Jean AKA Jeannie AKA Jeanie is a film, book, and magazine reviewer for a national magazine. Most of Jean’s work is done through email, which means he doesn't have to go into the office.
On a trip to find a gift for his girlfriend, Jean found an empty Genie Bottle. Upon picking up this bottle, Jean became the bottle’s new genie-powered occupant. Not only was Jean turned into a genie, but the bottle turned him into what he believed a genie of the bottle should look like. Which, due to his fascination with a classic 60s TV show, turned him into a busty blonde woman.
And… presumably Jean gets himself *thoroughly* drunk (not just prom punchbowl drunk), and forgets almost all of this — which is why Jeanie didn’t remember what happened.
But doesn’t Jeanie herself believe s/he lost hir virginity after the prom? If this is how it has always played out, Jean/Jeanie has been lying to hirself for years.
Exactly. So “something” happens that Jean forgets this fact. Either he’s really good at denying reality, to the point where he himself believes the lies he makes up, *or* he got sloshed and forgot.
Given that Jeanie didn’t remember Jean’s prom date’s *name* as well as not remembering that he didn’t really have sex, my money’s on the “full minibar” (previous strip) becoming notably emptier.
I’d believe either case, actually. Jean seemed really full of himself at the start of the comic, so it’s entirely possible he grew to believe his own lies. The drinks are another distinct possibility.
Of course, this being magic-related, it’s also possible there’s a kind of reality censor in place that made him forget the details of what happened after a while as well. But that’s admittedly entirely speculation on my part.
This doesn’t exactly solve the self-confidence issues. It would have been better for Jeanie to poof something into a sex doll look alike of her and fix the issue that way. This could lead to even further ripples in the timeline and a future where he’s not even confident enough to run a dead air radio station at 2am.
And something tells me that she’s going to grab the wrong Neil.
Haha, now *that’s* an intriguing theory! Though with how mousey teen-Neil is around Zoey, she’d likely have to be the aggressor. Which is a fun thought.
With both Teen Neil and Zoey at the punch table together and Teen Neil getting punch out by the guy that Neil spilled the punch on, this could have pushed Neil past his inhibitions, because, Zoey could be taking care of poor Neil after he got hit by the other guy.
She could ask if Neil OK. She could go get Neil an Ice Pack for his eye. Neil could get apologetic about causing this problem with the other guy and Zoey could use this as an open file to develop a relationship with Neil now. We will just have to wait and see what kind of interaction occurs between Teen Neil and Zoey now.
@Dagor and ijuinkun: I had a similar thought, but that creates another time-line paradox. Adult-Neil certainly should have remembered getting lucky on prom night but apparently, he didn’t. If you’ll recall, Jeanie didn’t spike the punch until after teen-Neil and Zoey left the table, so inebriation is not a likely scenario. Now it’s entirely possible that Natalie suddenly remembered teen-Neil’s amorous encounter and that’s the real reason she sent the two of them to the punch bowl, but that seems unlikely. Natalie herself, may have just contributed to, as she said, ascrew up the timeline or cause a cosmic event.
there have been somewhat subtle hints being dropped that they went back in time all along, meaning jeannie always dumped that booze, jeannie always had the burger joint getting in trouble for counterfieting(neil mentions it was shut down for some reason when they were in highschool) and jeannie was always jeans prom date and neil just doesnt kiss and tell
I think it more likely that Natalie will have a chase match with Danny and leaving an open file for Zoey to develop a relationship with each other. Neither Teen Neil or Natalie are into that kind of stuff like pre-marrital sex, that more of a Jean or Jeanie thing kind of thing to do.
This is just a theory but I am starting to think that the reason Jeannie is feeling sick is because she did something to alter the timeline and not because of any alcohol or thoughts of sex with her younger self.
My guess continues to be that Jeanie feels sick at the thought of intimacy with anyone other than Neil, the result of her genie nature, rather than any normal romantic feelings.
@Dragonstorm and 50srefugee: These are both interesting theories.
So, perhaps the ripple effect of a timeline alteration creates a feedback loop through her totem that causes Jeanie’s nausea. This could be demonstrably true because this time Jeanie’s affliction was less severe, meaning the disturbance is less severe as well and closer to the actual events. The green demon struck her in panel three as she’s at the door, and worse afterwards, meaning that her statement “I won’t deny it” might be key.
Alternatively, intimate physical contact might produce the same result because of the mystical tie binding a genie and her master. This is more difficult to justify because last time the illness struck before Jean could take her into the hotel room and this time it occurred after she averted the issue.
interesting thought. if the timeline doesn’t get fixed, there will be a jean and a jeanie, a neil and a natalie. and there will be no actual origin of jeannie. as far as the genie community is concerned, there is this unique bottle genie, jeanie, that just suddenly pops into existence from nowhere, disappears for a number of years, and then pops back into existence.
Your wish has been granted!
And I concur. The strip is better for it.
There’s a little scene in Steve Martin’s L.A. Story, in which Telemacher’s wife explains that she always glances in a mirror as she walks out the door, and if anything she’s wearing catches her eye, she takes it off. I’ve found that to be good editing advice, too. (Though of course I often ignore it in my own writing.)
I watched an actual episode of IDOJ this morning, one of the digital channels runs it.
Oh my gosh it was so dumb. Jean here looks like Einstein compared to Jeannie. I’ll summarize it – Bellows has Tony (Master) working at home on a really important report. Jeannie of course wants to help and proceeds to do things showing she would be an immense distraction. An exasperated Tony without thinking asks her if she can help someone else for today. Of course she finds a couple of bank robbers who she helps, believing their phony story, and ropes Tony back in by borrowing the car (a 1967 LeMans convertible, though). She ends up robbing the bank. gets Tony in trouble, who has to explain to her to fix it and what to do. Of course the robbers use this to try to really clean out the bank. It all culminates in Tony having to try to stop the bank robbers singlehandedly other than the less than helpful help Jeannie gives.
Any time you’re critical of how CD writes this, go watch some of the real deal and get back to us.
Excellent observation, and thanks for the reminder!
As I recall from watching this in the original run on my family’s black and white tube, a great deal of the show centered around Jeannie’s total ignorance of modern (well, mid-20th century) culture. She NEEDED her master. And, absolutely, the show runners had absolutely no idea how to run a fantasy story. NO genre awareness whatsoever. Joke-a-Moment in the extreme. They really needed a good SF writer on board as story editor. I’d propose Theodore Sturgeon–he could have made IDoF into a true legend–which, admittedly, might have been a bit, um, esoteric for middle class America at the time.
I’ve suggested that Our Jeanie needs her master as well. Someone (sorry, I can’t find your post) objected that if Neil takes his role seriously, the story’s over. But becky’s observation suggests that’s not necessarily so, although the narrative drive would be different. Jeanie, of course, would continue to resist and rebel, and Neil himself might well turn out to be flawed, as all we mortals be. As Jeanie tends to lazily and impulsively use her powers unwisely, Neil might also succumb to the temptations of a magical servant.
See, ferex, this strip from the truly charming Extra Ordinary: www dot exocomics dot com/584/
To be fair, *most* TV in the 60s was pretty bad. The entire medium of television was still barely a decade old when IDOJ aired. Writers largely hadn’t gotten the hang of writing weekly shortform TV shows, rather than single, long films.
nod-nod. But fantasy and SF themes have special difficulties that the networks were particularly inept at. Short form shows like The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) and The Outer Limits (1963-1965, ending the year IdoJ started) were outstanding exceptions. Even Star Trek (1966-1969) now looks notoriously cheesy–and of course had no long term story arc. But at least, all three of those shows employed honest SF writers. And not even the movie studios understood SF enough to take it seriously until Kubrick’s 2001 (2008).
Ironically, the original Star Trek was regarded by the network as being far TOO serious and intellectual, whereas present-day audiences think of it as being insufficiently so.
ijuinkun: How times have changed, eh wut? But yeah: exactly the problem actual SF&F fans and writers had. But I have to grant a small point: my own family watched these shows, there being little else on at the time, and I think I was the only one of us five that had any idea what I was seeing, certainly the only one honestly fascinated by it. I believe you have to have a strangely shaped brain to enjoy SF&F, and most people at the time simply did not have that. The landscape has changed, and the intellectual hooks are there for a far larger audience.
My gosh, the term “world building” didn’t really take off until about 1980, according to Goggle Ngrams.
To be even more fair, a lot of that was due to audience expectations. TV shows were originally called “Teleplays” because that’s what the were – televised plays. No one goes to a play expecting verisimilitude, they expect a performance. Back then Cinema Verite was still a new thing in films and wouldn’t hit TV for two more decades. So a lot of the theater’s explicit “we are here to entertain you” vibe was explicit, accepted, and expected.
@Pilgrim: Yeah, good thing everyone learned from that, so we don’t expect something like the Interwebz to change storytelling, much.
S’truth, TV itself was part of the SFnal future. I suspect that if you didn’t live through the thirties and forties, you have no idea how sharp the acceleration curve was in the fifties and sixties, what that felt like. Now, you expect it.
Good grief, even I can remember a time when men wore hats. More common than ties, I think.
At the time, Star Trek was consider series that was breaking new ground even. You had the first interracial kiss between the Captain and communication officer. When black were there in the story, they usually came in the servants entrance and left through the servants entrance and were generally treated like second class citizens even. Even Martin Luther King commented on it too and was one of the TV show that he would watch, because, it didn’t have that kind of bias in it.
And twenty-seven years later, with Deep Space Nine, the Captain was a black man, and almost nobody minded it. King would have approved how much social mores about race had changed in a single generation.
There’s plenty of good TV to be found in the 1950s and 1960s.
This show just … I’m sure it’s great if you’re a kid but as an adult it was very cringeworthy watching Jeannie go through entirely predictable situations because Tony can’t say “I wish you were more knowledgeable about our modern world” or something like that. She comes off like a puppy dog come to life, too eager to try to help Tony to stop and think about anything. Which is great in a dog, but if I were Tony I’d be annoyed as heck.
From what I read in the wikipedia this was the show’s schtick for the early color episodes, but they couldn’t play on that forever so she got better and more in step as the show carried on.
Of course eventually they marry, which makes you wonder how CD will end this comic when the time comes.
You make a good point with the “wish for her to have modern knowledge” bit. Tony did wish for her to be able to understand and speak modern English in the first episode, so apparently such wishes do work.
Bear in mind that Star Trek was a sci-fi drama. IDOJ was a comedy. Bewitched was another comedy with similar subject matter (magic), which also frequently devolved into silliness.
Also, the two shows ran side-by-side. Making Jeannie familiar with the modern world probably would’ve made her too much of a Samantha clone. So I suspect they kept Jeannie naive to help keep the two shows distinct. Barbara Eden also played Jeannie’s sister, who seemed much more crafty and streetwise. Devious even. So it’s not like the writers couldn’t write non-naive characters.
@becky21k:“Of course eventually they marry, which makes you wonder how CD will end this comic when the time comes.”
An interesting prospect. Bottle genies have a nurturing nature (something Jeanie seems to be lacking) and grow an attachment to their masters. While Neil was already Jean’s best (and maybe only) friend, Jeanie has not really demonstrated much of an emotional attachment, panel 3 of page 672 being the only notable exception.
Yeah, there’s no way a timey-wimey ball could be resolved this easily. Jean is very lazy and always tries to take the easy way out. Getting magic only made that worse. I’m guessing at least three loops before Jeanie finally knuckles down and bites the bullet, and only after she’s backed into a corner with no other way out.
Yup. That’s part of my “all genies need masters” model: Magic users generally are lazy, shortsighted, and selfish, unless the magic involves real costs to the users. Neil, with an engineer’s keenly tuned sense of trade-offs, would make an excellent master. Marketing droids suffer a similar problem with “wishing makes it so”, and when they control an organization, disaster always entails.
Now consider modern tech, which essentially confers wizardly powers on ANYBODY and EVERYBODY.
@Pilgrim: So you think that at some point in one of many alternate futures, Jeanie is going to actually lose her virginity to correct the timeline? I know CD isn’t going to portray that event “on screen,” but such an outcome is certainly going to affect Jeanie deeply.
@mike: Probably not, but if this is a series of stable time loops Jeanie eventually did something that left her younger self fully convinced. And given Jeanie’s history “virgin” is kind of a slippery concept at this point. We still don’t know what happened with Guano that convinced Haji (really Lahab) to let her go. And they must have been convinced because they aren’t pursuing her.
It has not been established how that works for genies. The best that has been speculated is that the Hubun Jadid merely makes a female genie fertile and isn’t a pregnancy by itself.
This may be a simple slip of the tongue. Jeanie just left future-Natalie not five minutes ago after calling her Neil. I’m pretty sure she knows who she is looking for… at least we can hope so.
If Jeanie remembered that he (young Jean) lost his virginity after prom then that event has to happen for real and not just be made up. If Jeanie doesn’t do it than someone else has to do it. Enter Rita. The bar is loaded and so is she. He didn’t actually say he did it with the blonde, only that it happened. Or Jeanie has to keep going back until she does the deed.
Jean does not need to actually have sex—he only needs to sincerely believe that he did. Getting him drunk enough that he remembers nothing, and then having him wake up to Jeanie in bed telling him that they did it, should work.
“No one will doubt it, ’cause I won’t deny it.”
Says the “exchange student” the administration doesn’t know about and only a handful of students met (and probably don’t remember), who disappears after the prom and is never seen again?
Hm. here’s a thought: Jeanie’s greenish nausea doesn’t arise from contemplating sex with Jean, or anything like that. It’s a sign that the timeline is still unsettled. She’s timesick.
At least, it seems she’s partially fixed things–her reaction is not as strong now as the first time.
How far off will Natalie be when Jeanie finds her?
(Gods, Jeanie could have a real problem on her hands if, everytime she meddles, things never quite go back…There could even be a kind of hysteresis. Ever used Silly Putty to pick up ink from newspaper comic, then stretched the blob to make weird faces? Imagine trying to unstretch the blob to its original size and shape, to recover the original image.)
I think it’s very likely that no matter what Jeanie does to fix thigs something will be different. Since we’re probably not going to get to keep adult-Natalie with her more confident personality (bummer), my money’s on a relationship between Neil and Zoey that wasn’t there before (and Natalie was the cause). Here’s my reasoning:
Neil was originally smitten by Zoey, as evidenced with his fumbling with dialogue (page 628) and visibly frustrated with Jean’s interference when Jean announced he’d found him a date.
Neil was disappointed when Zoey sent him a text announcing that Danny was asking her to the prom.
Again, Neil seemed smitten when he bumped into Zoey at the punch bowl and didn’t resist being led off by her to find ice for his eye.
For good or ill, Natalie is responsible for Neil and Zoey being alone together at the prom, something that Jeanie’s time travel escapade altered from whatever was to originally happen… not to mention Danny’s disappointment at Zoey’s disappearance (assuming he even noticed after staring across a chess board at Natalie’s chest all evening… yes, such a traumatic experience).
I don’t expect that they will ever restore the timeline exactly to how it was initially, but they will eventually end up with something that is “good enough” that Jeanie and Neil decide not to continue trying to alter it.
So, you speculate that the girl that called Jean a dweeb and a loser is going to dump her jock prom date and climb into the sack with him? Interesting.
Then again, it does depend on how the experience turned out. We know that his girlfriends created a website on what a cad he was, but he did seem to attract girlfriends.
His ability to attract a lot of girls who then turn against him suggests that he is less “unpleasant jerkass” and more “cheating bastard” who has no desire for monogamy or commitment.
I just had a thought regarding this conversation from page 675:
jmucchielloShe seems like she’s working a deadend job. She use to be a rocket scientist. Maybe she misses that.
Robertwas it really that bad? She’s been stuck as the wrong gender *and* the wrong age for almost a decade. That’s pretty bad.
MakairaI was thinking, if Neil joins Jeanie on enough of these time travel hijinks, he could end up having mentally lived 200+ years despite being in a 30-year old body.
RobertHuh, that’s an interesting idea. Jeanie could potentially use her magic to repeatedly reset Neil’s age, making him effectively immortal as long as Jeanie’s magic holds out. And even more interesting, Neil could also use that as an opportunity to try out different lives. Live as “base Neil” until he’s old, then have Jeanie poof him back to his 20s as “new Neil”. Then later, Neil might actually *want* to try being Natalie for a lifetime or two. Fun times!
Now, this should close any discussion regarding Jeanie out living Neil. A Genie won’t outlive her master because her magic can keep him forever young… at least until it runs out.
She can keep him youthful, and perhaps heal most diseases and injuries, but it is unlikely that she can make him unkillable without spending a great deal of effort to make him magically proof against bullets, blades, blunt impacts, fire, acid, poison, etc. without resorting to making him non-fleshy or inhuman as a way of increasing his durability. So he can have an “indefinite” lifespan, but no guarantees.
Well, that solves Jean’s future confidence issues. Now how did Neil/Natalie do at prom.
And… presumably Jean gets himself *thoroughly* drunk (not just prom punchbowl drunk), and forgets almost all of this — which is why Jeanie didn’t remember what happened.
But doesn’t Jeanie herself believe s/he lost hir virginity after the prom? If this is how it has always played out, Jean/Jeanie has been lying to hirself for years.
Exactly. So “something” happens that Jean forgets this fact. Either he’s really good at denying reality, to the point where he himself believes the lies he makes up, *or* he got sloshed and forgot.
Given that Jeanie didn’t remember Jean’s prom date’s *name* as well as not remembering that he didn’t really have sex, my money’s on the “full minibar” (previous strip) becoming notably emptier.
I’d believe either case, actually. Jean seemed really full of himself at the start of the comic, so it’s entirely possible he grew to believe his own lies. The drinks are another distinct possibility.
Of course, this being magic-related, it’s also possible there’s a kind of reality censor in place that made him forget the details of what happened after a while as well. But that’s admittedly entirely speculation on my part.
Huh, I was thinking that Jeannie would “volunteer” Neil to stand in for her again.
This doesn’t exactly solve the self-confidence issues. It would have been better for Jeanie to poof something into a sex doll look alike of her and fix the issue that way. This could lead to even further ripples in the timeline and a future where he’s not even confident enough to run a dead air radio station at 2am.
And something tells me that she’s going to grab the wrong Neil.
> something tells me that she’s going to grab the wrong Neil.
Haha, now that would be an amusing plot to untangle!
It kinda does. What destroyed his self confidence was Jeanie publicly and harshly turning him down.
We’ll see if that actually works. She might actually have to try, again. My thought, false memories.
Either that on another time loop when Jean goes back to fix this again.
Now we just have to figure out what she told him.
I have the feeling young Neil is the one who got lucky that night, and Jeanie isn’t going to be happy about it.
Haha, now *that’s* an intriguing theory! Though with how mousey teen-Neil is around Zoey, she’d likely have to be the aggressor. Which is a fun thought.
They were around the punch bowl so it could happen.
Yeah, Neil could be like Raj Koothrappali from “The Big Bang Theory”, in that getting drunk makes him forget his inhibitions about women.
According to Jean’s former girlfriend, Neil is actually damn good in bed. Jeanie nearly tried herself.
With both Teen Neil and Zoey at the punch table together and Teen Neil getting punch out by the guy that Neil spilled the punch on, this could have pushed Neil past his inhibitions, because, Zoey could be taking care of poor Neil after he got hit by the other guy.
She could ask if Neil OK. She could go get Neil an Ice Pack for his eye. Neil could get apologetic about causing this problem with the other guy and Zoey could use this as an open file to develop a relationship with Neil now. We will just have to wait and see what kind of interaction occurs between Teen Neil and Zoey now.
@Dagor and ijuinkun: I had a similar thought, but that creates another time-line paradox. Adult-Neil certainly should have remembered getting lucky on prom night but apparently, he didn’t. If you’ll recall, Jeanie didn’t spike the punch until after teen-Neil and Zoey left the table, so inebriation is not a likely scenario. Now it’s entirely possible that Natalie suddenly remembered teen-Neil’s amorous encounter and that’s the real reason she sent the two of them to the punch bowl, but that seems unlikely. Natalie herself, may have just contributed to, as she said, ascrew up the timeline or cause a cosmic event.
there have been somewhat subtle hints being dropped that they went back in time all along, meaning jeannie always dumped that booze, jeannie always had the burger joint getting in trouble for counterfieting(neil mentions it was shut down for some reason when they were in highschool) and jeannie was always jeans prom date and neil just doesnt kiss and tell
Neil isn’t the type to brag about getting laid at prom (or brag about getting laid in general)
Unless I’m forgetting something earlier in the comic that implies he didn’t, it’s a very real possibility
IMO I feel the F bomb should be edited out of the strip, just to keep this strip a more G+ rated affair. I dont believe its been used before this.
Wouldn’t Neil having sex with himself be technically “masturbation”?—Just sayn’. 😉
I think it more likely that Natalie will have a chase match with Danny and leaving an open file for Zoey to develop a relationship with each other. Neither Teen Neil or Natalie are into that kind of stuff like pre-marrital sex, that more of a Jean or Jeanie thing kind of thing to do.
Something tells me Jeanie will have to do this again (either pulling an Emma Frost X-Men: First Class or forcing Natalie/Neil in her place).
What alterations to the timeline will this produce? Or is that what happened the first time?
This is just a theory but I am starting to think that the reason Jeannie is feeling sick is because she did something to alter the timeline and not because of any alcohol or thoughts of sex with her younger self.
I like this idea.
But is the amount of nausea due to how significant the timeline change is?
That’s my thought… see below.
My guess continues to be that Jeanie feels sick at the thought of intimacy with anyone other than Neil, the result of her genie nature, rather than any normal romantic feelings.
I sorry this has nothing to do with the comic but what happened to all the links to other comics on the left hand side ?
There all gone.
Huh… that’s not right. We’ll see about fixing that ASAP.
@Dragonstorm and 50srefugee: These are both interesting theories.
So, perhaps the ripple effect of a timeline alteration creates a feedback loop through her totem that causes Jeanie’s nausea. This could be demonstrably true because this time Jeanie’s affliction was less severe, meaning the disturbance is less severe as well and closer to the actual events. The green demon struck her in panel three as she’s at the door, and worse afterwards, meaning that her statement “I won’t deny it” might be key.
Alternatively, intimate physical contact might produce the same result because of the mystical tie binding a genie and her master. This is more difficult to justify because last time the illness struck before Jean could take her into the hotel room and this time it occurred after she averted the issue.
interesting thought. if the timeline doesn’t get fixed, there will be a jean and a jeanie, a neil and a natalie. and there will be no actual origin of jeannie. as far as the genie community is concerned, there is this unique bottle genie, jeanie, that just suddenly pops into existence from nowhere, disappears for a number of years, and then pops back into existence.
and they thought the blue djinn was trouble.
Can’t wait to see how this all goes wrong, necessitating a THIRD trip to the past. (What? You thought Jeanie had suddenly become competent?)
“Boinked” would have been funnier…
Your wish has been granted!
And I concur. The strip is better for it.
There’s a little scene in Steve Martin’s L.A. Story, in which Telemacher’s wife explains that she always glances in a mirror as she walks out the door, and if anything she’s wearing catches her eye, she takes it off. I’ve found that to be good editing advice, too. (Though of course I often ignore it in my own writing.)
I watched an actual episode of IDOJ this morning, one of the digital channels runs it.
Oh my gosh it was so dumb. Jean here looks like Einstein compared to Jeannie. I’ll summarize it – Bellows has Tony (Master) working at home on a really important report. Jeannie of course wants to help and proceeds to do things showing she would be an immense distraction. An exasperated Tony without thinking asks her if she can help someone else for today. Of course she finds a couple of bank robbers who she helps, believing their phony story, and ropes Tony back in by borrowing the car (a 1967 LeMans convertible, though). She ends up robbing the bank. gets Tony in trouble, who has to explain to her to fix it and what to do. Of course the robbers use this to try to really clean out the bank. It all culminates in Tony having to try to stop the bank robbers singlehandedly other than the less than helpful help Jeannie gives.
Any time you’re critical of how CD writes this, go watch some of the real deal and get back to us.
Excellent observation, and thanks for the reminder!
As I recall from watching this in the original run on my family’s black and white tube, a great deal of the show centered around Jeannie’s total ignorance of modern (well, mid-20th century) culture. She NEEDED her master. And, absolutely, the show runners had absolutely no idea how to run a fantasy story. NO genre awareness whatsoever. Joke-a-Moment in the extreme. They really needed a good SF writer on board as story editor. I’d propose Theodore Sturgeon–he could have made IDoF into a true legend–which, admittedly, might have been a bit, um, esoteric for middle class America at the time.
I’ve suggested that Our Jeanie needs her master as well. Someone (sorry, I can’t find your post) objected that if Neil takes his role seriously, the story’s over. But becky’s observation suggests that’s not necessarily so, although the narrative drive would be different. Jeanie, of course, would continue to resist and rebel, and Neil himself might well turn out to be flawed, as all we mortals be. As Jeanie tends to lazily and impulsively use her powers unwisely, Neil might also succumb to the temptations of a magical servant.
See, ferex, this strip from the truly charming Extra Ordinary: www dot exocomics dot com/584/
To be fair, *most* TV in the 60s was pretty bad. The entire medium of television was still barely a decade old when IDOJ aired. Writers largely hadn’t gotten the hang of writing weekly shortform TV shows, rather than single, long films.
nod-nod. But fantasy and SF themes have special difficulties that the networks were particularly inept at. Short form shows like The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) and The Outer Limits (1963-1965, ending the year IdoJ started) were outstanding exceptions. Even Star Trek (1966-1969) now looks notoriously cheesy–and of course had no long term story arc. But at least, all three of those shows employed honest SF writers. And not even the movie studios understood SF enough to take it seriously until Kubrick’s 2001 (2008).
Oh, fer—Stupid fingers, type what I tell you to! Kubrick’s 2001 came out in 1968, not seven years after the title date. Sheesh.
Ironically, the original Star Trek was regarded by the network as being far TOO serious and intellectual, whereas present-day audiences think of it as being insufficiently so.
ijuinkun: How times have changed, eh wut? But yeah: exactly the problem actual SF&F fans and writers had. But I have to grant a small point: my own family watched these shows, there being little else on at the time, and I think I was the only one of us five that had any idea what I was seeing, certainly the only one honestly fascinated by it. I believe you have to have a strangely shaped brain to enjoy SF&F, and most people at the time simply did not have that. The landscape has changed, and the intellectual hooks are there for a far larger audience.
My gosh, the term “world building” didn’t really take off until about 1980, according to Goggle Ngrams.
To be even more fair, a lot of that was due to audience expectations. TV shows were originally called “Teleplays” because that’s what the were – televised plays. No one goes to a play expecting verisimilitude, they expect a performance. Back then Cinema Verite was still a new thing in films and wouldn’t hit TV for two more decades. So a lot of the theater’s explicit “we are here to entertain you” vibe was explicit, accepted, and expected.
@Pilgrim: Yeah, good thing everyone learned from that, so we don’t expect something like the Interwebz to change storytelling, much.
S’truth, TV itself was part of the SFnal future. I suspect that if you didn’t live through the thirties and forties, you have no idea how sharp the acceleration curve was in the fifties and sixties, what that felt like. Now, you expect it.
Good grief, even I can remember a time when men wore hats. More common than ties, I think.
At the time, Star Trek was consider series that was breaking new ground even. You had the first interracial kiss between the Captain and communication officer. When black were there in the story, they usually came in the servants entrance and left through the servants entrance and were generally treated like second class citizens even. Even Martin Luther King commented on it too and was one of the TV show that he would watch, because, it didn’t have that kind of bias in it.
And twenty-seven years later, with Deep Space Nine, the Captain was a black man, and almost nobody minded it. King would have approved how much social mores about race had changed in a single generation.
There’s plenty of good TV to be found in the 1950s and 1960s.
This show just … I’m sure it’s great if you’re a kid but as an adult it was very cringeworthy watching Jeannie go through entirely predictable situations because Tony can’t say “I wish you were more knowledgeable about our modern world” or something like that. She comes off like a puppy dog come to life, too eager to try to help Tony to stop and think about anything. Which is great in a dog, but if I were Tony I’d be annoyed as heck.
From what I read in the wikipedia this was the show’s schtick for the early color episodes, but they couldn’t play on that forever so she got better and more in step as the show carried on.
Of course eventually they marry, which makes you wonder how CD will end this comic when the time comes.
Becky:
You make a good point with the “wish for her to have modern knowledge” bit. Tony did wish for her to be able to understand and speak modern English in the first episode, so apparently such wishes do work.
Bear in mind that Star Trek was a sci-fi drama. IDOJ was a comedy. Bewitched was another comedy with similar subject matter (magic), which also frequently devolved into silliness.
Also, the two shows ran side-by-side. Making Jeannie familiar with the modern world probably would’ve made her too much of a Samantha clone. So I suspect they kept Jeannie naive to help keep the two shows distinct. Barbara Eden also played Jeannie’s sister, who seemed much more crafty and streetwise. Devious even. So it’s not like the writers couldn’t write non-naive characters.
@becky21k: “Of course eventually they marry, which makes you wonder how CD will end this comic when the time comes.”
An interesting prospect. Bottle genies have a nurturing nature (something Jeanie seems to be lacking) and grow an attachment to their masters. While Neil was already Jean’s best (and maybe only) friend, Jeanie has not really demonstrated much of an emotional attachment, panel 3 of page 672 being the only notable exception.
think she go back to another alternative future
Yeah, there’s no way a timey-wimey ball could be resolved this easily. Jean is very lazy and always tries to take the easy way out. Getting magic only made that worse. I’m guessing at least three loops before Jeanie finally knuckles down and bites the bullet, and only after she’s backed into a corner with no other way out.
Yup. That’s part of my “all genies need masters” model: Magic users generally are lazy, shortsighted, and selfish, unless the magic involves real costs to the users. Neil, with an engineer’s keenly tuned sense of trade-offs, would make an excellent master. Marketing droids suffer a similar problem with “wishing makes it so”, and when they control an organization, disaster always entails.
Now consider modern tech, which essentially confers wizardly powers on ANYBODY and EVERYBODY.
@Pilgrim: So you think that at some point in one of many alternate futures, Jeanie is going to actually lose her virginity to correct the timeline? I know CD isn’t going to portray that event “on screen,” but such an outcome is certainly going to affect Jeanie deeply.
@mike: Probably not, but if this is a series of stable time loops Jeanie eventually did something that left her younger self fully convinced. And given Jeanie’s history “virgin” is kind of a slippery concept at this point. We still don’t know what happened with Guano that convinced Haji (really Lahab) to let her go. And they must have been convinced because they aren’t pursuing her.
It will be interesting if we get a timeline with Neil and Zoey married.
How about this for a complication. Maybe Jeanie feels sick because she is having morning sickness from her genie pregnancy?
It has not been established how that works for genies. The best that has been speculated is that the Hubun Jadid merely makes a female genie fertile and isn’t a pregnancy by itself.
“Now to find Neil.”
Neil, not Natalie. Does this means she’ll be looking in “current” time, not prom-time?
This may be a simple slip of the tongue. Jeanie just left future-Natalie not five minutes ago after calling her Neil. I’m pretty sure she knows who she is looking for… at least we can hope so.
I’m sure she knows who she’s looking for, yes–but in what time period?
If Jeanie remembered that he (young Jean) lost his virginity after prom then that event has to happen for real and not just be made up. If Jeanie doesn’t do it than someone else has to do it. Enter Rita. The bar is loaded and so is she. He didn’t actually say he did it with the blonde, only that it happened. Or Jeanie has to keep going back until she does the deed.
Jean does not need to actually have sex—he only needs to sincerely believe that he did. Getting him drunk enough that he remembers nothing, and then having him wake up to Jeanie in bed telling him that they did it, should work.
Would’ve been more funny and disturbing had Jean lost his virginity to his future self, like how Fry “did the nasty in the pasty” in Futurama
And did anybody back then *believe* him?
“No one will doubt it, ’cause I won’t deny it.”
Says the “exchange student” the administration doesn’t know about and only a handful of students met (and probably don’t remember), who disappears after the prom and is never seen again?
What job is lower than radio DJ?
>What job is lower than radio DJ?
Congress. *rimshot*
@cd how much do i have to donate to ensure Neil screws up the time line?
I think that would require Natalie’s first born.
So the donation and the screw up end up being the same thing.
Unfortunately, Donations don’t affect the plot.I already have the plot well worked out.
Did the text change or is it just me?
Yes, the text in panel 2 was changed a few days after this page was released.
Thanks for changing it, the new narrative works well.
Well this was attempt number one to fix the timeline.
Any bets on how many attempts it will take?
solve a problem with Heinlen’s “All you Zombies.” Was Jean and his older sister adopted by their parents?
Hm. here’s a thought: Jeanie’s greenish nausea doesn’t arise from contemplating sex with Jean, or anything like that. It’s a sign that the timeline is still unsettled. She’s timesick.
I think that’s a more likely scenario than morning sickness or Master withdrawal.
At least, it seems she’s partially fixed things–her reaction is not as strong now as the first time.
How far off will Natalie be when Jeanie finds her?
(Gods, Jeanie could have a real problem on her hands if, everytime she meddles, things never quite go back…There could even be a kind of hysteresis. Ever used Silly Putty to pick up ink from newspaper comic, then stretched the blob to make weird faces? Imagine trying to unstretch the blob to its original size and shape, to recover the original image.)
I think it’s very likely that no matter what Jeanie does to fix thigs something will be different. Since we’re probably not going to get to keep adult-Natalie with her more confident personality (bummer), my money’s on a relationship between Neil and Zoey that wasn’t there before (and Natalie was the cause). Here’s my reasoning:
Neil was originally smitten by Zoey, as evidenced with his fumbling with dialogue (page 628) and visibly frustrated with Jean’s interference when Jean announced he’d found him a date.
Neil was disappointed when Zoey sent him a text announcing that Danny was asking her to the prom.
Again, Neil seemed smitten when he bumped into Zoey at the punch bowl and didn’t resist being led off by her to find ice for his eye.
For good or ill, Natalie is responsible for Neil and Zoey being alone together at the prom, something that Jeanie’s time travel escapade altered from whatever was to originally happen… not to mention Danny’s disappointment at Zoey’s disappearance (assuming he even noticed after staring across a chess board at Natalie’s chest all evening… yes, such a traumatic experience).
I don’t expect that they will ever restore the timeline exactly to how it was initially, but they will eventually end up with something that is “good enough” that Jeanie and Neil decide not to continue trying to alter it.
@ijuinkun: Yes, “close enough” will likely have to do. Things probably get more and more muddled the more you dink with the timeline.
Jeanie never actually said he lost his virginity with the blonde exchange student (675). There is still hope for Rita to do it.
So, you speculate that the girl that called Jean a dweeb and a loser is going to dump her jock prom date and climb into the sack with him? Interesting.
If Rita gets wasted she won’t know who she is in bed with. Panel the next morning Jean with a smile on his face and Rita with a look of horror.
Then again, it does depend on how the experience turned out. We know that his girlfriends created a website on what a cad he was, but he did seem to attract girlfriends.
His ability to attract a lot of girls who then turn against him suggests that he is less “unpleasant jerkass” and more “cheating bastard” who has no desire for monogamy or commitment.
I just had a thought regarding this conversation from page 675:
jmucchielloShe seems like she’s working a deadend job. She use to be a rocket scientist. Maybe she misses that.
Robertwas it really that bad? She’s been stuck as the wrong gender *and* the wrong age for almost a decade. That’s pretty bad.
MakairaI was thinking, if Neil joins Jeanie on enough of these time travel hijinks, he could end up having mentally lived 200+ years despite being in a 30-year old body.
RobertHuh, that’s an interesting idea. Jeanie could potentially use her magic to repeatedly reset Neil’s age, making him effectively immortal as long as Jeanie’s magic holds out. And even more interesting, Neil could also use that as an opportunity to try out different lives. Live as “base Neil” until he’s old, then have Jeanie poof him back to his 20s as “new Neil”. Then later, Neil might actually *want* to try being Natalie for a lifetime or two. Fun times!
Now, this should close any discussion regarding Jeanie out living Neil. A Genie won’t outlive her master because her magic can keep him forever young… at least until it runs out.
She can keep him youthful, and perhaps heal most diseases and injuries, but it is unlikely that she can make him unkillable without spending a great deal of effort to make him magically proof against bullets, blades, blunt impacts, fire, acid, poison, etc. without resorting to making him non-fleshy or inhuman as a way of increasing his durability. So he can have an “indefinite” lifespan, but no guarantees.
True… but I didn’t imply invulnerability, just youth.