Dr. Quinn, Time Traveler

Okay, I know a lot of you might be ready to call for an intervention with me and the Dr. Quinn watching. But I'm so close to the end of the series! And then I'll re-watch it all. Just stick it out with me a littttttle longer and I promise it is going to be GREAT. And I just had an amazing idea... You should all go watch it, too! We could have a party and bond over the good doctor and her crazy, crazy, shenanigans! Come onnnnnn.

Moving on, as I go about these later episodes of Dr. Quinn, a bit of a faux pas has come to my attention. No, it's not the blatant historical errors or the same storyline occurring 17 times in a row. It's the fact that apparently, Dr. Quinn is living in 1996 and not 1872.

Do you remember Little House on the Prairie? My mother-in-law will probably disown me if she finds this out, but I have seen nearly every episode of that show, too. That is a direct result of my mother's love of that show, so you can see the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. But when you watch LHotP, you notice one distinctive quality that every other episode centers around: the town is po'. The only ones with any money are the doctor and the mercantile owner, and the rest of the town is lucky to be wearing shoes on any given day. They have famine and locusts and fires and Mary goes blind. The parents take turn eating so their 47308 kids can have a crumb now and then. When someone is sick, they're up a plum creek, and might hang on for a few more guest appearances. The train costs approximately half of their life savings to ride.

Switch over to Dr. Quinn. Every single one of these people has money. Even the extremely poor people have enough money to fund their business, adopt 2.5 children, and get them doctored by Dr. Quinn. Silly things like diphtheria and loss of limb and smallpox have little to no effect on these people, and if they are affected it's only for about 60 minutes. They all ride the train 12 times a day, losing a spouse or child is pretty passe because they were probably only a guest star anyway, and the episodes that don't end in song end in Dr. Quinn smiling over her awesome kids and her awesome, rich life. Her husband doesn't even have a job right now and yet they are considering an addition to the homestead for when the baby gets older.

This puzzled me, until I figured it out: Dr. Quinn is clearly a time traveler who has brought all of these people and their money with her back to the 1870s for fun. That would explain why the mercantile is always having sales and why every single business owner wears a gold chain on their vest. It would also explain why she suddenly has knowledge of diseases that mayyy or may have not have been discovered until the 1900s. And why their chief Native American actor is named Larry Sellers.

Time-traveling. You never see it coming until it sews your arm back on with a laser beam.