Quinn makes his lawyer look like a fool when his “I’m not from this dimension” defense succeeds as he slides out of a vandalism conviction and into Rembrandt’s wildest dreams — an America where he’s bigger than Elvis. With his alternate long dead, Rembrandt decides to claim the mantle for himself and aligns himself with Captain Jack Brim to organize his huge comeback special. This doesn’t set very well with two people: the deranged former Spinning Top Maurice Fish, and the very much alive Rembrandt Brown. Rembrandt is abducted by Fish and threatened with death if he doesn’t sign over the legal rights to his songs. As the “real” Rembrandt and the others try to find and rescue him, Captain Brim is forced to stall for time with a rowdy audience. Is this the life Rembrandt is destined for? Or will the King take back his throne?
“Mr. Pavarotti is an Italian. He speaka likea this. Do I speaka likea this? No. Why? Because I am an Englishman, you blistering idiot!” — to hotel clerk Gomez Calhoun, who makes the mistake of referring to Arturo as Mr. Luciano Pavarotti.
Though it is not widely picked up by viewers, the people behind this episode intended the home video footage of the Sliders to mimic the famous Abbey Road photo of The Beatles, walking in single file in a cross-walk.
When Rembrandt split from the Spinning Topps in the 1970s, he went with manager Captain Jack Brim instead of Artie. Brim brought a lot of publicity and fame to Rembrandt. As a result, he became the undisputed king of rock n’ roll. Tired of the publicity, Rembrandt went sponge fishing and disappeared eight years ago. He hasn’t been seen since and is presumed dead.
Other minor historical differences include:
This episode, along with Last Days, ranks as Tracy Tormé’s favorite episodes from the first season.
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One element of the series which Tormé is especially fond of is the inclusion of throwaway gags and parodies within each episode. “That’s one of the icons of the series that everybody looks forward to, our ‘cross-cultural allegories,’ as we call them. I would love to do more, but one out of every two things we want to do is squashed for legal reasons.
“In ‘The King is Back,’ for example, we had a small group of Mexican boys, called Pequerio, whose manager has them singing Led Zeppelin songs in Mexican. It was a takeoff on the the group Menudo that was pretty popular years ago, but we couldn’t get the rights to do any Led Zeppelin songs, so that had to go by the boards.”
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Tormé says he named the unseen character of Marc Freedlander after a good friend whom he attended film school with.
Special Guest Appearances by: