truck... where he later finds a gun to point at them near the end of the episode.

• Oh look, a conveniently placed house in the jungle and we just happen to have found it (but not the road leading to it).

• The position of the snake around the neck of the pilot shifts dramatically between each shot of it killing him, more than possible. In one shot, it is draped over his neck like a feather boa, next shot it is wrapped around him twice. Then when Quinn comes in a second later, the snake has dropped off the dead pilot, just so Quinn can try to get at the controls (but it doesn't attack Quinn).

• The plane crashes and is completely trashed. So naturally Quinn, Rembrandt and the woman come out of it without a scratch or even a misplaced hair on their pretty little heads.

• I'd like to see an explanation for how that snake was bellowing that loudly and making that weird noise. The snake venom to cure Alzheimer's is also suspect, but since there is so little explanation for anything in this episode I can't say anything definitive about that.

• In the short time Carlos takes to kill the guy at the airport and get to the truck, he has time to cut off the man's hand without getting a single drop of blood anywhere, even after he takes the time to stuff the hand in his backpack with nothing covering it!! (note, no blood on the contents of the bag).

• I'm not certain, but wasn't the hand in the bag he asked Wade to get when he was ogling Maggie? If so, that doesn't indicate any great degree of intelligence on his part, but then again, none of the actions of anyone in this episode indicate any degree of intelligence.

• The slickness of Quinn's hair varies between camera angles!

• The door to the house falls in with the snakes on it like they had run at the door and threw themselves against it. Actually, they look like they were glued to the door and the door was pushed over.

• The "presumably" dead Evil girl is breathing quite rapidly while the snakes slither over her. If that isn't in defiance of biology, then what is?

• Geez, why aim the timer up when opening the wormhole?

• Conveniently placed fog follows the group around and covers the ground in areas where it is "dramatically" important, even though it disappears in the following scenes. It also looks to be pumped into the shot judging by the way it seems to emanate from a fixed position, out of camera shot.

• Love the set construction in the village. When the camera follows Wade to the phone, you can clearly make out wooden poles supporting the two-dimensional mock-ups of buildings!!

• The rubber snake Quinn grabs in the house and puts a knife through. Really funny the way he handles this obvious prop.

• The appearance of the house seems to change. When we first see it, the place looks to be well kept. When we move to close up shots, the place looks completely run down. Then when they leave the place, they try not to show the place, but you can see it is nowhere near as run down as it looked earlier.

• Carlos appears to be pulling the snake towards him when it is allegedly trying to go after him to kill him. Looks like the snake wanted to be in this as much as I wanted to watch it. :)

• Thanks to the wardrobe assigned to all the women, just about every scene they're in. At least the hot climate makes that somewhat plausible/excusable, but nobody in this has an ounce of sweat on their bodies!! Even Quinn and Rembrandt lugging a large metal box with a large snake in it through a jungle didn't even perspire a single drop. Must be using a lot of anti-perspirant, I guess.

• Maggie dousing herself with water at the river's edge and moaning suggestively. About as subtle as a sledgehammer to the groin.

• Quinn decides he suddenly doesn't want responsibility because some woman starts acting nice to him.

• Quinn and Rembrandt suddenly are at each other's throats over what to do. So much for hearing Rembrandt's opinion, as discussed in THE BREEDER.

• Quinn decides he'd rather throw in his lot with a stranger and leave Maggie and Wade to come back for them later. What a loyal friend.

• Quinn, again true to form, goes berserk with a rifle.

• All of it, from the funny strangulation of the pilot to Quinn grabbing the rifle from Rembrandt in a struggle and exclaiming emotively "WHAT ARE YOU, NUTS?!!!"

• The lacklustre villagers were pretty bad too. They looked about as enthused to be in the episode as the snake was. Watch them jeering Quinn and friends when the head villager tells them to go. They look almost comatose. And what do they contribute to the plot anyway? Some silly schlock about "the devil" and "evil snakes" which just makes the episode look like a cheap B film (moreso).

• All the fight sequences. Feels like the director said: "Things are getting too cerebral, let's throw in a quick fight to keep people interested." Of course, the first phrase is wrong and the second insulting, but that's a good way to summarize this episode.

• Quinn is back to being an action hero. I'm surprised he didn't say "I'll be back" when he was talking of leaving and coming back for Maggie and Wade.

• The pilot talking to Wade and Maggie. Cheesy, stupid, predictable, clichéd. They practically held up a neon sign delaring "MAGGIE will kick the pilot in groin." Did anyone actually NOT see that coming (besides the pilot)?

• Surrounded by snakes on the ground and hanging from the trees, Quinn and Rembrandt stand under the tree so a snake can later fall on Rembrandt's shoulders.

Man, there's just SO much material to cover on this one, but it's not worth the time. Super smart snakes and a bunch of other snakes that are smart enough to get together to save one of their own kind by hunting down the captors of the snake is not my idea of a good story. It doesn't work on any level. Poor in conception and execution. It is pretty sad when the best thing that can be said about the episode is that we get to see Sabrina Lloyd's legs (no offense meant to Ms Lloyd's legs - they're fabulous and an hour of looking at them would have been far more worth my while - but the stupid pseudo-plot kept interrupting shots of them). Bad story, badly written. The acting wasn't anything special either, but given the material, who could blame the cast?

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