Quinn is launched from the wormhole, and when he stands up, he finds he’s all alone. Similarly, Colin exits the wormhole looking for his friends only to find that they aren’t there. Working his way down an alley, Colin tries to enlist the aid of a group of transients watching a television show called “Lipschitz Live,” but they ignore him.
Rembrandt and Maggie aren’t so lucky. They’re hanging from a cleaning platform on the outside of a very high building.
Walking on a city street, Quinn sees “Lipschitz Live” in an electronic store window and notices that everyone walking around is watching the show. Televisions are mounted around the street so that no one will miss the show.
After pulling themselves to the platform, Rembrandt and Maggie raise it to the roof of the building. Maggie sees Colin down on the ground walking toward the Chandler, but he can’t hear her because of the elevation.
At the Chandler, Quinn asks the clerk, Gomez Calhoun, if his friends have arrived. When Calhoun says no, Quinn asks to rent a room. Surprisingly, the hotel is booked solid for a corporate wedding that is taking place in a few hours. Shocked, Quinn asks to leave a message but is denied as he isn’t a patron of the hotel.
Maggie asks Rembrandt if they’ve ever been separated like this before, and Rembrandt relates the events of Gillian of the Spirits. Together, they set out to find Quinn and Colin and make the slide.
In the Chandler bar, Quinn meets Hal the bartender and asks him about Barry Lipschitz as well as ordering a full-sized meal and charging it to one of the corporations staying in the hotel, Millennia Media.
Rembrandt and Maggie arrive at the Chandler Hotel and ask for Quinn Mallory. Gomez says that only a Colin Mallory is booked here. Heading up to Colin’s room, they find Chinese food, a suitcase and a lot of money. “Lipschitz Live” is on the television.
As Colin makes his way towards the Chandler, two men in black suits proceed to follow him. Colin enters the Chandler looking for his friends, receives the same warm reception from Gomez that Quinn got and is about to meet up with his brother when the two goons who followed him take him and rush him out of the hotel. As he leaves, we see a duplicate of Colin sitting on the couch, hiding behind a newspaper.
Alt-Colin leaves the hotel, smoking a cigarette. Rembrandt and Maggie grab him but he walks straight into the path of an ambulance. Locals crowd around, taking pictures and videotaping the whole thing. With 90 minutes left before the slide, Hal clues Quinn in on Barry Lipschitz. After a bunch of bizarre corporate mergers involving the Unabomer, Lipschitz became a wildly popular television star.
Colin is placed in a limousine, where his stepfather, MacArthur Mallory tells him that he is the heir to Intercorp and that there is an important merger. Colin is given a tuxedo and rushed off.
At the Van Nuys Hospital, Rembrandt and Maggie go to see Alt-Colin. Rembrandt laughs and the two help him get dressed, telling him they have to get ready for the slide.
Quinn arrives at the studio where Lipschitz Live is taped. The producer tells him that science fiction is out. Quinn tells her that he met the female version of himself (see Double Cross), and the producer asks if he had sex with her. It seems to work, since it gets Quinn on the air.
Meanwhile, Colin arrives at his double’s wedding. The bride comes in, and in a truly bizarre wedding, the two corporations are pronounced one and the merger is complete. Well… almost. Colin and his wife, Roxanne Crane need to consummate the merger personally.
The taping of Lipschitz Live begins, and Barry Lipschitz appears. He talks about two of his guests, who are interdimensional travelers. The first guest is Arnold Potts, a guy wearing a shiny suit who claims he can project his astral form anywhere in the universe. Quinn comes out and is amazed at the ridiculous attire Potts is wearing.
Rembrandt and Maggie see Quinn on the show and know they only have 45 minutes left to get to KKRP, the station where “Lipschitz Live” is broadcast.. They take Alt-Colin with them. Meanwhile, Colin is at the hotel suite with Roxanne. Colin tries to explain to her that he is not the man she loves, but she laughs and tells him to get ready for the consummation. At this, Colin runs and hides in the bathroom. In the bathroom is a television, and Colin sees Quinn on “Lipschitz Live.”
On “Lipschitz Live,” Potts mocks Quinn’s timer and pulls out his own, a mammoth contraption that almost looks like Quinn’s from the Pilot. Quinn dismisses it and knocks it out of Potts’ hand, prompting a fist fight.
Outside the hospital, Alt-Colin urges Rembrandt and Maggie to go to the airport. They remind him they have to go to KKRP television studio to meet up with Quinn and make the slide. Suddenly, “Lipschitz Live” busts in to broadcast the merger of Colin and Roxanne. Seeing this, along with other not-so-subtle clues, Rembrandt and Maggie realize they have Colin’s double. Alt-Colin is overjoyed to know that he doesn’t have to worry about getting married anymore. Rembrandt and Maggie remind Alt-Colin that marrying Roxanne will mean he gets all kinds of money, and suddenly Alt-Colin has a change of heart. They head to the Chandler.
After walking on the ledge, Colin goes inside one of the rooms. He sees MacArthur and is thrown back into the bridal suite.
Roxanne finally believes that Colin isn’t her boyfriend, based mostly on the fact that this Colin isn’t a rabidly horny individual. She takes a liking to Colin and agrees to get him to KKRP to meet up with Quinn. They make up a story about buying the station for the corporation, and MacArthur buys it, giving them the limo to ride in style.
Minutes later, Rembrandt, Maggie and Alt-Colin arrive in MacArthur’s room and demand to know where Colin and Roxanne are. MacArthur, understandably confused, buys another limo and they ride over to KKRP as well.
Everyone reunites at the studio, and Quinn opens the vortex, much to the surprise of Lipschitz and Arnold Potts. Alt-Colin and Roxanne share a cuddly moment, but Lipschitz opens up the floor by asking if she’s married to two different men.
It’s wacky. It’s irreverent. It’s “Lipschitz Live.”
![]() | Lipschitz WorldWeird media conglomerations have transformed a schlock daytime television host into the most watched entertainment/news personality in the world. |
The war with Guam had a superstar. No, not the Scud Stud. INN foreign correspondent Barry Lipschitz became a popular man on television, and that popularity translated to big ratings.
Then the mergers started. INN was bought by TBC, then Global, then UNIMAX, the Turnbull Group, General Comco and the Unabomer. So impressed with Lipschitz was Ted Kaczynski that he put Lipschitz on his own talk show, called it “Lipschitz Live” and turned it loose on the populace.
The results were impressive. Lipschitz slowly began to dominate the ratings, and the market for cable slowly began to eat away. Foreign rights for the show were purchased, and it took only a short time for Lipschitz to become the most watched television personality in the world. Television gradually gave up and embraced Lipschitz, showing him 24 hours a day via reruns and syndication. With rare exceptions, the only show on television was “Lipschitz Live.”
For some reason, the corporate world is much more different here than on Earth Prime. Huge, monolithic corporations buy and sell and merge with each other on a frequent basis. Mergers and acquisitions are done by marriage, quelling disputes much in the same way that the Mafia does. After all, blood is thicker than water.
Infinicorp and Millennia Media, two of the largest corporations in the United States, are about to merge by bringing Colin Mallory and Roxanne Crane together into a contract of matrimony, creating the largest corporation ever.
Charlie O’Connell enjoyed his double take as a double of Colin Mallory.
“I had an episode which was like an Italian thing, and I was wearing the gold chains — the whole thing,” he explains. “It’s fun that every once in a while they throw in another character that you can do completely differently.”
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It may have been fun, but the addition of a Colin double to the series undermined an important element to the Kromagg arc — that initially Colin was to be a Kromagg plant working to get the Sliders to Kromagg Prime.
Episodes like The Alternateville Horror set up elements that would reveal Colin to be a cloned variant of Quinn (the clone grown after samples were taken in Invasion; however, a double dislodged that idea and the idea fell out of favor.