Jeanie Bottle 383
Aug02
on August 2, 2016
at 12:00 am
and modified on November 26, 2022. at 11:11 pm
Chapter: Story 09: I Dream of Technicolor
Wait, what?
Welcome to
Normally Updates Weekly
Usually Tuesday or Thursday
Wait, what?
Well, I wasn’t expecting this.
You should of; https://jeaniebottle.com/?comic=jeanie-bottle-369
Holy crap, even I didn’t realize that connection!
I don’t quite follow.
Rodge mentioned how eerily similar the situation between Jean and Neil is compared to the JB universe’s version of the I Dream of Jeannie TV show. Jean is apparently following up on that.
Ummm, time travel? This did happen in the original series.
I wonder when Jean and Neil will run into Ms. Eden, who would be, what fifty years younger?
OK… so, for the first time, we have an exact date for this comic: May 26th, 1969. Meaning that Sid and Andy discovered the bottle 30 years earlier – which would have been in 1938.
Cool that we now have a backstory for where Sid got his ideas for the IDoJ series!
Now, just what are Jean and Neil doing, time-traveling back to 1969?
30 years may be a round number instead of an exact number–if it was EXACTLY 30 years, then Rouyaa would have been with Andy for two years BEFORE the USA entered WWII. I think that it had been months rather than years that they had been together when Kazom dropped by.
Hard to say. Andy and Rouyaa seemed pretty cozy. And there had been enough time for Sid to get drafted into the military and become a senior pilot. So I think it could well have been 2 years or more. (The US didn’t enter WWII until December 1941, so even if the bottle discovery happened in December of 1939, that would have to be 2 years, absolute minimum.) I could see Andy and Rouyaa keeping company that long.
It probably is a rounded number. Not many people do give exact measures of time or anything. Especially for that length of time.
But they did meet Rouyaa before the war remember? When Andy was about to leave for school, and they found her bottle. Then there was the time skip into WWII. And there was never any indication of how long of a skip it was. Though it seemed that he was living on his own, and out of school. So I would say it would more likely be years instead of months. Ans they seemed pretty cozy together, so I would also say that it would take some time for that level of comfort as well.
Actually, there was a very precise date for the WWII time skip. The radio broadcasts were from a particular date fairly late in the war. The date Sid and Andy went off to college is a bit vague, but 1938, plus or minus a year, seems about right. If I weren’t busy I’d look up Sidney Sheldon in Wikipedia and see if it lists when he went to college.
@ranck
You’re in luck, I already looked and have the link; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Sheldon
It doesn’t give a date for when Syd went to college but as he was born on 2/17/1917 I think we could work it out. [BTW His mother’s name was Natalie and yes, his unit was disbanded before he saw any action.]
And this is why you don’t break the fourth wall Rodge! Things go wibbly wobbly timey wimey!
The Moon Safe story always seemed a little odd to me–why the bleep would NASA send a heavy safe to the Moon? I can understand sending the safe’s contents to the Moon, but the safe itself is just dead weight, and it cost hundreds of (1960s) dollars per pound just to get ANYTHING to the Moon, even on a one-way trip. Better to package the desired payload in a purpose-built container.
Oh it cost quite a lot more than “hundreds” of 1960s Dollars per pound to send stuff to the moon. It was on the order of $2 million per kilogram.
$2 Million in 1960 Dollars? That’s even more as it sounds today. Keep in Mind that basically all currencies lost in value since then.
US dollars today have the same buying power as $6.66 in 1969. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if the $2 million/kg statistic is in 1969 dollars or more modern dollars. But even if it’s modern dollars, that’s still ~$300,000/kg in 1969 dollars.
I noticed that on the poll there is someone called Lord Shona. Can someone please explain who this is?
Lord Shona was the genie lord who was dispatched to tell Rouyaa’s sister Evie to stop interfering in WWII. See Jeaniebottle #378
I don’t understand this poll at all myself what exactly are we voting for here?
This Chapter is just great:
Sid is Sidney Sheldon, the writer of most Episodes of the “I dream of Jeannie” TV show. The four episodes Tony is refering to are the IdoJ Episodes “Genie, Genie, who got the genie?” 1 to 4.
And even the story about his Career in WWII is based on fact. His unit was disbanded before he saw any combat action. (Now we know why Rouyaa faked the oder by F. D. Roosevelt instead of finding another way to get Sid out of danger)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Sheldon
CD Rudd did a ton of research to write this chapter as accurately as possible. And it shows. 🙂
Is it just me, or did anyone else hear a laugh track and the original scene transition music for this episode too, once Jean and Neil appeared?
I could never figure out why NASA was sending an explosive safe to the moon, either.
Sid?! Oh, I should have seen it sooner….
And the truth comes out.
Why are they in a dumpster?
Haha, I think that’s supposed to be a “line wall”. The kind they put up to help people form lines, like at airport security.
I think it’s just a half wall to keep people from walking around that corner and into the staircase that is above their heads. Someone coming in from our right, if they cut that corner short, could easily bonk their head on the underside of the stairs. So, they put a wall up to make people go wide around that corner, sort of like those barriers on school buses these days that make kids walk far enough out front to be seen by the driver.
I was actually about to post “Sidney Sheldon” when I read the posts after my first one. But I admit I just flashed on Sid=Sidney just before I looked.
Well, here’s another fearless guess: The plot is going to turn on meeting Rouyaa (no brainer), being afraid of screwing up the timeline so that the future Jean and Neal remember and maybe need to exist gets butterflied away, and finding out when they finally return to their present that their present depended on them going back in time all along. Why? This is the “gotcha” in all the best time travel stories, including at least five Star Treks and one Futurama.
And yes, this strip is even more awesome than I thought.
I do love those Closed Time Loop-based time travel stories. It’s something I always loved about Time Turners in Harry Potter. They can’t change the past, they just give you the opportunity to do something that already happened.
Like, The Terminator.
Terminator is NOT a closed time-loop story. Terminator’s timeline is constantly evolving, with each time someone goes into the past things turning out different by varying degrees.
People get thrown off because John Conner can’t exist without time-travel, but they are making a false assumption that there was always a John Conner. Since the series demonstrates that time travel CAN change events, logically there was a timeline prior to the first movie where there was no John Conner.
If you want some good examples of a closed time loop, look at all the time-travel episodes of Gargoyles.
…Heh, now I’m wondering how a crossover between this comic and Gargoyles would turn out.
Actually, the FIRST Terminator movie COULD’VE been closed time-loop story. It’s just that unless the rules changed between first and second movie, it can’t be …
What’s this? The plot thickens!
My unanswered question for tonight: After 30 years, do Rouyaa and Andy have any kids?
I’m interested in that answer, as well!
According to my crystal ball:
Yes. And they will have a grandson in about 1986. The parents will name him…
(wait for it… )
“Jean”…
No fair! Now I really want to know how the heck Rouyaa ended up in a safe to inspire the episode arc!!
Ok, If you’re a Pokemon GO Fan, pop over to Melvin Chronicles and check out the Fanart page… You’ll learn what happens when you try to capture a Genie with a Pokeball.
I know most people are focused on Sid and Andy but all I can think on looking at this strip is that Jeanie looks very feminine when she’s grabbing Neil there at the end.
I don’t get a particularly “feminine” vibe from the way Jean is grabbing Neil; it’s more like gender-reversal. How many times have you seen The Hero drag The Damsel away from a sticky situation when she seems slower to react?
But Senko got me to pay closer attention, so now I notice that Neil and Jean are both wearing their not-special day clothes, which means that before their trip to The Past, they weren’t in bed (pajamas or less), surfing (Jean would be in a bikini) or when Neil was at work, where he has to wear shirt-and-tie like all the other Dilberts. Even without the genie hat, Jean will stand out now because, at least in the IDOJ Sixties, the only non-genie woman who wears pants is Mary Tyler Moore. Come on, Jean, at least zap up a housedress!
Its the way her arms tucked under his usually the hero grabs the heroine around the shoulders while the girl wraps her arm under the guy’s at least in the shows i’ve watched.
This comic is so meta.
No update this week?
What happened to #384? I got the alert in my RSS reader, and there’s a thumbnail, but the link isn’t found.
It took 7 years, but we are finally seeing the other side of this