(Well, we're back again! I'll leave the intro bit to my past self, but I'll just give you the heads up that with 22 episodes and like 1000 words apiece to say about them, this ended up long. So long that I had to do my usual anime project thing of splitting it up into multiple posts. As such, for the next few days you're going to get some pieces of thoughts on Quantum Leap Season 2 episodes, five or six per post. The math works out, trust me. Sit back with your coffee on a boat, then, and enjoy...)
Welcome back to this thing! We're well beyond a coffee shop now. You, friend, are on this ship with me, drifting along and letting the currents guide us where we need to go. Don't worry, I'll still brew you a cup though. That's just common courtesy. Last time we drifted along through 9 episodes of the first season of Quantum Leap, and we certainly discovered some wonderful things. In many ways, I got exactly what I was looking for. Smaller-scale tales about going back in time and making intimately personal stories better. Mending broken hearts, saving lives, challenging prejudices. It was beautiful and intimate. On the other, a new ideological threat reared its head. Quantum Leap does not have consistent lore it can retreat into for the sake of pandering. (Yet.) What it does have, however, is the broad canvas of American history between 1950 and 1975. We have seen episodes come to a screeching halt so Dr. Sam Beckett can meet or inspire famous American celebrities. This could get worse before it gets better. (I have heard hushed whispers that an episode on Lee Harvey Oswald is in the future.) Well, there's nothing to it but to just ride the current and call it as I see it. I have a feeling we're starting with a doozy, and not for any celebrity historical reason. Let's ride the wave, you and I. Let's get back to the leaping.
Honeymoon Express: Well, holy shit. Right as I end Season 1 and get mad at the show choosing macrocosm over microcosm, it responds to me. The leap itself is interesting and tense: Sam is on the titular Honeymoon Express, a train in April 1960. He's a newlywed police officer with his new wife Diane on their way to their honeymoon from New York City up to Niagara Falls. Diane's very much In The Mood For Love, much to poor Sam's flustered consternation, and she's also studying law in order to pass her BAR exam. Unfortunately she's got a possessive ex-husband, a French guy who's a criminal smuggler and is totally amoral thanks to the horrors he witnessed in occupied France during World War 2. As far as he is concerned, Diane is His Woman, and he stalks the train and sneaks on board in order to try and take her back and kill Sam.
So right away, I just want to say I dig the plot here. Diane's very sweet, as is Sam in his flustered shock at the fact that he may have to consummate a marriage that isn't technically his. The train setting matched with the dangerous Frenchman gives the show a certain vibe that reminds me of scenes in the James Bond series that are set on trains. Movies like From Russia With Love, The Spy Who Loved Me, or in recent years Spectre. It's a good setting for the sort of story where outside help isn't coming and Sam and Diane have to fight off this French guy and his goons themselves. In a way, it's also fighting off toxic masculinity: Sam is here to help Diane be her own person and pass her BAR exam, while the French man just sees Diane as stolen property to be reclaimed from a thief. Much like "Camikazi Kid" before it, the show is standing up to an abusive bully and showing him a thing or two.
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| Trial of a Quantum Leaper. |
It's bullshit, and Sam knows it's bullshit. At the same time, it's the logical endpoint of the kind of shit we've been seeing, right? When you start becoming the secret history behind celebrity inspiration, and the hidden cause of historical blackouts, you can only go bigger from there. Al is only pushing Sam to do this so he can leave a footprint to prove himself to the hearing, but it's still wrong and Sam calls it as such. Sam doesn't give two shits about stopping a spy plane and changing macrocosmic history. He's on a train, there's a lady he's married to who needs his help, and he wants to help her. That's been the story. That's always been the story. Sam, and the show as of now, are drawing a line in the sand. Buddy Holly is as far as we go. A celebrity is still a person we can inspire, after all, and not an Event. If he did fuck with the U2 plane, think of what that would mean. The US government would have a time-travelling agent in their pocket. There's a joke early on in the episode where Al tries to get Sam to go stop Fidel Castro's revolution, but that would be the kind of shit Sam would be told to do to leap. Sam rewriting personal history is one thing. The American military rewriting all of their history is a horrible thought of its own entirely. It must be rejected, for now, and please God Quantum Leap do not flip-flop on this later down the line.
There's a definite aura of spirituality at play here, as well. Al is convinced that what's making Sam leap all around to right the wrongs of the past is nothing less than capital-G God. Sam, later on in the episode, looks to the skies and pleads for a sign that he's doing the right thing while he's apprehensive about sleeping with Diane. Now, that could raise a lot of theological and spiritual questions on the nature of free will and "God's plan", and what God sending Sam all over time to rewrite wrongs made by independent humans could mean for free will. That... is not something I would like to poke at just yet. What I will poke at is how Sam proves his existence. He saves Diane, and helps her study, and corrects her on a particular amendment. All this is happening just as the senator is about to pull the plug on project Quantum Leap, but then... well, the male Senator is instantly replaced by an older Diane, who approves the funding of the project! How's that for a footprint in history? We see it happen before our eyes! So does Al! Time itself has shifted around him, and we've proven that Sam's approach has had a tangible effect on history! Suck on that. macrocosm. What an opener. Quantum Leap firmly plants its flag on my side of the camp and goes with the microcosmic small-scale personal stories. I can only hope it keeps it there for the foreseeable future and doesn't flip-flop on me. If it does, I will be very cross with it and you'll know.
Disco Inferno: Hey, fun fact, I'm listening to some disco now as I write this, so feel free to listen along! Anyway... Another good one! I only have a few gripes with it, but I want to start with praise so I have to praise the cold open for this one. We have Sam narrating over footage of the last episode, comparing things to high school prom. Wanting to dance with your date, some jerk trying to cut in, and then just as you finally get a chance to dance the song changes... at which point he leaps into this episode's setting, dressed in white polyester in a disco club like he's an extra for Saturday Night Fever. Then, just as he's getting used to his surroundings, a man pulls out a shotgun and shoots him in the chest, blasting him straight through a fucking window CUE THE OPENING CREDITS. Like, wow. Holy fuck, is that a way to keep you from touching that dial. How the hell is Sam going to get out of this one?
Thankfully, this is a show about small-scale stuff so the disdain for disco doesn't go beyond a few digs. Sam is stuntman Chad Stone this time, here to save his leapee's brother Chris from a fatal accident in 2 days' time. Al and the computer Ziggy can't tell him what it is, so Sam just has to try and keep the kid out of trouble. Chris is a good kid who just wants to prove himself as a capable stuntman like Chad and their father, but he's also got a knack for music that he's not really expressing because he wants to make his dad and brother proud. From here, we get Sam empathizing with Chris in a way not unlike "Camikazi Kid". Sam has to play the part of Chris's big brother and look out for him, which reminds Sam of his own older brother Tom whom he's just remembered. Eventually Sam learns some of what that perspective must have been like for Tom, having to look after a little brother and push the kid towards what he was more inclined to rather than what his big brother was into. In Sam's case, this had Tom push him away from emulating Tom in playing sports and more to his calling in physics and science. For Chris Stone, that means Sam needs to nurture Chris's musical inclinations rather than forcing him down the path of stunt work.
Their dad doesn't really care for this, getting drunk in the bar and generally acting in toxic masculine ways about Chris and his dream of being a musician. Chris runs off after a fight to try and prove himself by working for the unsafe director of Disco Inferno, and this leads to two emotional scenes: the first is where Sam remembers what happened to his older brother Tom. Vietnam happened, and though Sam understands the perspective of what his older brother did for him, he can never tell Tom how grateful he is for that brotherly guidance. (INTRUSION FROM THE FUTURE: Ahahahah oh just you fucking wait 'till Season 3.) The second is Sam looking for Chris and finding their dad, who admits that the whole stunt work thing is something his own father pushed on him and now he's pushing it on his own kids. Why, it's almost like a cycle of sorts. There's a big climax wherein Chris's stunt goes wrong and Sam uses Al's guidance to find him amidst the flames (the disco set caught on fire, I guess this really is a disco inferno NYEHEHEHE) and save his life. But he's not leaped back yet.
Yeah, this is another weird bit. Sam and the family are watching TV and President Gerald Ford is coming off of Air Force One or something like that. Al mentions that Gerald Ford historically trips down the stairs and falls on his ass, and Sam uses that to get their dad to support Chris's music career. HEY DAD IF GERALD FORD FALLS ON HIS OLD ASS DOWN THOSE STAIRS, CHRIS CAN BE A MUSIC MAN! This is a callback to another bit earlier where Sam and Chris were watching SNL, and after a Family Feud skit with the Coneheads and Bill Murray as Richard Dawson, there's a Gerald Ford bit about him falling all around that Sam knows before it happens 'cause he's seen the rerun. Well, I guess Quantum Leap is taking a page out of Jason Reitman's book and saying that it's essential we shoehorn Bill Murray and Dan Akroyd into the show somewhere. That's hyperbole, but I had to. Okay, back to this bet though. You would think that realizing the cycle of pushing sons to be their fathers would be enough for Mr. Stone, but no, they have to bet on a historical event Al has future knowledge of. Gerald Ford trips on those goddamn stairs, Chris can be a music man, and thank God they didn't reveal Chris Stone has a stage name of some musician we know from the 80's. It's rough in a few places, but I liked this episode. The brother connection thing was emotionally resonant enough to invest me. The only sad part is that now I have to turn off the disco tunes and write about something else. So long, disco.
The Americanization Of Machiko: Oh god. Hey, remember how uncomfortable I was having to watch "The Color Of Truth" and how poor Sam leaped into a story and setting that were uncomfortably racist? Well, here we are again!! (The "again" is a bit of a strange one, and we'll get to that at the end.) It's a weird sensation. I don't remember how I reacted to "The Color Of Truth" in exact detail, but I did write down how I felt and that was honest. This episode hit me a different way. Yes, it has loads of uncomfortable bigotry from its supporting cast and that's wrong. Whereas "The Color Of Truth" made it feel like the whole goddamned world was systematically bigoted, this episode feels more like it has a couple of folks acting in bad faith who can't get over their own prejudices. The side effect this led to was me yelling in disbelief at just how petty and bigoted these people could be in their little microaggressions. It's macrocosm and microcosm again, and this episode's microcosm in its portrayal of bigotry. What that meant was I got a whole lot madder at its cast of characters.
We'll start with Charlie's ex-girlfriend, Naomi, as she's the least bad here. Still pretty bad, mind. It's less that she treats Machiko bad and more that she won't fucking take no for an answer. She's deluded herself into thinking that Charlie was just a poor lonely boy over in Japan who needed love, but now that he's back in America he can get back with her and it'll all be okay. So she starts forcing herself onto poor Scott Bakula really aggressively, trying to make out with him and shit and I'm like "Stop it. Stop it, for the love of god.". Eventually after some sitcom-esque misunderstanding bullshit, he sits her down and tells her that he loves Machiko and it's over. She's sad about it but seems to accept it. Then, at a town picnic, she's helped Machiko do her makeup and is taking her around to meet people! How nice! Oh. Oh, wait. She preyed upon Machiko's naivete of social customs and tricked her into calling some people fat to humiliate her and get back at her for Stealing Her Man. Machiko runs off, calling her not very nice, and that's the last we see of Naomi in the show. Pretty awful, but that's just jealously. It's not active bigotry.
No, for that we can look at a local dude named Rusty. Who, you know, spits on the ground where Machiko walked when we first see him. As another local man explains, telling Sam and Machiko not to mind Rusty, he's "still fighting World War 2 in his head". Moments after this, Sam and Machiko return to their truck after shopping to find that Rusty has painted an anti-Japanese slur on their truck followed by the words "go home". He tries to bean Sam with a baseball at a local game and is ready to beat the shit out of him because he hates Japanese people. He will also be involved in the third act climax, and I won't mention what he does yet because it dovetails into another character's bigotry towards Machiko. What he does tell her, though, is that he was supposed to go be an ace pitcher before WW2 broke out. He came back after the war and all his baseball prospects were gone, and now he's taking it out on Machiko because she's a Japanese person and someone who's Not Like Him who he can tangibly hurt for his own precious catharsis. How about this, Rusty? How's about Machiko jams a fucking plutonium rod down your throat for those two atom bombs America dropped? Same thing, right? Rusty is abhorrent and, honestly, deserved more comeuppance.
Which brings us to Charlie's mother, Lenore. This woman drove me up the fucking wall with just how petty and microaggressive she got with Machiko. Whereas Charlie's dad was confused but understanding at the moments of culture shock that naturally occur with Machiko, Lenore is venomous and hostile. Oh, Machiko cooked rice for breakfast 'cause that's how they do it in Japan? YOU STUPID IDIOT! WE DON'T EAT RICE FOR BREAKFAST IN AMERICA! YOU IDIOT BUFFOON I AM THROWING ALL THIS RICE AWAY RIGHT NOW! It's tiny needling shit like that which set a fire under me multiple times in the episode. Let me just cut to the chase and get to the third-act climax, where I really yelled my head off. It's after that picnic and a big storm is rolling in. It could even be a tornado, it's pretty bad. As they're all getting ready to go in the storm cellar, Lenore gets a call from one of those people Machiko offended with her accidental fat comment. Then Lenore gets really pissy at Machiko for it in the storm cellar, and Machiko runs off in a huff... and Lenore doesn't give a shit. Sam and Charlie's dad run off after her once they find Machiko not in the storm cellar, and at this point I'm furious. That could be a tornado. A member of your family has run out into this storm and you don't fucking care. Ghoulish.
Even worse is what this leads into. Machiko, running in the storm, is picked up by Rusty, who takes her back to a garage and plans to hurt her. Sam, with Al's help, finds her and fights off Rusty to save Machiko, but let's step back a minute. I fully believe that this, in the original timeline, got Machiko killed and forced Charlie to settle with Naomi. Machiko would have died, murdered at the hands of a bigot, over what? A fucking faux pas comment about someone's weight? Lenore's indifference at Machiko running off into the night literally would have gotten her killed. All over social pressure bullshit and wanting to not look bad to the people of the town. The worst part of all this is it isn't even the first mistake Lenore's made in this fashion. We find out later that Charlie had a sister, Ilene. Ilene got pregnant out of wedlock and didn't get any support from her mother over it because Lenore just had to look after her precious reputation. So, Ilene drove her car off a bridge and died. Lenore lost a daughter and she still can't get over her own prejudices and failings. Machiko gets hit in the head with some debris Charlie hurled their way during the garage fight, and in the hospital there's another scene that shows just how deep-rooted this shit goes.
When Charlie's dad tells Sam they've been praying for Machiko, Sam looks at Lenore and asks "Have you?". Lenore protests that she's a Christian, and Sam's simple rebuttal? Then show it. Go in there and show Machiko your support... and Lenore can't. She can't because Ilene came to that same room after driving off that bridge, and she couldn't do it then. She can't do for Machiko what she couldn't do for her own daughter. Malarkey. What, you fucked up once and now you can't strive to be better ever again? How convenient. How cowardly. You can do better. That's half the point of this show, and Lenore does take a step forward in that direction. At Sam and Machiko's wedding, Lenore shows up last minute. In a kimono. A first hesitant step towards acceptance and doing better and getting that venom out of your heart. It's a start. With that, Sam leaps... into Jesse Tyler? This is not a repeat. This can only be some sort of episode shuffling order, where this episode was supposed to be followed up with "The Color Of Truth" but then plans changed. Fair enough, but imagine how fucked up it would be if you followed up the episode where a Japanese person is microagresssed against for her race with the one with the black guy in the South pre-civil rights. Jesus. This one was rough and made me mad. Can we go to something better, please?
What Price Gloria?: And so the show responds to my plea for one that isn't so rough with another one that's rough around the edges. Really, I knew this was coming. The film noir episode ended with the tease of this leap and I thought "well I'll talk about it for the season opener", only to find a little runaround. Something or other aired out of order, but well. Here we are. Dr. Sam Beckett has leapt into the body of a woman named Samantha Stormer, a secretary for a Detroit car company in 1961. It's nice that Sam initially has name euphoria at first in the episode: people are calling out to Sam and he's happy to be called by his real name for once, before looking in the mirror and going oh gosh I'm a lady. So now in addition to all the uncomfortable racism in these stories, I have to talk about gender shit circa 1989. Oh my god. I put this off for a few days because I was scared of that, but let's see if I can get through this without putting my foot in my mouth.
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| They show this clip every time in the intro, so if I have to see it every day I'm putting it in here. |
All of this ties into the main thrust of the episode, where the titular Gloria is Sam's roommate and co-worker who's also involved in an affair with the office manager Buddy. Buddy's going to reject Gloria, causing her to take her own life, and that's what Sam has to stop. Again, this is all tied into how bullshit the societal status quo is. While Gloria is in love with Buddy, Buddy only sees her as a side fling. He lies through his teeth about leaving his wife so he can keep Gloria on the hook and keep getting sex. She's basically just a conquest to him, a sex object, and the realization of that is what's going to get Gloria killed. Sam does his best to cut this off and make Gloria realize that Buddy's a shitheel, but it doesn't work. She really is in love with this guy, and has fallen for the lure. It takes seeing his wife at a restaurant and getting rebuked by her over the lies of him leaving her to escalate things, and soon enough Gloria's out on a ledge and Sam has to talk her back in. What does it is the fact that if she does it, Buddy will think it was over him... and do you really want to give that lying shitheel the satisfaction? That breaks the hold Buddy has over Gloria, and she's going to be a more independent lady thanks to her friend's advice.
It's a nice story. There are some weird bits, though. Like Al having an existential crisis over how hot Sam is in Sam Stormer's body. On the face of it this is some weird shit involving Al's status as a horndog himself, but also... he sees Sam as who he's leapt into? I always thought that he saw Scott Bakula, like we did. It almost feels like a retcon made for the sake of adding in this subplot where Al's horny for Sam Stormer. I guess it goes to show that the fight against the patriarchy and these social attitudes is a constant battle. Certainly, things were better in 1989 (or whatever "10 minutes in the future" Al's present is) than they were in 1961, and things are better in some ways in 2022 than in 1989. Still, though, the fight's not over. Look at the headlines in the US for a little indication of that. There's always room to improve and do better, and there's always some failing in the past.
Which brings us to the weird final scene, where Sam gets "revenge" on Buddy by coming into his office and trying to seduce him. Playing the role that Buddy and society want Sam to play, being coy and demure and a perfect lure for Buddy himself. And then Sam says he's a man and proves it by sharing a bunch of firsthand experience of what it's like to grow up as a man, like getting kicked in the balls or looking at Playboy, and when a panicked and terrified Buddy doesn't want to fuck Sam any more he punches him out. So. If you're reading this episode in any kind of trans lens, that could be seen as a little fucked up! On the other hand, I'm way out of my wheelhouse on this. I don't have that experience. There's some definite clunkiness to this episode, but at the end of the day I think I see what it was going for; an examination of sexism and patriarchy done in the same style as the show's examined racism and prejudice. Did it succeed in that? I'm not entirely sure. Hey, at least we're done with the heavy stuff though, right? Right?
Blind Faith: This one's a high-water mark for me. Not only is it excellent, but the way it layers itself with its themes and interconnected plot elements makes it just this immaculate little script that fires on all cylinders. Weird machine metaphors aside, this is just great and weaves things together in a satisfying way for me. I may have to get a little plot summary-ish again to set up all the threads, so forgive me for that. It's 1964 in New York City and Sam has leaped into the body of a blind pianist named Andrew Ross. Sam, however, can see just fine. I'm sure you could nitpick that and wonder how Sam can see if Andrew can't, but I won't because the answer is that this is the story we're telling. He's got a supportive girlfriend named Michelle, but she hasn't told her overbearing and protective mother about him yet. Oh, and there's a literal serial strangler running amok in Central Park.
I both have to praise and condemn the episode for how it expresses this threat to us. First we pan down on Sam and Michelle's walk through New York to a discarded paper with a front headline about the third victim of the Central Park strangler being found. That's simple, unobtrusive worldbuilding. You pan the camera down to the paper and we know what's going on without a word said. Then the episode feels the need to hammer it home in a really nasty way; on the way back into his apartment, Sam has a chat with a fellow resident. She's a French lady who's going out to walk her dogs. She seems nice. The next time we see her she's in the park, a rope wraps around her neck from behind, and that's curtains. It's not only excessive after the elegant newspaper shot, but it's cynical and mean. It reminds me of Chris Chibnall's Doctor Who inelegantly putting a side character in front of you and having them say they have a family or they're gay or something to make you like them before "OH WHOOPS THEY WERE MURDER FODDER THE WHOLE TIME NOW DON'T YOU FEEL EXTRA BAD?". I don't like that beat.
So, the better future's a pretty simple one. Save Michelle from being murdered by the Central Park strangler. It won't be that simple, of course, but the way the complications so perfectly weave together at the end is incredible. Before that, though, I need to mention the other elements. Andrew Ross has a friend, a friendly police officer named Pete who we meet once or twice through the story. Pete also helpfully lets us know about another big event happening in the story. It's February 1964, in New York City. The Ed Sullivan Show is about to host The Beatles, and there are hordes of fangirls screaming in the streets of New York over them. Pete's got a bit of a reactionary take on the fangirls and those Liverpool weirdos, but you probably know by now what I was thinking. Oh god, here we go again. Sam is going to get into shenanigans at the Ed Sullivan show along with Pete, and when Paul McCartney asks who he is he'll go UHHH UHM MY NAME'S... SERGEANT PEPPER! and Paul will muse to himself on just how neat a name like that is. We've played this song and dance before.
Nope! Not this time! The Beatles coming to New York are a Chekov's Gun. Because they are there, a thing will happen later that is informed by several other things in the episode. They are not the be-all end-all point of the episode wherein Sam Beckett is the Secret Arbiter Of History. Thank God. This is more like it! This is how I'd like the show to treat history! It's there, it's important, integrate it into the plot organically somehow... but don't overshadow the very human story of it all! I'm going to try and shotgun through all of this to show you how meticulous it flows. Michelle's overprotective mother sees Michelle and Sam having lunch together, and follows Sam back to his apartment. Sam, unaware that anyone's there but Al and Andrew's service dog, is reading off of a packet of dog food to talk to the dog about his dinner... and Michelle's mom catches him. Without the knowledge of quantum leap mechanics, she just thinks that Andrew is faking being blind as a con and tells him to stay away from her daughter. Okay, how the hell are we going to get out of that one in a way that doesn't ruin Andrew's life?
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| No Al, there's four Beatles... |
Michelle, in her desperation, has run right into Central Park... and there's the strangler, ready to strangle. Oh, and by the way, it was Pete all along. Wow! The police officer who was just a little reactionary against girls going wild for a popular band turns out to be deranged enough to be a serial murderer of women! Quantum Leap really out here saying ACAB in 1989. (INTRUSION FROM THE FUTURE: At least, until the finale, though it has another instance of ACAB before that in Season 2, as well as one in one of Season 3's more gonzo episodes.) Well, with the help of Al and his service dog, Sam is able to subdue the murderer! As he's arrested, he's rambling to his other cops about how I WAS DOING MY JOB, I WAS KEEPING THE PARK SAFE, DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND??? Quite mad. So, Michelle's going to live... but Sam hasn't leapt yet. No, now we need to save her emotionally by getting her mother to loosen up a bit and let her daughter live. He lies his way out of seeing her at the show by saying he smelled her perfume, but she doesn't buy it and lights a match before putting it right in front of Sam's face to try and make him flinch... but he's still temporarily blinded. That makes her go "oh my god holy shit he really was blind all along" and mellow out a bit. A life saved, both physically and emotionally. Multiple threads woven together to form a beautiful little tapestry. What an episode. I loved it! I hope the next one is just as good!
Good Morning Peoria: Yeah it's pretty good, if not sliding back a little for me personally. I think I'll be able to be a little more concise this time because it's not a story like Blind Faith where every part of it is tied together meticulously. This time we're in Peoria, Illinois (surprise surprise) in 1959 and Sam's an AM radio DJ. All Sam has to do this time is keep the radio station from shutting down so its director, Rachel Porter, can live out her dream of running a hit radio station like her father. What antagonistic force is going to stop that dream, I wonder? A murderer? The patriarchy? Nah, it's reactionary bullshit again. The main antagonist of this episode, Fred, thinks that ROCK AND ROLL IS THE DEVIL'S MUSIC and that the station should stop playing it so as not to corrupt precious American family values. He will go hog wild with this belief later, but for now he's going to pull his ads from the station and try to convince others to do the same. So begins Sam and Rachel's determination that rock and roll will never die on their station.
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| HAHAH I ALSO REMEMBER CHUBBY CHECKER |
The main thrust of the episode is absolutely wild. Fred manages to get a law passed in city hall banning rock and roll music on the radio, happy to have censored such offensive bullshit music that he does not like and celebrating with other officials of authority in the local café. His wife is very much like "oh for God's sakes Fred it's only music" and I really wish she had stepped up to be more important in the climax to get Fred to settle down. Sam's grand idea to protest the bullshit law is to barricade Rachel and himself in the radio station, and defy authority by broadcasting all the fucking rock and roll. The rest of the episode follows a fun formula of escalation: Fred will do a thing to try and stop the station from broadcasting, succeed briefly and act all smug about it, only for Sam and Rachel to fix the issue and keep airing while Fred is losing his mind going GODDAMNIT THAT CORRUPT MUSIC IS STILL ON AAGHH!!!. Fred cuts the power to the building? They've got a generator in the basement. Fred cuts the transmitter? Sam and Al rig up a makeshift one using the copper gutters of the building and some jumper cables.
All the while, of course, Sam is on the air. Earlier in the episode, Sam was at first nervous about performing live on air as a DJ... but with Al's encouragement he went into this completely wild over the top performance and just let loose. I'm no DJ, but I played at one online for a while over a decade ago. What I can tell you, from streaming and making videos, is that there definitely is a little switch in your head to turn you into performing mode that you hit when you hit that live button. Sam found that switch, and opened himself up a little more because of it. During the protest, though, we see more of Sam's heartfelt side come up. He reads out an op-ed from Fred, who also writes for the paper, about rock and roll being bad before then reading out the First Amendement. There's also some budding romance with Rachel, which is this weird sort of hot-and-cold thing where they smooch and then she smacks him for the smooch, thinking this whole barricade thing was all a cheap trick to get with her romantically before he can talk sense into her about that being silly.
Before I get to the climax, since I can't believe I get to share this factoid: Rachel is played by actress Patricia Richardson, who people may know best as the mom from 90's sitcom Home Improvement. This is not the first time she was in a show with Scott Bakula, though. Right before I started this project, a video essay by Youtuber Allison Pregler dropped covering a forgotten sitcom called Eisenhower and Lutz. Both Bakula and Richardson are in it, but given that the title of this video is "The Most Misogynistic Sitcom Ever Made"... it isn't great. Bakula is playing the practical opposite of Sam Beckett in that show, a misogynistic greaseball. It ain't great, but having seen that essay before starting this, when I saw Patricia Richardson I perked up because holy shit, it's two of the leads of that shitty sitcom! They work much better together here than on that shitshow.
So, the climax then. The thing that ties the show together. Fred has gone completely frothing mad and has resorted to taking an axe and trying to Jack Nicholson his way into the station to kill rock and roll with his bare hands. With the help of Al and Ziggy, Sam knows exactly what to say on the air to stop this madness once and for all. It's a newspaper article written in 1945, after the end of World War 2, musing on the loss of so many fallen soldiers and how they laid down their lives for freedom. Fred wrote those words, and Sam asks for a little freedom of their own in playing their tunes. It's a very nostalgic American dream thing, appealing to one's sense of the right to freedom to get them to back down and realize that they're being the reactionary oppressor this time. It was timely coincidence that, the day before I watched this, my friend Christa Mactire did a revisit of the 2006 Doctor Who episode The Idiot's Lantern. One of the scenes that sticks in my mind from that story is a son standing up to his authoritarian father, and the line "You fought against fascism so little twerps like me could say whatever they wanted!". It's that same sort of energy used in the climax of this story. Fred realizes that he once fought for freedom, both in the press and in support of the war, and is now fighting against freedom because he doesn't like the music so it should not be allowed. Again, I really wish his wife had more of a presence in getting Fred to call it off, but it's not the worst sentiment to show for the climax of a show.
This was a fun one, though. The rock and roll vibe makes me think of another Doctor Who, this one somewhat contemporary with the episode: 1987's Delta And The Bannermen. I think that story rules and it plays with that kitschy rock and roll nostalgia throwback tour vibe quite well. This story is also well-marinated in that "let's have fun and spin some ROCK AND ROLL RECORDS" energy, and it just feels like a good time while also having something to say about losing sight of your own values as times change around you. To link the third video in a row here, The Simpsons said it best. Of course, you know, the cycle continues on. In the episode we see many a letterjacket jock and poodle skirt lady dancing in the streets to Tutti Frutti. How many of them grew up and had kids of their own? How many of those kids got into this new heavy metal music? How many of those baby boomer kids then declared that heavy metal music was the devil and Satanist music that needed to be burned en masse to protect the children? The cycle continues on. It's up to us to be better people and fight against the tide.
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