Friday, September 21, 2007

FANNING THE POZZ'BILITIES

Tele-genetics can have strong echoes. An exact likeness can re-occur down through countless generations. And for all of those characters who have exact doubles living in the same time period as they are, a genealogical link can usually be traced back (sometimes only going back one generation to a philandering father).

What's somewhat rare, however, is two sets of carbon copies in the same families and in the same time period. One example of this might be the married couples of Hilton and Ruth Lucas and Dr. Cliff and Claire Huxtable. But that involved making the choice to marry each other, and perhaps they were responding to some primal recognition that they'd make good matches for each other. (We'd like to ignore the fact that Bill Cosby enjoyed working with Phylicia Rashad and wanted the chance to do so again. That just takes us out of Toobworld.)

I'm finding it hard to uncover an example in which both participants share the same blood ties, like siblings or parent and child. I thought I had one when I saw the pilot episode of 'Dirty, Sexy Money' at the Paley Center for Media a few weeks back. The family lawyer for the Darlings, Nick George, and his daughter Kiki look exactly like a former NYPD cop named Joe Miller and his daughter Anna, as seen in last year's fantabulous mini-series, 'The Lost Room'. (Here in the Real World, the splainin is that Peter Krause and Elle Fanning were cast in both productions.)
As with the Cosby examples, I would have preferred to ignore the casting reasons for the similarities in appearance. However, with episode two of 'Dirty, Sexy Money', the role of Kiki George has been recast with Chloe Moretz now assuming the role. Now we have to find a splainin as to why Kiki's a recastaway.

And for that, I think we should return to 'The Lost Room'.

For most of the mini-series, Anna was trapped in some dimensional vortex after she was stuck in the motel room when its door closed. But we don't know exactly what happened to her while in there.

Perhaps a 'Quantum Leap' effect took place and she found herself suddenly living the life of Kiki George for those few days in which her father assumed his late father's position as the Darling Family's personal lawyer. She was only a child of seven years when the traumatic events of that mysterious motel occurred. That alone would have been too much for her young mind to grasp. To suddenly find herself transported into the life of another little girl, to find herself being addressed as Kiki, to find that she suddenly had a mother! (Her own mother may have passed away when Anna was too young to remember what she looked like.)

She probably didn't raise a ruckus because at least her father still looked the same - mistaking Nick George for Joe Miller. And since she didn't say anything about it, Nick - who only could see his own Kiki when he looked at her, just as would happen on 'Quantum Leap' - never suspected that anything was amiss. Besides, he was too preoccupied for those two days by the unceasing demands put upon his time and attention by the Darlings.

Once she was rescued by her real father, Anna leapt back to the motel and the real Kiki resumed her life. She'll probably have no memory that she was in Limbo for a period of two days and no one else would have noticed there had been a transfer either.

There may have been a temporal shift in the replacement, as 'The Lost Room' took place in 2006 and the pilot for 'Dirty, Sexy Money' won't occur in Toobworld until next week (September 26th). But time-shifting is what happens during a 'Quantum Leap', right?

Not saying it did happen; just that it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble.....

SHOWS CITED:
'Dirty, Sexy Money'
"The Lost Room"
'Cosby'
'The Cosby Show'
'Quantum Leap'

BCnU!
Toby OB

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