I wonder what Jeannie's sister's 3rd visit was originally going to be about?

[TheLittleFaerie]

When Jeannie is trapped in the safe at Nasa.... her sister pops in looking for her, after she discovers she's trapped in the safe, she starts concocting a plan to get Tony....

My question is, what did she originally have in mind when she came there? I wonder if this would have just been a normal visit or did she have a plan to get Tony?

[kentauros]

I suspect we will never officially know. Only Sheldon, or whoever wrote that episode, would know, and Sheldon can't help now.

Probably safe to assume that she had some scheme to get Tony for herself, like always, and as happened later in the same episode. Ever since Jeannie summoned her from the beginning of the third season, that's been her only motive for ever visiting.

What that episode does, is make one wonder about Jeannii's admission that she only wanted Tony as a 'pet' and not as another Master. She had a Master already, so Tony wouldn't have replaced him (that we know). So, what I wonder is how often people reported as missing had instead been kidnapped by a powerful djinni as personal 'pets' as Jeannie had wanted to do. That could have been a tiny detail added to this or another episode just as a passing thing, not that anyone would act on it to resolve it.

[TheLittleFaerie]

Originally Posted by kentauros

I suspect we will never officially know. Only Sheldon, or whoever wrote that episode, would know, and Sheldon can't help now.

Probably safe to assume that she had some scheme to get Tony for herself, like always, and as happened later in the same episode. Ever since Jeannie summoned her from the beginning of the third season, that's been her only motive for ever visiting.

What that episode does, is make one wonder about Jeannii's admission that she only wanted Tony as a 'pet' and not as another Master. She had a Master already, so Tony wouldn't have replaced him (that we know). So, what I wonder is how often people reported as missing had instead been kidnapped by a powerful djinni as personal 'pets' as Jeannie had wanted to do. That could have been a tiny detail added to this or another episode just as a passing thing, not that anyone would act on it to resolve it.

There are a lot of inconsistencies. Jeannie's sister almost talked like she was planning on "ditching" her old master and Tony replacing him.... like when she switched the lotions to make Jeannie hate Tony. Her sister basically said, Tony would be her master but she runs a "tight ship" meaning she would be in charge

Also the episode where Jeannie's sister starts to marry Roger..... It seems her sister just came up with that scheme impromptu when Jeannie started talking about wanting to marry Tony.... so I wonder what her original plan was in that episode

[kentauros]

Originally Posted by TheLittleFaerie

There are a lot of inconsistencies. Jeannie's sister almost talked like she was planning on "ditching" her old master and Tony replacing him.... like when she switched the lotions to make Jeannie hate Tony. Her sister basically said, Tony would be her master but she runs a "tight ship" meaning she would be in charge

Also the episode where Jeannie's sister starts to marry Roger..... It seems her sister just came up with that scheme impromptu when Jeannie started talking about wanting to marry Tony.... so I wonder what her original plan was in that episode

My impression of Jeannii's character is that she never visits her sister without having already worked out how she is going to steal Tony away. So, even if the show makes it seem like she just created her plot on the fly, I always felt like she knew what she was doing and was just tricking her sister yet again.

Jeannie was quite gullible, so she was easy to trick. Her Master didn't have as much success at tricking her presumably because she used her magic to see things about a situation (she could see through walls as well as know who was calling on the phone, sometimes). Again, her powers and what she could do was inconsistent due to the lack of a set of rules for the writers. Such inconsistencies would never happen today or the fans would be in an uproar.

So, I think that Jeannii not only planned out what she would do and what she would tell her sister, but also looked into the future to see how it would work out for her. If she used a Past & Future machine like Jeannie's, she could look at all of her scenarios to determine which had the best chance at success. I do get the idea that she never watched it to the end to see it fail. Maybe she had an intuition that it would fail, but tried anyway. Her thinking was likely because her magical power was greater than her sister's and she often put her mind to greater use in being sneaky and conniving.

[TheLittleFaerie]

Originally Posted by kentauros

My impression of Jeannii's character is that she never visits her sister without having already worked out how she is going to steal Tony away. So, even if the show makes it seem like she just created her plot on the fly, I always felt like she knew what she was doing and was just tricking her sister yet again.

Jeannie was quite gullible, so she was easy to trick. Her Master didn't have as much success at tricking her presumably because she used her magic to see things about a situation (she could see through walls as well as know who was calling on the phone, sometimes). Again, her powers and what she could do was inconsistent due to the lack of a set of rules for the writers. Such inconsistencies would never happen today or the fans would be in an uproar.

So, I think that Jeannii not only planned out what she would do and what she would tell her sister, but also looked into the future to see how it would work out for her. If she used a Past & Future machine like Jeannie's, she could look at all of her scenarios to determine which had the best chance at success. I do get the idea that she never watched it to the end to see it fail. Maybe she had an intuition that it would fail, but tried anyway. Her thinking was likely because her magical power was greater than her sister's and she often put her mind to greater use in being sneaky and conniving.

I always felt her sister has a weird sense of "honor" about her... she wanted to get Tony fair and square and wanted Tony to genuinely want to be with her over Jeannie on his own free will. I mean, otherwise, she could have realistically just put a spell on Tony to make him love her.... but it seems like she likes the fight of getting him on her own

[icecream]

Originally Posted by TheLittleFaerie

I always felt her sister has a weird sense of "honor" about her... she wanted to get Tony fair and square and wanted Tony to genuinely want to be with her over Jeannie on his own free will. I mean, otherwise, she could have realistically just put a spell on Tony to make him love her.... but it seems like she likes the fight of getting him on her own

But she did use a spell in another visit getting Jeannie to hate Tony. There is no sense of honor or fair and square about that.

[kentauros]

Originally Posted by TheLittleFaerie

I always felt her sister has a weird sense of "honor" about her... she wanted to get Tony fair and square and wanted Tony to genuinely want to be with her over Jeannie on his own free will. I mean, otherwise, she could have realistically just put a spell on Tony to make him love her.... but it seems like she likes the fight of getting him on her own

Well, as icecream said, her sense of honor in how she would get Tony and Jeannie apart isn't that honorable. In that episode where Jeannii switched the potions, her sister put Tony into real deadly danger, and with no intent on saving him (like she would do in all episodes of the past).

However, there is precedent in stories outside of the show, whether from unrelated stories, or the book that was written for I Dream of Jeannie, that a djinni can indeed bring the dead back to life. In the book of the same name, when Tony mentioned all of the astronauts ahead of him for getting to the moon, Jeannie blinked them all "with the angels" until Tony wished her to bring them back. She did just that, leaving them with only headaches for the rest of the evening.

Now, Disney has corrupted that idea, and everyone who has any concept of a djinni firmly believes that those three "rules" they invented are hard and fast rules to be applied to all djinni stories or series. That just isn't true. Jeannie might well have roasted or beheaded or froze Tony literally to death and her sister could just have well blinked him back to life each time. It's just that the show needed to keep the comedy aspect in place. The actual killing of characters couldn't be done and still make it funny back then. They had to already be dead (like in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir) for dead characters to be accepted.

Tony is in obvious pain and anguish when the opening clip ends before the animated opening begins. Yet, when they come back to the show, that anguish is gone as Roger sees him and then he gets wished out of the roaster. However, Jeannie never cures him, so Tony should have at least had heat exhaustion as well as burns on his exposed skin. Jeannii never intervenes there, either, even if she was 'watching' from above the whole time.

I suspect that was the case, even if she was never shown in that smoky realm like in the episode "Tony's Wife" (I'm not going to call it a "cosmic continuum" because that was Bewitched's phrase; most likely for the djinn it is a place made of the color of smoke of the djinni. Previous episodes have shown that a djinni can also 'see' while they are turned into smoke, and such a smoke-based realm would be as normal to them as just being smoke without going into or out of a container).

Now, if you're writing fanfic that takes place at a later date in the reality of the show, there's no reason to assume that Jeannii couldn't have had a change of heart in some way. The collector and interviewer who wrote that book about the show before all of the other official guides came out, also had some fanfic in it where Roger manages to win over her heart after all. He's depicted a bit out of character, as is Jeannii, so you can basically do whatever you want in fanfic, and most readers will accept the changes.

[TheLittleFaerie]

It was a "weird" sense of honor, as a I said, but I feel like it was there. I know she did a trickery to get Tony, but I think at the end of the day, she wanted Tony to WANT to be with her on his own. Like when she switched the lotions.... she didn't put the spell on Tony, she put it on Jeannie in hopes that Tony would start to dislike Jeannie on his own, and that's when she would have made her move on him. I mean she could have always put a spell on Tony to make him love her, but she never did that... it seemed like she enjoyed the fight to get him.

[kentauros]

Originally Posted by TheLittleFaerie

It was a "weird" sense of honor, as a I said, but I feel like it was there. I know she did a trickery to get Tony, but I think at the end of the day, she wanted Tony to WANT to be with her on his own. Like when she switched the lotions.... she didn't put the spell on Tony, she put it on Jeannie in hopes that Tony would start to dislike Jeannie on his own, and that's when she would have made her move on him. I mean she could have always put a spell on Tony to make him love her, but she never did that... it seemed like she enjoyed the fight to get him.

Yeah, that's a good point, and had not considered it. It goes along with her desire to keep Tony as a pet, and not as a lover or member of a harem (males only). She almost had that for herself just from how many times she had been married. Makes one think that she likely cheated on all of them too. But, who is going to stop a djinni from doing what she wants?

[TheLittleFaerie]

Originally Posted by kentauros

Yeah, that's a good point, and had not considered it. It goes along with her desire to keep Tony as a pet, and not as a lover or member of a harem (males only). She almost had that for herself just from how many times she had been married. Makes one think that she likely cheated on all of them too. But, who is going to stop a djinni from doing what she wants?

Here is a disturbing thought..... Tony has LIKELY had sex with Jeannie's sister after they were married at some point. As many times as Jeannie's sister disguised herself as Jeannie to get Tony, I think it's safe to assume she continued to do this after Tony and Jeannie were married.... Tony always initially fell for it when Jeannie's sister was disguised as Jeannie.