“Rules of the Game” means well. It’s a guilty pleasure. And that’s about it.

“Dead Man Sliding” succeeds by creating an America that has taken a serious idea — tort reform — and pushing it to absurd while believable levels.

“Electric Twister Acid Test” is an episode where a detailed alternate history works against it. It just rubs you the wrong way, and since it’s more about weird cult-like communities and running away from electronic tornadoes (really), I’m left wondering why Scott Smith Miller even bothered.

“The Guardian,” despite its flaws, is one of my favorite and most endearing episodes for a reason. A quiet character study, it shows how Quinn has matured by looking at the events in his childhood that formed his zeal for physics and his drive to succeed.

“Dream Masters” fails on almost every level: it doesn’t fit the mold of Sliders, probably because it’s a poor man’s ripoff of the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series, itself a failure of a franchise.

“Desert Storm” is not only a poor legacy for actor Ken Steadman, who died during its production, it’s also one of the most implausible outings the series has had to date.

“Dragonslide” is definitely an hour of television steeped in the third season production mindset, but with those caveats in mind – and the magic, dragons, crazy Druidic nonsense – it also includes powerful themes that attracted fans to the show in the first place.

I could get into the logistics of Wade buying a laptop and projection screen on a half-day’s pay, the warehouse full of women typing on typewriters but talking on wireless phones, or the weird unexplained 40s retro feel and a host of other things but to me, “The Fire Within” goes up in smoke.

“The Prince of Slides” has taken a very shaky concept and made it into one of the best outings of the show this season.

While it isn’t a terrible episode, “State of the Art” is goddamn boring. Never have I seen a television program devote so much energy to androids/artificial life forms and have it represent so little.

Taking the obnoxious American tendency to “shop ’til it hurts” to extremes, “Season’s Greedings” crafts a hyper-consumerist society that offers up scathing commentary on the nature of debt during the holiday season.

While doubles are interesting, they also limit our characters to interaction with “themselves” in a consequence-free environment. But take the Professor and essentially transform him into a “double?” How would you react?

There are a lot of things going right in this story yet when they come together, they just don’t quite pop. Still, it’s a bold first entry in this post-Tormé era. If nothing else, it has staked itself a place as an episode you’ll have to remember.

When future fans look back on Sliders — assuming they manage to keep any — they will look back on this moment and declare that this was the week everyone gave up.

“Last of Eden” is by no means their best effort, but at the very least it’s a far more fitting send-off for John Rhys-Davies than that farcical piece of dung known as [permalink href=127]The Exodus[/permalink]. It’s also a very ironic title, as there’s a good chance nothing that comes after will be any better than this.

Sliders is locked in civil war over its ideologies. On one side is a commitment to exploring intriguing parallel worlds. On the other? Action. Explosions. Low-grade pastiche. Which sensibility will win? It looks like we’ll find out at the conclusion of this two-parter.

The only thing professional about this is the hit it carried out on a once-great series. It’s not just a bad episode; it dooms every future episode by its callous removal of Professor Arturo.

For those of you not into titles, this is the zombie episode. I don’t like zombies, but I do like this episode.

Recognizing the show’s own history is a step in the right direction. The next step is placing that history in a credible forum. Better luck next time.

Two stars for “The Breeder?” While Matt makes the case for television perfection, Mike balances the scales with a flat zero. Here’s two separate reviews defining why each thought the episode a masterpiece… or a tragedy.

I reserve my contempt for writer Josef Anderson, who has to be one of the laziest hacks to ever put pen to paper. The entire story is just one stopgap measure leading to another pointless scene, each with an even less credible back-story.

“This has turned into the vacation from hell!” Rembrandt screams as snakes surround him in the mansion. You mean ‘episode,’ don’t you, Rembrandt?

“Dinoslide” is not just a return to dinosaurs, it’s also a return to the Rickman storyline, and a return to the world Maggie’s people fled to at the end of “The Exodus, part II.” Why return? Because Rickman is in desperate need of brain fluid matching his own.

Maybe “This Slide of Paradise” isn’t offensive enough to really warrant a no star rating, but it doesn’t do anything that deserves credit. I’m tired of giving Sliders points for showing up; fortunately, with the season being over, I don’t have to.