Main cast: John Shea (Jeremy), Alexandra Paul (Julie), Dean Hallo (GR), Nancy Isaak (Cheryl Ann), and Page Fletcher (The Hitchhiker)
Director: Chris Thomson

I know, this is The Hitchhiker, but Minuteman is not a reference to how long our protagonist lasts in the sack. This episode has nothing to do with the military, so perhaps the title is just the people behind this show trying to show off their cleverness, as shenanigans involving a time loop is on the menu.

Jeremy and his wife Julie don’t get along, especially when they are on the road. They are driving to a place called Sunnyvale because Jeremy is starting his new job there on Monday, and Julie doesn’t understand why they can’t treat this trip as a holiday instead of a nerve-wrecking race to the city. Oh, and he is lost, and naturally it’s the wife’s fault.

I’m distracted early in this episode by how the scenery outside window, when seen from inside the vehicle, is clearly different from the scenery outside the vehicle they are in, heh, but perhaps the folks behind the show expect people not to notice such small things.

Anyway, Jeremy and Julie soon cross paths with biker GR and his wife Cheryl, but what’s really weird is how he finds himself in the same time loop with those two. Each time he and Julie encounter them, things happen depending on his actions—mostly bad things, really bad things—but he seems to be the only one that realizes how they are stuck to relive the same events over and over unless he can find a way to break the loop.

This is an odd episode in that, barring that scene where Alexandra Paul flashes the audience just because, the whole thing is actually pretty wholesome in a The Twilight Zone-ish way: no degenerate behavior, no treachery and sleaze, just a story that sees a guy having to learn what the show deems an important lesson: just don’t be a douchebag to other people. How did it get into this show?

While the whole thing isn’t anything I haven’t seen before, it’s certainly a step up from the previous episode. It has a more interesting story, at the very least.

The main reason that keeps me from being more enthusiastic about this episode, though, is my god, John Shea is super irritating to watch here. Perhaps he’s playing the role of Jeremy too well, heh. I’m actually disappointed that the show ends with him having learned his lessons instead of meeting a bad end, because a bad end would be the perfect payoff for having to sit through a whole episode of Jeremy screeching and shouting and ranting.

He’s still doing that in the scene leading up to his “redemption”, so ugh. The fact that this character is alive and zooming into the sunset leaves me feeling vaguely disappointed with this episode at the end of the day.