by phredd on Thu Mar 09, 2006 9:28 pm
Quantum Bums Episode 3: Win, Place or Show?
Kamau's Spotlight Episode.
OPENING SCENE: Crowd at Aqueduct Racetrack. Kamau and Jack are there. "And they're off!" Kamau tells jack win, place and show for the race before they're out of the gate. Now the audience knows how Kamau was able to pay for his apartment and other amenities.
Jack demands that Kamau give him betting tips.
Conflict.
Jack's Stakes: Kamau gives him the trifecta winners so that he can hit it big.
Kamau's Stakes: As Jack goes to make his hot bets, he encounters Chuck Lepore (the crime boss that Jack owes for his freedom and other things). Jack has to duck away from Lepore, giving Kamau a chance to ditch Jack.
Producer's Stakes: Chuck Lepore catches them together. Jack can't use his hot tips, lest Chuck usurp them.
Jack wins his stakes and Jack wins big at the track ($500K), but Lepore knows that something is up.
SCENE 2: Kamau's apartment overlooking Ebbets Field. Kamau is watching various snippets of news footage from the future via his expensive 50s era color TV. He's mostly watching the arc of Jack's criminal career. The camera pans in to the television until it fills the screen.
FLASHBACK: The camera pans back from the television, but now it's a wide plasma flat screen that's in Kamau's apartment in Jersey City 2010. He's arguing with Stephen, who was going to be the one to go into the past until things went wrong in Episode 1.
Stephen is convinced that he will have to kill Jack to save the future. Kamau is trying to convince him otherwise and seeming much more idealistic than the Kamau who's been trapped in the 50s. In the course of conversation, it's also implied that Stephen is Jack's son!
Kamau's stakes: Kamau convinces Stephen that killing people in the past is not a fruitful path.
Producer's stakes: Kamau loses his faith in the plan entirely, decides to give into despair and lash out by assassinating some of his contempoary political enemies.
Kamau wins his stakes and the camera returns to the 50s, where Kamau looks out his window onto Ebbets Field and Brooklyn. "You're just a small part of the problem, Jack."
SCENE 3: Prospect Park ballfield where Patrick's little league team plays. Annie and Patrick are conversing in the bleachers as a game proceeds. Annie is worried that Jack will dominate the child she's been told she'll have sometime in the near future. She doesn't want that.
Annie's Stakes: Annie will use her feminine wiles to manipulate Patrick into taking her directly to Kamau in order to find out more about the future of her child
Patrick's Stakes: Patrick, knowing Annie's tricks, will let her come on to him and then throw it back in her face, humiliating her.
Producer's Stakes: Patrick will become embarrassed and flustered by Annie's come on.
Annie wins, Patrick loses. He's flustered, but she gets him to take her to find Kamau and pump him for information. They hurry off to his apartment building.
SCENE 4 Jack's Mom's House (where Jack lives. With his Mom. Because he's a Mamma's Boy.). Jack arrives home (with his winnings) to find his Mommy has been waiting to confront him with the purchase contract for the house that Jack had concealed from her. Jack reveals his great wealth, but is surpised when Chuck Lepore enters the room behind him.
Jack's Stakes: Jack pays off his debts to Chuck and his Mother admits that, for once, she's proud of him.
And so it is. Jack wins. "I've got so many ways to make you proud Mommy!"
SCENE 5: Kamau's apartment again. Annie and Patrick arrive, looking for answers. Kamau does what he can to explain the time he came from, showing them television shots, including one of NYC lying under a hundred feet of ocean. He's about to go into more detail when Jack knocks the door down and barges in.
Jack's feeling his oats and starts telling (not asking) everyone that they're going to join him and take over the Brooklyn Dodgers. He's heard enough from Kamau to get some ideas. They're going to buy a controlling stake in the Dodgers, kick Rooster off the team and Jack's going to become a real big fish.
The Stakes: Everyone's stakes revolve around how well Jack's grandiose plan goes over.
Jack's plan doesn't go over well. He's building castles in the sky. Patrick can make the team (by Jack's fiat). He'll help raise Annie's son in his own image. He's ranting and spewing saliva over everyone. No one buys it, and ultimately, Jack realizes this and sees what an embarassment he's allowed himself to become. He has a sudden and catastrophic change of heart, falling to the floor sobbing.
But after finally giving up on building himself up at everyone else's expense, Jack's ready to listen and work with Kamau. At last they all agree that they'll work together and do all they can to keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn forever.
SCENE 6: Bleachers of Ebbets Field. Jackie Robinson is doing some laps up and down the stairs after a practice. Kamau has snuck in somehow and is sitting on a bench nearby when Jackie notices him.
Kamau asks Jackie if everything he's been through to be on the Dodgers and the first black man in the majors has been worth it. It has. It's been hard and it's been awful, but Jackie knows that it's had a lasting effect, even if it has brought more pain and anguish into his and his family's life.
This conversation is the tipping point for Kamau, who's finally committed to making things work, saving the Dodgers and not worrying about how that can be possible when he has to work with the likes of Annie and Jack.
Symbolizing that he's letting go of his past entirely and throwing himself into the mission, Kamau takes off his broken time travel watch and tosses it back over his shoulder and out of Ebbets field, where it falls to the pavement.
The final shot of the episode is the watch crashing to the pavement. As the camera closes in on the watch from above, a pair of well cared for black shoes steps into the frame on either side of the watch. Someone's found it, but whom?
DC hates girls. And money. - Viper
