Vanishing Act

Very nice episode and Cryer is perfect here.

An awesome mini movie that subverts expectations for this series in pleasant ways which makes it feel like the best parts of really early TNG. Particularly with respect to one character you immediately have suspicions about.

Cryer is great, as are all the actors, and the different eras are well depicted.

Though this fizzles a bit at the end, it is really engaging most of the way. A young man, played by John Cryer of "Two and a Half Men," depressed and nearly broke, leaves his wife to get a bottle of Champagne on New Year's Eve in the early Fifties. On the trip home, he is blinded by an intense light and crashes his car. When he arrives home, his wife is ten years older and furious for his having left her that evening many years back. This leads to a series of ten year leaps into the future. His loved ones, including the man his wife has now married, become aware of his dilemma. In actuality, he is only around for a week or so, while everyone else ages thirty to forty years. The new husband, who is a psychologist, tries his best to get a handle on the situation but can only engage in theory. Cryer's son, who was conceived during that one night on his first return, becomes important to him as he gets an opportunity to latch of to a piece of normalcy. Cryer has moments of peace that are interrupted by the invasion of the light. He is quickly cast into some kind of alien swamp where he faces off against monstrous forces then light and movement another ten years. Cryer does a nice job in this role and plays it with pain and emotion. This would have made a pretty decent movie.

One of the best of all time. Cryer is amazing in his role. Dean McDermott is so handsome as a young man. This i science fiction that forces you to THINK. The best kind.