Originally aired December 20, 1996
Written by Eleah Horwitz
Directed by Richard Compton
On a world where people are virtual prisoners in a giant mall in the sky, the Sliders get jobs while trying to locate the mother of an abandoned baby. Arturo becomes Santa Claus, Quinn gets an administrative job, and Wade runs into her sister and father's doubles.
Tropes present in the episode:
- Armor-Piercing Question: When Kelly says she wants more out of her career than what Don has, he hits her with one of these."I'll tell you something, young lady: I wake up in the morning, I look in the mirror, and I like what I see. Can you say the same thing?"
- Brutally Honest: When Carol says she'll pay off her debt and get her child back, Arturo bluntly tells her the system is stacked against her and that she'll never see her child again unless they do something out of the box. He ends up making her cry, so he assures her that he'll find a way to fix this.
- Children Are Innocent: Arturo tells a greedy child a story about a bad boy being punished by Santa, but because of the world's focus on consumerism, he thinks the kid completely missed the point of it. However, the child then confesses to something bad he did and apologizes. Other kids also take to Arturo's stories and would rather hear them than ask for gifts.
- Christmas Episode: This episode is set during Christmas on an alternate world.
- Continuity Nod: While holding Carol's baby, Arturo says he delivered a baby not too long ago.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Bernsen in spades. He secretly initiated a subliminal advertising program for the various monitors in the mall in order to get people to buy more and more items, which racks up enormous debt in the process. This is doubly bad for mall employees, who are required to spend money in the mall and are punished if they can't pay back their debts on demand.
- Dead Alternate Counterpart: The Wade of this world died during childbirth, along with this version of Liz.
- Despair Event Horizon: After getting her chain yanked on her family, Wade laments to Quinn that she's never going to see her family again and doubts they'll ever get home.
- Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: When berating Bernsen, Arturo lets it slip that he knows about the subliminal advertising scam.
- Different World, Different Movies: Kelly has never heard of Charlie Brown, indicating that Peanuts does not exist on this world.
- Dramatic Drop: Don bumps into Wade at the food court and approaches her to talk. She immediately drops a tray of food.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Watching one of the ads, Quinn notices something unusual. He does some fiddling with a remote and finds the subliminal messages.
- Family Eye Resemblance: On the subject of Kelly sharing features with her mother.Don: Even you remind me of her.
Wade: [looking at a picture of Liz] It's my eyes. People always tell me that my eyes look just like... I can see the resemblance in the picture. - Foreshadowing:
- Rembrandt keeps glancing at the monitors and gets a little too obsessed with buying gifts. This indicates the subliminal advertising scam going on.
- Quinn is initially a mall elf, but Kelly gets him a job as an executive. As a result, Quinn is in a position to help track down Carol and get records relating to the subliminal advertising scam.
- Freudian Excuse: Arturo's invested in reuniting the baby with Carol due to knowing what it's like to lose a mother at a young age.
- Friendship Moment:
- After Carol gets away, Arturo thinks he's failed and is contributing to a fraud on the children of this world. Rembrandt convinces to just keep trying. Arturo soon admits "the impudent elf" taught him a lesson.
- Rembrandt snaps out of his buying frenzy by hanging out with Wade. He also later apologizes for snapping at Quinn.
- Heroic Vow: Arturo promises Carol that he'll find a way to get her out of debt and reunite her with her son.
- Hope Spot: Early into his Santa tenure, Arturo spots Carol nearby cleaning tables. He tries to reason with her, but she gets away from him.
- It's Personal: Wade acknowledges that Arturo is obsessed with reuniting Carol and the baby, though he only confides in Carol what his motivation is.
- Mall Santa: Arturo's job in the mall, with Quinn, Wade, and Rembrandt as elves (though Quinn quickly gets a job in another division).
- Manly Tears: During the first Christmas they shared after the war was over, Arturo recalls his father giving him a gift and having these in his eyes at the time.Arturo: That was the moment I knew my daddy was home and that he loved me. Best gift he ever could've given me.
- Mean Boss: Downplayed. Kelly penalizes an employee a few weeks' worth of pay for not spending the required amount, and she ignores the employee's insistence that the money went to her sick mother. Don openly considers this rather callous, but Kelly says she's just abiding by mall policy and doesn't take any pleasure in the crappy parts of her job.
- My Greatest Failure: Don blames himself for Kelly falling under Bernsen's influence.
- Oh, Crap!: Wade figured out early on she didn't exist on this world, but she's later stunned to hear it's because her mother Liz died in childbirth.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted. There are a lot of women working in the mall named Carol, and Arturo has to work his way through a list to find the right one.Arturo: This is the 38th house I've knocked on this evening.
- Parental Abandonment: A woman named Carol leaves her baby with the Sliders early on. Arturo also reveals he suffered this as a child during World War II; his mother was killed in a bombing, and he was placed in an orphanage until his father could come home.
- Parents Know Their Children: Downplayed. Wade's double died in childbirth along with Liz, but Don can't help but find Wade familiar.
- Properly Paranoid: Quinn finds Rembrandt's buying frenzy unusual. When Rembrandt says he's just buying gifts for the group, Quinn says Remmy doesn't love the group this much.
- Punny Name: The mother in this Christmas Episode is named Carol.
- Race Against the Clock: With two days until the slide, Arturo asks the priest to look after the baby and give them that time to find Carol.
- Shadow Archetype: Kelly is one to Quinn. Both were deeply affected by the loss of a parent at a young age, but Quinn was able to embrace the memories of his father and their Christmas traditions; Kelly pushed those things away and became more distant towards her surviving parent.
- Shout-Out:
- "Charlie Brown wouldn't want this tree."
- Rembrandt likens the mall to structures seen in The Jetsons.
- Off-screen, Arturo had to tell the children the story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer three separate times.
- Sophisticated as Hell: Arturo caps off his first story about how "a rotten, stinky little boy" not getting what he wanted as punishment for being greedy and bad.Kid: What a buzzkill.
Arturo: What a buzzkill indeed. - Throw the Dog a Bone:
- Quinn recalls how Christmases felt empty after his father died until he was 15 and he was with his mother shopping for a tree. He spotted a Charlie Brown-esque tree, the kind Michael had a history of picking out. Quinn took it as a sign that his father was still with them in spirit and always would be.
- Arturo finds Carol early on, but she manages to get away from him and run off. Arturo kicks himself and starts ranting about the world's focus on consumerism, but then the greedy child from before confesses to something bad he did and shows that the Professor's story did get through to him.
- Ultimate Job Security: A rather cruel example that makes the subliminal advertising scheme even worse. Paychecks for employees have some big caveats. Though each Slider is technically getting $200 per day, $100 is taken out for housing, and they're required to spend another $80 on goods in the mall, so they really only get $20. Debt is quickly racked up, and the subliminal advertising causes those affected to shell out more than they're required to. If an employee can't pay back the debt on demand, they lose all their assets and are forced to work in the mall until they can pay everything back, which Rembrandt figures would take a lifetime.
- Unwitting Pawn: Rembrandt gets wrapped up in the subliminal advertising scheme causing people to buy more and more goods at the mall.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Upon seeing doubles of her sister and father, Wade was uneasy due to conflicting emotions. Then she found they don't even know who she is.
