309 Rebel Without a Clue

[alsplacebartender]

Rebel Without a Clue
September 1, 1958

South of Big Sur, California


Leaping into the "gang clown" of a biker gang on the road, Sam must prevent the stabbing of the gang leader's girlfriend, who Sam believes does not belong on the open road and must be set free. A visit to Jack Kerouac, a famous American writer, might help matters...


Teleplay by: Randy Holland and Paul Brown
Story by: Nick Harding and Paul Brown
Directed by: James Whitmore, Jr.


Rate and comment on this episode!

[Vince Beckett]

This was good. It's an homage to "Rebel Without A Clue."

[Sam Beckett Fan]

I like this episode for a lot of reasons. I like Becky and her love for writing basically becuase I share it with her

Possibly my favorite part in the whole episode though was towards the end when Jack Karoac appears at the diner and speaks to Becky and then he looks over at Sam and says
"In the circle of life we all go round, we are many people in many times."
and thinking about it randomly just now I think he could maybe see Sam because after all based on a reference from Al he seemed to spend a lot of his life drunk, and being in that state he should be able to see through the aura. So I thought that was really cool when he looked straight at Sam when he said that line.

Also like Vince said it was a good spin off of Rebel Without a Cause. Saw that movie in english class as a senior in high school, great story. I also very much liked Dylan's charactor as he is a good visual of how being at war completely changes a man and his thoughts and views of the world.I liked how he was the only one sympathtic towards Ernie about his son in Korea because he was there himself.

[cookiemom6067]

Do y'all mean "Rebel without a Cause?"

I liked it because I could play "spot the actor" with "Oswald" from the Drew Carey Show

[Sam Beckett Fan]

Yeah I like that game too, hehe I recognized Ernie the resturant owner. He also had a small role in Pool Hall Blues and I have seen him elsewhere besides QL but I can't remember where.

[isz]

After seeing the first 40 episodes of QL,i'm placing this episode in my last place of all the QL episodes. It wasn't very interesting,the acting was o.k,but only o.k. The story was weak and so is the writing,in my opinion.
In the bottom line - i almost voted "poor",but i think it deserve at least "fair".

[ohboy]

I thought that this was one of the better ones. Of course, I somehow couldn't get past the leader being Oswald from "The Drew Carrey Show", and it was hard for me to take his role seriously. Other than that, it was pretty good.

[iMonrey]

Originally Posted by cookiemom6067

Do y'all mean "Rebel without a Cause?"

I liked it because I could play "spot the actor" with "Oswald" from the Drew Carey Show

I spent the whole episode trying to figure out where I'd seen him before. Never watched much of the Drew Carey show, but he's one of those actors that's been in tons of stuff. I had him confused with Larry Poindexter who was in the pilot.

[Donofrio_QLTD]

Judging by all the votes I've seen on this episode, I'm on a vast minority here, but I thought this episode was excellent.

If they ever told you that QL was a show with very light-hearted episodes, like most of season 1, and you didn't know about this show at the time and then you came and saw this episode, you would've thought they lied to you. That was not my case, of course, but it's just a thought to show how I believe the tone of these series changed drastically as time progressed.

"Rebel Without A Clue", even with the funny title, comes hard!!! While it may be a parody or an homage to a movie I've never seen, "Rebel Without A Cause", the subject line here is very serious to the point of uneasiness. Randy Holland and Paul Brawn, not my favorite writers, surprisingly manage to not glamourize the subjects of freedom and violence in that way of life on the road and they handle them instead with a good sense of reality. Of course there has to be humor (Jack Kerouac himself and many of Al's lines), of course there have to be over-the-top moments to ease the tension a little, but most of the time everything was very suspenseful to the point of thinking that, at some moment, not even Sam is going to be safe. All the guys who played the violent bikers, as so over-the-top as they may have seemed, were actually very believable and menacing.

Things I disliked: Ernie was portrayed as a bit of a goody-two-shoes. Violent bikers there or not, being like Ernie is a bad combination in a place like that. It makes him easy prey for bullying and for others to easily take advantage of him. Not exactly a two-dimensional character, but most of his faults rely on the actor who played him, I think: He played him almost as when he played that other guy in "Pool Hall Blues". He was more tolerable here because of the background we learn on the character, but overall I thought it was just an OK job.

Another thing: Becky is so naive and her "poetic" and "literary" nature blinds her so much to the point of almost getting herself killed for that. I know that without her character being that way we probably wouldn't have the development of this story, but sometimes I couldn't help getting a bit annoyed by her. She wanted to act so rebel and talked about things like living and grooving and moving and the first thing she paid attention was to the looks themselves, like to that bad guy she was with. He almost raped her and was constantly abusing her mentally, which is way worse than any physical pain, and she still found the way to make excuses for him probably just because he was hot and was considered the boss of the gang. Even when Ernie and Sam looked after her, she wasn't almost convinced that their way was the right choice. Not something from a true rebel or a true writer. She was quite foolish, even for the age she was supposed to be.

Another thing: Sam telling Jack it is his fault and his responsability because he wrote that book. Something quite immature and seen with a very one-dimensional perpective, which is a bit surprising coming from Sam. Not competely misunderstood, either, because he was saying that out of desperation, but still. Loved the immediate response from Jack.

My favorite part: Jack Kerouac's last words to Becky. My favorite scene: When Sam kicks their violent butt. Put 'em in place!!! Awesome!

My rating: Excellent.

[chris-oates]

An above par episode this one. Rebel Without a Clue was one of the more forgotten episodes in my mind before my recent rewatch of QL. I remembered Sam leaping into a biker but that was mostly it. But I really enjoyed this episode this time around. True, it is mostly set in just one place but the characters are interesting/entertaining enough to make it work.

I didn't really...dig the hero worshipping nature of this episode towards Jack Kerouac. I also wasn't too crazy on Becky as a character either. But I loved Teddy Wilson as Ernie. He's just as lovable here as he was in Pool Hall Blues.

One of the more interesting aspects of this episode is Dillon. He's not your out and out evil villain. He's actually well developed. In the beginning of the episode he seems to have a sort of genuine warmth for Becky, and is even okay with Bone drawing her picture. The war getting to him was a nice touch. It shows how some things can turn normal men into monsters.

My rating. Good. An enjoyable, above average episode.