The New Breed

Even though Thomas is quite recognizable, I could easily believe this was a real life college professor/inventor.

It helps a lot that the inventor role was well written and avoided most of the crazy inventor and absent minded professor cliches. I suppose they transferred most of that to the other character.

Most of the inventor's technobabble seemed pretty real, with only one glaring flaw I caught, though I wasn't following it that closely.

This is a very adult level OL episode, like almost an R level rating. Thematically it was fairly heavy, even for a not exactly new plot. And all the actors were putting in solid feature film quality performances, so the dramatic elements really work.

It does have some OL cliches, of course, but they are relatively in the background for the most part.