It is hard to hate Quantum Leap, the NBC sci-fi series which debuted in 1989 and was canceled in 1993 after completing its fifth season. The show is so utterly well-meaning, following the lovably gee-whiz Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) as a scientist whose experiment “leaves him leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping that his next leap will be the leap home.”
That just warms the heart, doesn’t it?
On the other hand, Quantum Leap is very easy to mock, largely due to its remarkably earnest tone and many “very special episodes,” like a sci-fi Blossom. Sam is fate’s grunt soldier, fixing broken relationships, saving one life at a time, and occasionally running into young versions of celebrities, e.g., Stephen King, Buddy Holly and Michael Jackson. However, he’s constantly faced with the prejudices of our past which leads to plenty of sermonizing. His best bud Al (Dean Stockwell) is always around for a reliable one-liner, but even he gets in on the sermonizing and turns out to have led an insanely eventful life, with an ever-growing list of prior careers and ex-wives.
In general, there’s an awful lot of plot convenience to what Sam and Al turn out to be capable of. Plus, the mechanics of the time traveling component of the show are pretty wonky, and what they thought the future was going to look like was hilariously inaccurate.
Those are the types of things which really jump out at me every time I re-watch Quantum Leap. My love for the show has not faded, but my willingness to mock it has sure increased. There are plot holes and awkward moments galore as well as some simple reminders of how much TV culture has changed since Quantum Leap went off the air.
1) God or Fate or Whatever Sure Has a Sick Sense of Humor
Almost every single Quantum Leap episode ends with Sam being thrown into the deep end in a new and terrifying situation, forcing him to either sink or swim. That’s a pretty shitty existence, going from smiling earnestly one second to walking on a stage in front of a packed theater of people waiting to hear you play piano the next second. But boy did it make for good television. It’s one of the things that makes Quantum Leap so compulsively watchable, its every episode ending on a cliffhanger in which Sam has no idea what to do next and lets outs an exasperated, “Oh boy.”
However, if we ignore the part where this is a TV show with a story structure designed to keep viewers hooked, and think of the logic of the show’s own universe it becomes pretty apparent that God or fate or whatever the heck it was leaping Sam throughout time has a wickedly dark sense of humor. Seriously, why couldn’t Sam have ever been allowed to simply leap into someone sitting around their living room watching TV, with maybe their wallet (and thus a quickly accessible method of identification) laid out on the table in front of them? Nope, instead Sam got dropped into situations like this:
And this:
Is any of that really necessary for Sam being able to put right what once went wrong? Absolutely not. God or fate or whatever just really liked watching the poor bastard squirm.
2) Sometimes Sam & Al Just Weren’t That Bright
Al is “a hologram that only Sam can see and hear.” It’s right there in the show’s voice-over prologue. However, sometimes both Al and Sam seemed to forget that, the most egregious example being the time Sam tried to throw a pie at Al’s face in the season 4 episode “Stand Up”:
And Al behaved as if he 100% believed he was in real “pie on face” danger:
Sam usually gets the benefit of the doubt because, well, he’s damaged goods with his ultra convenient/inconvenient “Swiss cheese” memory. But Al? Was he just humoring his mentally compromised best friend, the way one might tolerate a “not quite right” uncle’s insistence that he did actually magically produce the 7 of hearts when doing a card trick? Was he just so caught up in the situation he forgot he was just a hologram? Or maybe is it just that sometimes Sam and Al appeared to have taken complete leave of their senses in the show’s effort for comic scenes between the two? Fine, it’s obviously the latter.
3) Some Innocent People Had Their Lives Ruined By Sam
For a show whose own series finale was shockingly bittersweet, Quantum Leap was built on happy endings. Most if not all episodes ended with Al assuring Sam (and by extension the audience) that everything worked out a-okay for all involved. However, when you think about it in some cases that doesn’t seem true. Case in point, in “Shock Theater” Sam develops multiple personality disorder as the result of being leaped into a mental hospital patient who immediately receives traumatic electroshock therapy (again, with God and his dark sense of humor). Sam keeps shifting back and forth between adopting the various identities of those he’d once leaped into in the past. To save his own life and maintain his connection with Al, Sam needs to have electroshock re-administered to him at a dangerously high voltage. He, while believing himself to be a mentally challenged man named Jimmy and thus slurring his speech, manages to pull it off by desperately pleading with the attending nurse, “If you don’t shock Jimmy Al go away.”
Waaaaaaaiiiiiiiit a minute here. I get that the historic period of the episode (specifically 1954) is meant to comment upon the early days of medicine in relation to mental health and conditions like multiple personality disorder or schizophrenia. In that way, this is Quantum Leap‘s own version Sybil. Al even references Sybil in the episode! So, none of the doctors or nurses truly know what the heck is going on with Sam. However, even though a perfectly timed dosage of electroshock at the same near-fatal dosage as the therapy that triggered the multiple personality disorder is what Sam needs it’s not necessarily what the person he leaped into needs nor is it medically advisable. In the course of the episode, the generally sympathetic nurse argues that 200V is a potentially fatal voltage, administering electroshock therapy twice in 48 hours could kill the patient and that only doctors are allowed to administer the therapy, a fact confirmed by one of the doctors. Yet she is the one to administer electroshock to Sam at 200V while the Doctor and orderly are arguing. This is supposed to be a big, heroic moment, but, wait, didn’t the episode establish that what she does could actually kill the patient? Yep, pretty effectively, too.
How do you think it’s going to go over in a Morbidity & Mortality meeting if when asked why she gave the patient a fatal dosage of electroshock therapy she replies, “He said if I didn’t do it his imaginary friend was going to go away”? She might end up a patient at that very mental hospital, oh irony of ironies, or at the very least mentally anguished, haunted by frequent “Why did I do it?” thought. However, even if the nurse had been wrong about both the voltage and frequency of treatment being fatal she still broke the rules by administering treatment and is likely looking at some serious repercussions in her career. That is but one example of a happy ending being not so happy and an otherwise nice and decent person whose life was potentially screwed by Sam Beckett.
4) Al Totally Amy Pond’d a Poor Little Girl Except Even Worse
In the Doctor Who episode “The 11th Hour,” the Doctor encounters an adorable little Scottish girl named Amelia Pond. He promises to take her to the stars and on an adventure, but when he fails to return she had to go through years of therapy as no one believed her tale of a “raggedy doctor” who literally fell from the sky. The thing here is that, crucially, the Doctor did eventually come back, and he never intentionally misled poor Amelia. He just really sucks at getting time coordinates right.
So, what then, do we make of the final scene from Quantum Leap‘s season 2 episode of “Another Mother”? By this point, the only thing preventing Sam from leaping is Al’s need to say goodbye to the adorable daughter of the woman Sam leaped into. Falling into that kid/mentally challenged/animal spectrum of people who can actually see Al other than Sam, the girl had grown attached to Al and him to her. What proceeds is a genuinely sweet scene between a young child actress who mostly flashes her big white eyes at Stockwell as he promises to come back to see her again real soon.
Liar! Al can’t go back. He’s not really a time traveler who can just go anywhere he wants; he is linked to Sam’s brain and can only go to a place and time where Sam is present. Unless Sam leaps back into that family with the little girl, Al has no way of following through on his promise. That poor little girl probably had years of therapy after that, refusing to back down from her claims of a strange imaginary man from the future who was going to come back to see her any minute now, just you wait and see. “Oh, it was just an imaginary friend” they’ll all say, angering her even more. Of course, that imaginary friend may be the least of their concerns since that little girl will probably also swear up and down that for around a week mommy went missing and a nice man named Sam pretended to be her and dressed in her clothes.
5) Nope, You Didn’t Dream It – Al Really Did Rap in One Episode
Some things are so strange, so bizarre, so impossible sounding you can convince yourself over time that you simply made it up. For example, was Creed ever really a super popular band? That didn’t really happen, did it? Well, in the case of Quantum Leap re-watching it reveals that one insane thing you might have convinced yourself was but a fever dream of your’s actually happened. I present, with utter, utter regret, rappin’ Al from “Shock Theater”:
With Sam a bit busy being 12 different versions of himself, it is up to Al to right the wrong, and in this case, it means teaching a man how to read. Why? Ah, who cares. Why does Al think simply teaching him a song about the alphabet will automatically guarantee his ability to read? Ah, again, who cares. The bigger issue here is simply what in the hell were they thinking by having Dean freakin’ Stockwell perform a rap song on a national television show in 1991? In fact, years later they included that song, “ABC Rap,” on the show’s official soundtrack meaning you can go buy “ABC Rap” on iTunes right now. Mercifully, M.C. Stockwell’s long-awaited rap album “Nozzles, Cigars & Bazoombas” never materialized
6) Sam Was a Man-Whore Cheating on the Wife Waiting for Him Back Home
Every Quantum Leap episode other than the pilot features a moment during the opening credits where we see a montage of Sam’s best kisses with woman from the show’s history to that point. Of course, there’d be plenty of kiss scenes to show – the dude got some serious action as the show sought to appeal to Bakula’s female fanbase. It is also the natural by-product of an episodic show with a central male character who is both a lover and a fighter – he’s going to have a ton of love interests. The same thing was true of Kirk on Star Trek: The Original Series. But at least there was no woman waiting at home for Sam, no woman so despondent with loneliness she looks up at stars at night and imagines one of them talking back to her with Sam’s voice, right?
Then the season 4 premiere (“The Leap Back”) happened, and we learn that bachelor Sam had changed his own history on a previous leap in the first season resulting in him having now actually been a married man this entire time. Knowing that from the get-go when re-watching the show makes a fun game out of, “I wonder how close Donna was to complete breakdown this week based upon Sam’s romancing of yet another woman.” To be fair, in “The Leap Back” Donna actually forgives Sam for his many, many infidelities because his memory loss meant he didn’t know he had anyone to whom he’d pledged to be faithful.
There was always a strange dynamic to sexuality on the show, in which Al and his consistent references to nice “bazoombas” and “gazongas” was a horndog for Sam to admonish. Who the hell is he to talk, though? He fell in love with women sometimes at the literal drop of a hat, bedded them, and then left them high and dry for his next leap. Man, at least Al knew what he was. Sam? He was a total man-whore; he just didn’t know it.
7) Our Definition of Physical Fitness Sure Has Changed
Back in the day, Scott Bakula was what might best be described as man candy. His Sam Beckett was the consummate sensitive 90s male, not afraid to cry (and boy did it show) but tough enough to stand up for what’s right. So, obviously, the show featured Bakula shirtless…a lot. Like at least once every other episode.
Wait, that’s what qualified as a sex symbol back then? Don’t get me wrong – Bakula looks fantastic. He’s clearly in good shape. It’s just that nutrition and body shaping sciences have advanced so much that we now have constantly shirtless male stars of TV shows who look like this:
Advantage? Stephen Amell of Arrow. Well, I guess the true advantage goes to the viewer inclined to find such sights appealing as neither are in anything remotely resembling bad shape. Re-watching an older show like Quantum Leap centered around a male sex symbol shows just how much our image of that type of person is ever-shifting in response to the advances in abdominal muscle-shaping glory.
8) They Were Desperate For Ratings That Last Season
It’s always kind of sad when you see your favorite show trying too hard to get big ratings. However, sometimes when you watch older shows in syndication or on Netflix you may not be aware of it because your viewing is happening so long after the fact. But let’s look at what Quantum Leap did in its fifth and final season:
- Sam Leaping Into Dr. Ruth, Elvis, and Lee-Harvey Oswald Even Though He Wasn’t Supposed to Leap Into Historical Figures
- Sam Leaping Into Someone Working for Marilyn Monroe
- Sam Leaping Into the Civil War Even Thought He Wasn’t Supposed to be Able to Leap Outside of His Own Lifetime
- A Trilogy Focused Upon Sam Being the Father, the Lover, and then the Court Defender of One Woman At 3 Different Stages in Her Life
- A Trilogy Focused on the Concept of There Being Evil Leapers Out There Just As Sam is a Good Leaper
- Stunt-casting of Brooke Shields in an episode somewhat recreating the scenario of her film Blue Lagoon
- Sam leaping into a vampire
Some, if not most, of these episodes are pretty good. The trilogy focused on Abigail was admirably ambitious, and the concept of an evil yin to Sam’s not-evil yang was long overdue. However, taken as a whole it becomes pretty apparent they were ditching all of their old rules and just throwing everything at the wall in the hopes of getting the ratings necessary for a sixth season (epic fail on their part). Plus, they re-did their theme song – you know, their amazing, instantly hummable Mike Post-composed theme song. They made it oddly insistent and energetic in a desperate “Please watch our show, we have pep now” fashion:
Alas, they got themselves canceled.
But I really like Quantum Leap. Let’s end on a positive note. What is a good truth learned from re-watching Quantum Leap?
Most of Your Favorite Episodes Are Still Amazing
“MIA,” “The Leap Home,” “The Leap Back,” “Catch a Falling Star,” and many, many other beloved Quantum Leap episodes are still as good as they ever were.
What about you? Any things you’ve noticed upon re-watch? Liked the show but never actually went back and re-watched it? Let us know in the comments.
This post is partially a result of years of joking with my best friend Julianne. Click here to check out her picks for Quantum Leap‘s 10 best episodes.
We Minored in Film 
I would have loved to see Sam leaping into Truman Capote or in on of the two criminals that killed the Clutter family in Kansas, well it would have been too dark, so let just say Sam being in Truman body or just being involved with him. That would have been something to behold. After all he met Marylyn Monroe so why not? And by the way Marylyn was friend with Truman Capote.
That definitely could have been a season 5 or beyond storyline when they dropped their rule about him not leaping into famous people.
Imagine if Quantum Leap was real and if it was it could be happening right now or already happened for all we know. So also if the Quantum episodes were real and more epic than he would have changed the course of American history and human kind imagine if some episodes of Quantum Leap were more epic. If I wrote quantum Leap this is some of the stuff I would do also their age I would like to imagine or change would be Al born in 1931 and Sam in 1943. Also do you know the summer olympic games of 2016 were held this year in Brazil and that had me thinking about another person’s fan comment that he said earlier that they should had Sam leap into the 1972 munich games. So that had me thinking imagine if they had Quantum Leap episodes take place in the summer Olympics. But just not only the summer Olympics but also the winter olympics to that would have been really interesting. But with the Olympics held in the past I wish they were held in different countries in those certain past years for example I wish the summer olympics of 1928 were held in Rome Italy and 1948 summer olympics were held in sweden instead of 1912 and in London. Which gives me another idea they also could have Sam leap into a member of the Olympic commitee.
When you look at the show’s premise from a certain age and perspective, it was actually a metaphor for a philosophy of life itself: God sends us here for a reason, and when that reason…or task…has been fulfilled then we die, or “leap”. Most of us will leap into our Heavenly afterlife, while a very small percentage will be asked by God (the Bartender) if we’d like to return and be on a “special assignment”.
With that in mind, “Mirror Image” remains special for me, not merely because Cokeburg is only 30 miles from my home in Pittsburgh but because in my life, at age 47 in 2003, I found myself on a “special assignment” that lasted until the Space Shuttle Atlantis and her crew safely returned home.
I was pushed, in a manner of speaking, into action when Columbia didn’t return safely home February 1st, 2003. Although my career is not with NASA, I began having nightly, extremely lucid dreams about working in space. I began following the accident investigation, and at the behest of my colleagues attended the final CAIB hearing. A chance encounter with one of the board members led to a working relationship and suddenly I had the ability to contribute. This got NASA’s attention and suddenly I had a seat at the table, only wishing to prevent another disaster and loss of life.
In the fall of 2010 a problem with STS-133 arose that required intervention. They wouldn’t listen to me, so I enlisted my CAIB friend and they listened to him and stopped the launch.
“You’re beginning to think you’re here to save Tonchi and Pete”
“Am I?”
“Not directly.”
“What about indirectly?”
“Who knows what Don Quixote can accomplish?”
Google “STS-133 ET stringers” and you’ll learn how close we came to a disaster.
When NASA stopped the launch, I e-mailed my friend and said “Way to go, Don Quixote. You got the windmill.”
What if Katie Mcbain wasn’t the only leapee to be with Al in the imaging chamber because Sam happened to leap in after the fact.
How come Jimmy was the only leapee to be in the waiting room more than once.
Because Jimmy was the only person Sam leaped into twice.
The evil leaper meddled with Sam’s first leap hence why he came back again. Could have been any of his past encounters. Was only a mater of time (excuse the pun)
Two leaps I could wish Sam made was a elf and someone with stigmata.
Elf?? Really?? Maybe a pixie or Santa?
I always wished Sam could leap into someone onboard the Titanic. Also, I would have loved a wild west episode where he leaps into someone close to Jesse James or Billy the Kid.
He did leap into a gunfighter. But they tried to keep the show from having him leap into anyone famous.
Only in Mirror image do we see the empty waiting room.
How come there was never a episode involving puppy love?
How come there was never a episode dealing with Incest?
Because it was on a major broadcast network in the 80s/90s? And they would have vetoed any kind of incest storyline? And, on top of that, that probably just wasn’t something they cared to explore anyway?
Or peddling drugs or pimping? Its coz of a thing called the watershed
Did they have objections to puppy love because a episode in which Sam’s leapee has a crush on someone or someone has a crush on Sam’s leapee would have been really interesting.
A leap date I wish was on Quantum Leap is Sept.14 1972 the day I was born.
A leap Sam never made is into the 1971
Standford Prison Experiment.That might have made a very interesting episode.
How come Sam never leaped in the 1973 Norrmalstorg robbery?
It is fiction and the writers chose not to. FFS.
If there was a 6th season would any of the other leapes be in the waiting room a 2nd time.
In Mirror Image where and when did Sam leap to after telling Beth that Al was still alive and would be coming home?
Season 6
How come Sam is himself only twice in the whole series?
because it wouldn’t really be worth watching if he kept leaping into himself. I do that every day. I wake up and look in the mirror then say “oh boy”. Hardly a cliffhanger. Maybe some of these posts need vetting before they get put online.
Oldboy and Zinda deal with private prisons what if Sam leaped into someone who was locked up in 1.
How come there was never a episode dealing with private prisons by having Sam leap into 1.
Because private prisons weren’t really a going concern when the show was on the air?
Something people are losing sight of here is that QL was never designed to be anything more than a show families could watch. While they dabbled with large events (JFK’s assassination) they couldn’t change the history for obvious reasons. In fact, if I recall correctly Al wryly observed that the first time Jackie was killed too.
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There is generally an episode where sam meets a young boy called donald trump. Just think how that episode could be exploited today
Funny you should mention that. Stephen Colbert did a bit about that when Scott Bakula was a guest on the show during the election. Here’s the YouTube link if you haven’t seen this yet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0ScMs6_I8s
How come Sam always succeeded in putting right
what once wrong but always failed to make the leap home?
The answer is in your question
How come there was never a episode dealing with puppy love?
How come Sam never leaped into a tribal society?
Please! Stop asking these inane questions! The answer is simply that the writers didn’t write it.
Why didn’t the writers write it? We don’t know. Ask the writers!
There were NOT that many non-fiction books for Quantum Leap (at least one)… and it’s been 20 years since I read the one I own.
In Shock Theater Sam got to use his own name and even channeled previous leaps.
I wonder what happened to Katie in Raped after Sam leaped out and she leaped back in.
The majority of Sam’s leapees were male only 9 times were his leapees female.
To avoid having to make scenes for
Ancient Rome Greece Egypt and the like Quantum Leap Time Travel was limited to their own lifetime.
I bet it’s because of the Handlink in the Leap Back that the evil leapers were able to create their own project
in order to put wrong what once went right.
Too bad Sam never leaped into a furry that might have been really something.
good show…(+or-), nevr saw all orig. b’cast shows. S-o-o-o FRESH 2 ME R THE RE-RUNS!
Did notice “see-ers” of Sam kept growing (innocent child, animals etc.) Especially good wrinkle of evil woman leaper w/ her evil “Al” hologram.
Tha-uh-tha’-uhthat’s all Folks! A-member Porky’s punchline?
I wish Sam leaped into the olympics both summer and winter.
Then shut up and write your fanfic or comic already.
Here’s what I don’t get. Official lore is that Sam always was in his own body and did not occupy the leapee’s mind or body. So, why did Sam tend to emulate the Leapee’s mannerisms? Teenage nerd, old black man, etc. I mean in the first season he’s a boxer and undergoes enough physical training to hold his own (for a time) in a title fight. The a couple of leaps later he’s a 16 year old nerd who cries in pain when his sister hits him in his arm. What’s up with that?
There were certain leaps where Sam’s mind and the leapee’s mind slightly merged, causing him to unconsciously emulate them. However, for the most part Sam’s emulation was just acting. He wasn’t so much taking on their characteristics as he was simply aping them to keep up appearances (often with helpful direction from Al) so as to not let on that he’s actually just some white dude from Nebraska instead of whoever he’d lept into, such as an old black man or teenage nerd. The example you mentioned about him crying in pain after being hit in the arm was, I think, just him genuinely crying in pain because a swift punch from a girl can still hurt you no matter how old you are. I’d have to watch that episode again, though. It’s been a while.
lol -what a load of…
A lot of science fiction is based around making stuff as they go along.
I just kind of think it would have been cooler for Sam to bring the experience and physical skills learned in each Leap to the current Leap.
But, that would probably have made his character overpowered and thus hard to write compelling challenges.
And when I see that I suddenly think of Sam as being Syler-from-Heroes like sponge absorbing the abilities of everyone he touches and turning into character far too powerful for his own good (from a dramatic tension standpoint).
At the same time, yeah, it would have actually been kind of cool.
Of course he kept his experiences
So, they re-cast his wife? When WE first met her she was a young Teri Hatcher. I guess they needed an older actress to show the years that had passed, but they sure didn’t bother to find someone who looked like her.
Oh, no. They made next to no effort to find someone who looked in any way like an older Teri Hatcher. We’re just as confused as Sam is to see her because, hey, she doesn’t look anything like anyone we’ve seen in his life before.
Terri hatcher was in quantum leap? Missed that. Does anyone remember that weird eposode where al wasnt al but the devil trying to get sam to kill someone. That was sooo dark
Yep. Teri Hatcher is actually in the second episode of the show. It’s ironic considering how often the “you can’t change your own personal life” drama was doled out over the show, but right there in the second episode Sam changes the past of the love of his life and ensures she won’t leave him at the altar.
And yes I remember the episode with Devil Al. It’s the one where Sam leaps into a horror novelist tutoring a young Stephen King, and apart from the bizarre imagery of Sam choking a goat – not a euphemism, for a brief moment near the end he literally chokes a goat – it is one of my favorite all-time QL episodes.
agreed on both your statements. With the latter it really was a good episode but did kind of mess with the science of Quantum leap pushing more for religion (Christianity) being the driving force and they never revisited it again so I wander if it was popular with the mass? The worse episode was lee Harvey Oswald. Filmed so soon after Kevin Costners JFK they really were fighting an uphill battle with the Oswald was a crackpot theory working alone and then expecting us to accept he saved Jackie. Don’t mess with famous historical events Sam.
I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I was young enough the first time I watched the Lee Harvey episode that I stupidly turned to my older brother to ask him if Jackie truly did make it out of the assassination okay. He reminded me it’s just a show. Sam didn’t save her. She survived the ordeal just fine, physically. Mentally, well…they made a movie about that last year with Natalie Portman.
The JFK episode, if I remember correctly, was Donald Bellisario having an axe to grind. He personally met Oswald when he was in the service, and he didn’t much care for Oliver Stone’s conspiracy theory lunacy. He felt he had to put things right, appropriate considering the show’s mantra.
I did not know that. Interesting. Thanks for sharing
And the irony of Sam encouraging a young Donald trump to become famous when he was a cab driver. Are we sure he put right what was wrong there? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0ScMs6_I8s
Truly, Sam’s most destructive kiss with history.
A leap Sam never made was to prevent Karen Carpenter’s fatal heart attack.
No kidding, Sherlock.
He also didn’t stop Martin Luther King’s assassination; he also didn’t save Vic Morrow from the helicopter blades; he didn’t stop the bullet that killed John Lennon; he didn’t stop Paul McCartney from Wings; he also didn’t stop the creation of the TV show “Full House”; he also didn’t prevent Nickelback from existing; he also didn’t stop Michael Hutchense from autoerotic asphyxiation; he also didn’t stop Fox from cancelling Firefly and Wonderfalls; he didn’t prevent Nigel Tufnel from being served ridiculously small slices of bread that went with his ham; he didn’t save Apollo Creed.
He also didn’t prevent absolutely everything in the Billy Joel song “We Didn’t Start the Fire”.
What is wrong with you? Why are you posting this sort of random rubbish? If you want a Quantum Leap story about something specific, write it yourself or pay somebody to write it. Start your own WordPress and express your ideas. Do something constructive instead of posting junk. Your posts are irritatingly boring and substanceless.
lol maybe Sam is racist and doesn’t like 80s pop solo artists.
In my Quantum Leap story that I write Sam makes all the leaps he never made in the show and deals with all the things that were never dealt with in the show.
The Sixth season was going to be even weirder than the fifth. I remember talk of having Sam Leap into a cartoon character, as if Al’s rap wasn’t a true enough shark-jump moment.
One thing I don’t get is how people were able to reconcile Sam being able to do things that were out of the physical limits of the people he Leaped into. Like, if he could reach further than someone who was physically shorter than him. Why did no one notice when they, say, rested their head on his shoulder that his shoulder was suddenly a foot higher than it was supposed to be, like in “Camikazi Kid”?
Michael, they did try to explain that — both in the show and even more so in interviews. The explanation is about as silly as explaining that Thor can fly because he throws his hammer while it’s tethered to his wrist, but at least it’s an explanation. That is…
Sam is in his own body. Always. But, the Leap somehow causes people to PERCEIVE him in the body he Leaped into. That includes looking as well as feeling.
Yeah, I understand the mechanics of it. I just think it would be a bizarre thing to see. We saw it once with his legs in season five, but wouldn’t it be weird to see something snatched out of mid-air, several inches beyond the original person’s reach? Or you’d think someone would notice when they went to hug him that — hey, you don’t quite feel like a woman, or whatever. It would just be a weird thing to see.
On that note, it’s a bloody good thing the only time he Leaped in during a sex act it wasn’t into a woman’s body. Consider that for a pause.
If everyone thought like you there woukd be no bedtime stories for chikdren. Its a tv show with a modest budget. Try something more factual
I wish there were more evil leapers episodes.
What if in Raped it was Kevin Wentworth who was the leapee.
Quantum Leap always was and still us one of my favorite tv series! I’ve watched the entire series multiple times and my kids love it, too. While I loved every episode of Quantum Leap, the finale always leaves me sad. Aside from the obvious, the show ending, I find incredibly disappointing that Sam never goes home to Donna, and he will be forced to rap around with Al since he just mended the relationship of Al and his first wife. Now I wanna go onto Hulu and watch it again. lol
He would actually be solo as Al wouldn’t necessarily be around any more to help Sam given his own life has changed (the butterfly effect). In fact technically all the other episodes should have changed too because of that effort to help Al. Nice work Sam all the righting wrog has to be done again like a reboot. I sell a tv opportunity. Hey why didn’t they ever show an episode where the implications of a previus leap affected another leap. That would have been good.
The “wait, did Sam just undo everything?” string of him fixing Al’s marriage to Beth is better left unpulled because, yeah, everything does kind of fall apart.
Isn’t still possible that Sam and Al would still meet despite everything and thus the essential parts of the timeline would still fit?
Maybe time travel isn’t as linear as people think? After all, Philip J Fry is his own grandfather. Eww…
Philip J. Fry is his own grandfather. Ohhh yeah. Man I love that episode, creepy Back to the Future-style incest and all.
But as for your main question about QL – I don’t know. If this was the early 90s and we were in the QL writer’s room this would be a fun corner to write ourselves out of for a hypothetical season 6, and time and time again time travel shows sort of wave away more logical arguments about “well, if you change this then everything changes” and sort of set their own rules based on the needs of the story. The easy answer would be that Sam and Al still met and still became best friends, but little things here or there changed. The narrative problem, though, is that so many QL episodes were oddly dependent on Al’s improbably colorful life experiences, which he constantly relied on to coach Sam through his leap. On top of that, Al only ended up on the project because he was drunk and fighting a vending machine, his personal and professional life in tatters. It’s hard to imagine him being laid so low if he ended up with Beth. Similarly, it’s hard to imagine him still having all those helpful anecdotes about that one time he did that thing back in the day while married to his 2nd/3rd/4th/whatever wife. But maybe his adventures with Beth were just as if not more colorful and everything stays roughly the same.
Man, this is such a supremely nerdy conversation, isn’ it?
I guess you could say that the finale shows that either Al is truly Sam’s greatest love (in a non-sexual way, of course), or that Sam still doesn’t remember Donna or else he’d probably want to see her one last time. And since Al is a regular cast member and Donna a guest star who only appeared twice, each time played by a different actress, there’s considerably more emotional weight tied to Sam’s relationship with Al than with Donna’s. But, yeah, Beth got her husband back; Donna lost her’s (again) and never got him back. It’s sad.
Not if you understand what a paradox means dude. Ref The Time Machine and Back to the Future Part 2 re the grandfather paradox.
Jeez. So many mistakes in my above post. I meant “Sam being forced to leap around withOUT Al”
I think the Japanese would look at Sam as honorable because of
his leaps putting right what once went wrong.
I bet all the leapes are out of sorts when Sam leaps out and they leap back in.
I’ve noticed Pregnancy appears 2 times in the show in the 2 part pilot Genesis and again in 8/12 months.
Scott Bakula was in Star Trek Enterprise.
Yes. Yes he was.
I do not see why they could not end it with Sam getting home to make His life right. If they had gone to a new season, they would have had to replace Gushie since his portrayer died the year after QL was cancelled.
True. Gushie would not have been long for that world.
Sam showed Kevin in Raped that he can’t escape the consequences of his actions.
Huh. Well how about that.
A lot of people myself included seemed to be saddened by the end of Quantum Leap because there were so many leaps for Sam to make and so many wrongs for him to put right.
Wasn’t Dr.Ruth able to speak and be heard from the waiting room in Dr.Ruth so why wasn’t that done with Katie in Raped instead of having her in the Imaging chamber with Al?
It’s almost as if the logic of Quantum Leap doesn’t always make sense, particularly when it comes to anything taking place back in the “present” at the QL headquarters. There is that one episode where the guy breaks out of the holding area, and Gushy sees him and simply says, “Hi, Dr. Beckett” since this person was in Sam’s body while Sam was in his. But, of course, Gushy should have known better, and even if he didn’t that was a far too casual response to Dr. Beckett’s apparent return.
Sounds interesting. What episode was that?
Let me look it up. It’s in the fifth season. Sam leaps into a killer who is holding a woman and her daughter hostage. It’s a rare episode where the person he leaps into is in no way sympathetic but instead flat out dangerous, to the point that back in the “present” when he’s in Sam’s body he breaks out and goes on the hunt for any random girl to kill. Ah, thanks Wikipedia. It’s the fifth ep of the fifth season. Called “Killin’ Time.”
Wow thanks Kelly I will look that up