(Hello again from the present! I just had a lovely vacation, and I've come back to get right back at it with posting these words. In fact, the posting of the rest of the show is going to become very fast now that we have a month to October and spooky month marathon. I'm already in the weeds of Season 4 and doing two episodes a day, and I'm going to have another trip in September so boy howdy do I have to speed things up here. That's just how things go for me in the fall, but enough of that. Please enjoy like a thousand words apiece on each episode of Quantum Leap's third season, starting with the first five or six!)
So glad you could join me for the third go-around! It's good to have company while one is adrift and far away from shore. Last time we finished the first of four of the "big" seasons of Quantum Leap, 22 whole episodes and kind of a loss of brevity. Look, sometimes I have like 1000 words to say per episode and some of it isn't even summarizing what happened in the show for you. Multiply that by 22 and you got a big brick of words that needs to be sculpted. Wait, I thought we were doing boat metaphors, not statue ones. Either way, we're going to talk about Quantum Leap Season 3, whether it's on a boat or with a statue or with some other metaphor I've not thought of. Season 2 had its highs and lows, for sure. Most of the lows come from words that are slurs, to be fair. One curious improvement I noticed, though: they stopped doing that shit that was annoying me where the episode would stop for a minute so Sam could inspire a historical figure or event. After Chubby Checker and Dr. Heimlich, which were within the first six episodes of S2, it stopped. Good, I say. I still think "Blind Faith" is the best use of this, where the big historical event is perfectly used as a plot device to aid like four or five other plot devices. More of those would be good! Really, more episodes as meticulously crafted as "Blind Faith" would be nice, but I digress.
At this point I think I do have the feel of what a good Quantum Leap story is. It isn't just the macrocosmic "help another person 'cause it's right and it will change the future for the better", business. There's also the feelings of Sam and Al to consider. The pair of them have their own histories, their own losses and failures and regrets which make them sympathize with certain people who they're here to help. Sometimes they even drive them to go too far, as Al was driven to do in the conclusion of last season with "M.I.A.", and the other has to pull them back. Why do I mention that? Oh, just because the season opener is going to really delve into that mindset with a whopper of an episode. Yeah, I already saw the first, and I'm going to tell you about it now... but I've not seen the remaining 21. Hard to port, constant reader. We've got one hell of a storm coming to open up the season.
Once again, then, we have one of Sam or Al butting up against Quantum Leap's one rule: You can rewrite any story for the better, except your own. It's something Sam has felt friction with when it comes to his old lovers, like "Star-Crossed" or "Catch A Falling Star". Al absolutely fought against it just last episode in "M.I.A.", and here in the season opener we're re-iterating that conflict for Sam. Sam, who had the clarity to see that Al was obsessed with changing a thing that God or Fate or Time refused to let be changed, is now in Al's position and faltering in the same way. It's different now. It's his life and he's actually here and not a hologram, so he can change it. He can get his dad to quit smoking and eat healthier so he doesn't die of a heart attack in three years. He can tell Katie to stay away from a guy named Chuck. He can convince Tom not to go to Vietnam so he doesn't get killed. He can do it! He changes the future all the damn time, what's the difference here?
The difference is that one rule. At every turn, Sam gets pushback from his family on this. His dad doesn't want to quit smoking and drink skim milk. Tom believes in doing his duty for his country and fighting in the war. Katie... well, we'll get to Katie in one of the saddest scenes. Even so, Sam persists. I would complain about Sam having to learn the same lesson that he was advocating an episode prior when Al was the one trying to fight fate and change his future... but it's a very human reaction and I can't blame him. I've lost family, too. Maybe you have as well. Can you honestly tell me that if you were quantum leaped into your younger self, a few years before those family members died, that you wouldn't fight tooth and nail to prevent it? That you wouldn't scream and beg at the top of your lungs for them to change their lifestyle, or go to the hospital to get checked out, or avoid a certain place on a certain day because that's the day they'll die? I guarantee I would. I can't blame Sam here. I honestly can't.
There's a looming implicit question at the heart of this leap: is it a blessing, or a curse? Each of our leads takes a different stance on that, eventually. Al thinks that this is a blessing. The goal of the leap is for Sam to win a high school basketball game that will make his local team state champions and give his fellow players scholarship opportunities. Rewriting the story and making a better future, for the people that aren't his family. Al's view on this is that Sam's blessed to be able to go back into his own past and spend just a few more days with the family that he lost. Extra days with his father and brother, a gift which Al envies Sam for being able to have. What Al wouldn't give to have just one more day with those he's lost. To him, this is a reward for Sam for all the good he's done for other people. He gets to help more people, and also gets to see his family once more. A gift Al envies Sam for, a gift anyone might envy him for with the right mindset. Sam, in the low point of the episode, sees things differently.
Now we come to Sam and Katie, and them talking about the Beatles of all things. Sam lets slip that they break up in 1970, but Al manages to stop him before he can tell Katie what happens to John Lennon in December 1980. Instead, he plays her a song from the future. He plays her Imagine, and it's a beautiful rendition by Sam... but it sends Katie into a sobbing fit. She's never heard that song before. Her older brother isn't bullshitting about knowing the future. It's all true, all of it. The Beatles are going to break up, John Lennon's going to write that beautiful song... and her father's going to keel over from a heart attack and her other brother's going to die in a jungle in Vietnam. Al gets a poetic line here to get Sam to defuse the situation and tell the family he was just joking around. Sam isn't making a better future for them. He's creating a worse present by stressing them out about the future. Sam runs off into the cornfields in frustration, and here's where we get how he sees this leap.
This is a curse. This is torture. After all he's done for God or Fate or Time or whatever, all the stories he's changed, he can't change this one thing and save the people he loves? Worse yet, he's been brought back here to have them puppeted in front of him, to taunt him with living versions of his family that he can't save from their own doom. In the pilot episode, Sam was thankful to whatever force quantum leapt him to be able to have one last phone call with his father. Now he's with his father and he can't change his fate, and he's cursing that same deity. After all he's done, he can't have this one thing? THEN FUCK YOU, I QUIT! The looming thread of narrative collapse has hung over the episode, and now it's dropped. When Sam says it's not fair, Al counters that it is fair, citing why he thinks this leap is a blessing for him. Hearing that perspective seems to snap Sam out of his funk.
And so, Sam makes the most of the extra days he has with his family. He has Thanksgiving dinner. He wins the big basketball game, but still has to try one last time with Tom. When practicing the night before, he tries to make a bargain with Tom. Winning the game for one day. Just one day, Tom. April 8th. Fight the Vietnam War, the fight you believe in, any other day... but hide in the most secure bunker you can on April 8th. Tom makes the promise, but one has doubts that he'll be able to keep it. (As an aside, this only serves to make Duck from "Animal Frat" even worse for his black-and-white logic of "well maybe if you convinced your brother better, he wouldn't have died in Vietnam". Look how Sam tries. Look how fucking hard Sam tries in this one.) Who knows what happened on April the 8th in Vietnam? What I know is that this is one hell of an episode, poking against the very structure of Quantum Leap. There is a meta element to Sam screaming to the heavens at his inability to change fate. He can't change his family's fate because of that one rule... but that one rule has no in-universe justifications. God, Fate, Time, none of them made that rule. The one writing on the page made it up for added drama and pathos, and that's who Sam is screaming at. The writer of better futures, venting his frustrations at the writer above setting tragedy in stone. And yet, who's writing that man screaming at the heavens to the writer above? Hmmm.
We're not done, though. This is only Part 1, and Part 2 will plunge us right into the belly of the beast. We are about to leap into one of America's biggest nightmares, the anxiety of which the boomers in late 1990 are still feeling. The storm is here, friends and constant readers. We have leaped into the hell jungle, the death and doom of the American dream in the 1970's. We have leapt into Vietnam, and now have to figure out what the hell we do here for 45 minutes.
The Leap Home, Part 2- Vietnam: Oh dear God, that was bleak. I don't know how the hammer is going to fall on this one, so I just have to type it out and see what the words play when they come out of my brain in order. The best comparison I have to my framework of tentpole sci-fi? Doctor Who stories like "The Waters Of Mars" or a Star Trek story set in one of its big war arcs. It's tempting to pick an Enterprise one, given Scott Bakula, but let us say (and I've never seen this one) Deep Space Nine's "In The Pale Moonlight". It is, for better or worse, a story about making a tough choice in the midst of a war and having to live with your particular answer to a trolley problem. In a way, it's an apt metaphor for the Vietnam War itself. God help us, let's dive in.
There's the mistake Sam makes. Not an ignoble mistake, or a truly selfish one. At heart, he is still fighting to save someone else. His laser focus and determination to do so just cause him to lose sight of other things, and make a bigger mistake. There's a photojournalist named Maggie on the base with the soldiers, here to take pictures of the war. In any other leap, this would likely be the person Sam was meant to save. Perhaps it was. Sam doesn't even really consider it, and this is how far he's fallen in his pursuit of breaking the fixed point of Tom's death. Earlier, Al warns Sam of an incoming ambush because the only future information he was able to dig up was an article written by Maggie. On the day Tom dies, the squad is set to go off on a mission to try and rescue American POWs. Maggie wants to come along, but Tom and an army colonel don't want to bring a civilian. So, she comes to Magic, attempting to seduce him and telling him she'd sell her soul for a story, and even more. So why not tell the boys that your sixth sense says I should come along?
Sam agrees. He does not, to be clear, agree because he's going to get sex out of it. His logic is that Maggie will come on the mission, write about it, and then Al can read the article in the future and tell him what happened so he has more foreknowledge and can save Tom. This is how far Sam's fallen. He's treating this woman as a cheat sheet for the future, bringing a civilian along on this dangerous mission and disregarding her safety for the sake of saving Tom. This is the moment where Sam Beckett, trolley problem man, flips the switch. As they're heading out in the chopper, Al doesn't have an article for Sam to crib off of... because Maggie didn't live to write it. Indeed, she sneaks off immediately to get poignant photos of the POWs being led off by the Vietcong, managing to get one really good shot of one as she silently cries in the jungle, unable to save him herself.
Here's where Sam has to finalize his pull of the trolley lever. No turning back now. He finds a radio attuned to the same frequency as the radio at base was on an enemy combatant, and realizes what's going on. The base had a woman working for them as a defector, but it turns out she was a spy all along and she is the one who ambushes and kills Tom Beckett in Vietnam. Sam is forced to shoot her down just before she can Swiss Cheese Tom. Holy shit. Has he done it? Has Sam actually changed history and saved Tom? You bet your buns he has. As for Maggie? Well, as she's getting back with the soldiers, she's too eager and hits a tripwire. She's blown up! She's... fucking dead! There is no Time Lord to tell us the rules of time travel and quantum leaping in this world, but it seems we've learned one rule the hard way. You can alter the personal history that seemed off limits prior, it seems. All it requires is an equal sacrifice in the name of karmic balance. You can erase Tom Beckett's name on the list of the fallen... but you have to be the one to pencil in another name to keep the tally equal. Sam's laser-focused determination to save Tom practically made him pencil in Maggie's name. She didn't sell her soul to get on the mission. Sam sold it for her.
So Sam silently drinks in the bar that night, drowning away the guilt. A life for a life. That's the price he had to pay. Sure, Maggie will earn the Pulitzer. Posthumously. Is that what she would have wanted? I imagine she'd rather be fucking alive right now. There's one last wrinkle, though. Maggie's final photo, the one she'll get the Pulitzer for. The poignant POW looking back at the camera. It was Al, who is resigned to living in the dampest dark holes of Vietnam for the next three years and losing his first love. Al gave up his chance of a better future to help Sam gain his, and let Tom Beckett live. There's something very moving about that, as is Al's comment that he was never imprisoned, in his own head. The past three episodes have been a wild trilogy about changing the personal futures of these two men, and at the very end we see the deep friendship they've formed. Deep enough that one will give the other control of the pencil to change his own future for the better. On the other hand, that could just be Al refusing to take control of the trolley lever.
No matter how you slice it, or try to cut against it, this is bleak. I almost hope Sam has to grapple with this guilt for a bit in the next one, if only to heal from it. It's too big of a beat to get swallowed up by a procedural leap into some other unique setting with a different serious issue. Really think about what our good doctor just went through. Sam Beckett, determined for the sake of his own self-interests, plunged headlong into a war and ended up causing a microcosm of destruction, loss, and death. He got what he wanted, in the end, but the needless loss is going to haunt him. Forget inspiring history. Sam just became history. He just became the Vietnam War itself, a pointless little war started by people determined for the sake of their own self-interests that got a lot of good people killed for no good reason. One wonders if Tom Beckett's continued existence will end with its own Fall of Saigon... but we have to leap forward and go elsewhere.
I said the hammer had to come down at the start of this, but I'll be damned if I know where I stand on this. It's pretty fucking bleak for Quantum Leap, and for the idea of better things being possible in general. You can save anybody and write a better future, unless it's someone from your own personal history in which case you have to pass the worse future on to some other poor cursed bastard. That's really goddamned depressing, y'all. I expect better from Quantum Leap. If I want a world where better things aren't possible, I'll look out my own damn window, thank you. Maybe better things will be possible if I look from my window back to the television. Turn your head to the right with me, and let's find out.
The funeral gets gatecrashed by a little punk delinquent named Tony, and this is the kid who Father Mac thinks killed the 12 year-old. This piece of work committed a robbery that ended in the death of the store clerk a while back, one which the kid and Father Mac both witnessed. Tony is covering his tracks and killing the witnesses in Mysterious Circumstances, so now Sam has to protect Father Mac from an unfortunate accident. It's a good setup, and it will lead to a big twist in the climax. Let's put that aside for now and talk about the interesting things in between. We may as well start with the sigh-inducing one. Father Mac is a former boxer and he sometimes teaches kids in a little gym he's got in the church. Sam's watching one lesson and the kid training mentions he can't make tomorrow because he has to work part-time at the butcher's. Sam tells him he saw this movie once where a guy trained to box by punching a slab of meat in a walk-in freezer, and that seems to inspire this kid... who shuts his locker and we see the name "S. Stallone" on it. God damn it. I thought we were over these Sam Beckett Does A History bits.
What's much better is another quiet scene late at night between Sam and Father Mac, where the latter's service in World War II comes up. He earned some medals and awards, but he's not exactly proud of them given that he earned them by killing a shitload of Japanese soldiers in the Pacific. He became a priest to try and make up some karmic balance in the world for all the lives he put an end to by his own hand, and isn't sure he's done that. Sam's reply does seem informed by what he just went through, the war of the future he escaped the maw of with his own bloodied hands. You just have to do the best you can, and hope that your good deeds and attempts to make a positive difference make the world a better place in the long run. It's a bit of a generic statement that the character could say at any point in the show's run so far, but it does gain extra heft coming right after the Vietnam one. For better or worse, this is how Sam seems to have internalized what he dealt with in Vietnam.
Lest you think our other lead doesn't have poignant resonance, we also have Al being uncomfortable being in a church again. He had his own crisis of faith as a child because his father got cancer, and the young Al prayed to God at his father's bedside every night for him to get well. He never did, and that resentment led Al to abandon faith and God and church. Grief can do that to someone who believes in God. You pray and pray for the bad thing not to happen, it does anyway because that's life, and you glare up at the heavens and ask "if praying to you falls on deaf ears and makes tragedy happen anyway, then what is the point of you?". And yet, here we are with these leaps turning tragedy into happy ending. Maybe God didn't answer the prayers. Maybe Sam Beckett is the one answering them by pinballing through time and space. Who knows?
What I do know is Al gets a little faith back. Sam volunteers to do confession in Father Mac's place, and this is where Tony comes in. Forgive me, Father, for I've brought a fucking gun and I'm about to murder you, bang bang bang. Sam falls out with a bloody head wound and Al lambasts God for allowing this shit to happen again. You can't take Sam, he's helped too many people and will help countless more! Please. Please, God, don't let Sam die. Sam's okay, just stunned and with a grazing bullet wound on his head that's just made him bleed a little. Al gives a little thanks to the heavens, but that's the good news. The bad news is that because of this botched murder attempt, it's Father Mac who's now going to run off and kill Tony... so a very dazed and still bleeding Sam has to go stop that.
Father Mac's taken Tony to the train tracks where the poor kid died, and has him at gunpoint and is demanding confession of his own. Confess your sins before Father Mac makes some karmic balance a la vigilante justice. A life for a life. A good kid got hit by a train here because of a bad kid... so Father Mac is going to let that bad kid get obliterated by a train to balance the scales. He even reveals that he never actually saw the robbery which Tony is killing people to cover up. He only said he did to comfort the scared kid who confessed it to him, and here we hit another parallel with what Sam went through in Vietnam. Father Mac had the best of intentions, much like Sam did in trying to save Tom. Through their actions, innocent people got killed and now the old soldiers are living with that and trying to do good in the long run. Father Mac's let his grief and guilt overtake him, his own lie having gotten the poor kid killed, and now he wants to do good in the long run by ending the life of this punk. Sam stops him, thankfully, as it's not worth him throwing his freedom away for killing a punk. Everything works out, then. The punk will do time, but reform after getting out of jail. Father Mac will live another 20 years, doing good deeds and making the world a better place.
It's a good episode, and one which subtly plays off of the darkness we delved into with the previous episode. Whereas that one used karmic balance as a negative, playing it off as a life for a life, this one treats it as a positive. Do better next time, and leave the world in a better place than you found it in the long run. It's not a bad philosophy, and if this is how Sam truly copes from the messy actions of Vietnam then I can just about accept it. Its ruminations on faith are also intriguing from the increasing spiritual bent this show demands to be read under. Yeah, it's good. I do wonder if we will go back to the well of what Sam did in Vietnam, but time will tell and we've got more leaps to make.
One Strobe Over The Line: It just wouldn't be a show from the 1990s without the requisite "drugs are bad" episode. At the very least Quantum Leap handles it better than something like, oh say, a mass crossover of every children's cartoon character in which they all tell you that marijuana is the devil's drug and if you blaze it then the wispy ghost of George C. Scott will turn you into a gaunt and sickly child. Yes, this is a specific reference. Yes, the 1990s really were like that. And no, Quantum Leap is not going to take that stance on weed. Instead we're going to talk about amphetamines and the heavy cost of making it in the world of fashion and modelling.
Sam kind of likes Edie, as he takes her back to her apartment in New York City. The pair bond over the fact that Edie also grew up on a farm, and is doing the model thing to help her family be better off back on the farm. Sam has to lie a little because the photographer didn't grow up on a farm, instead making up something about visiting his cousin in the summers but still sharing that common interest to bond with Edie. That charm makes the stark reality of the leap all the stronger: Edie is going to OD on those pills, so Sam has to be the one to stop her from taking them. The solution he comes up with is staying with her all weekend and making her go cold turkey. I don't know if that's the most medically sound way to get someone off of amphetamines, but that's just what he goes with.
I really like the cinematography during this segment. I know about as much as cinematography as I do quantum physics, but even I can see there's a stylistic approach in mind to convey the withdrawal Edie is feeling. For this segment, we have a handheld camera approach which shakes and bounces as the cameraman tracks Edie through her apartment late at night, searching desperately through her place for a pill to pop. Going all found footage only accentuates the fractured state Edie is in currently, as does the decision to do all of this, then Sam stopping her, then her coming on to Sam in one singular long take. The show itself is frazzled because of Edie's state, unable to steady the camera and unable to even edit itself. It's a simple touch, but it's one that stood out to me. I may not know the words and techniques involved, but I know that the camera is doing things here that mirror the plot of the story.
Okay, let's talk about Helen. Helen really does kind of suck. She's the kind of woman who cares only about her career, everything else be damned. She has a history of working the models she manages down to the bone, then using her special pills to perk them back up to work harder to get her to Make It In This Business. She has gotten models killed this way, lives cut short by one pill too many. Somehow she avoided the consequences of this, and so she's learned nothing from it and is doing the same thing to Edie. There's also the fact that she's involved with the photographer Sam's leapt into, coming on to him in the back of a restaurant during a night out. When Sam rebukes her, she thinks it's because he has a thing for Edie and she even makes threats about Edie which Sam doesn't take too kindly to.
Regardless, Edie made it through the weekend and just has to make it through another shoot. She's tired, but Sam is a good egg and is making sure she has plenty of coffee to stimulate her rather than pills. Edie even stands up for herself and refuses to take the pills Helen offers, despite the woman's insistence that her career won't be ruined over one idiot model with a conscience. Conscience is something Helen seems to lack, because after she's refused she fucking slips the pills into Edie's coffee anyway. This leads into the climax of the episode where Edie, now high as fuck on those pills, pisses off Snowball the lion by splashing champagne into the lion's face. Snowball goes wild, chasing down Edie, and Edie passes out and is beginning to OD. Sam's here to save the day, though, after making Helen admit what pills she slipped Edie. He keeps Edie awake, walking her around and talking more about his farm and her farm so she doesn't pass out and die before the ambulance arrives. Helen is left begging to all the people on the photo shoot, telling them it's not over yet and she still has a career, as everyone in the shot silently walks away from her, Al even vanishing out of the shot. She has nothing. Time to pay the price for your actions.
As for Edie, she's going back to the farm, and Sam tells her about his "cousin" Sam Beckett. She'll be fine. This one's not half-bad. For an anti-drug story, it at least tackles a serious hard drug in an industry wracked with drug use and tragic ends. It's got the right kind of antagonist, one you really hate, and it's got creative camera choices. I kind of liked it. I especially think I'm going to like the next one, though. It seems as if it's time once again for Quantum Leap to get SPOOOoooOOOOKY!!!
The Boogieman: Holy fuck. Holy fuck, y'all. This is a new high mark in Quantum Leap for me, just for how batshit gonzo it gets with the spooky setting. Recall that last season's "A Portrait For Troian" also played around with a spooky setting and raised the possibility that something supernatural was afoot, only to then reveal it was just a gaslighting jerk, only to then swerve right into "actually ghosts are real in Quantum Leap". Because of that, all bets are off when it comes to the spooky shenanigans happening in this episode. Supernatural shit is real, so it could very well be that which explains everything. Even with the limiters off, this one manages to go to absolutely wild and unexpected places. Let's get into it, and really jam.
It's Halloween 1964, and Sam has leapt into Joshua Ray, a horror author living in a spooky house with his fiancée Mary and working on making it into a haunted house attraction for Halloween night. The opening has a confused Sam wander around this place before opening a closet door, having a devil jump out and go boo, and Sam tumbling down the stairs. It's okay, it's just a helpful kid named Stevie helping out with the haunted house who looks up to Joshua Ray and has story ideas of his own. We'll get back to Stevie, trust me. Far more pressing is the fact that people start fucking dying in mysterious and unexplained ways, and Sam is unable to save them. An old handyman working on the second-floor windows has his ladder tumble and he breaks his neck. Sam swears he saw a goat nudge the ladder loose, but the local sheriff says there are no goats around anywhere.
While Al says Sam wasn't here to save that poor old man, this is still a terrible sort of failure state for Quantum Leap. Sam is supposed to save people and make the story better, and now a man's died while he's been in this leap. Worse, it happens again. An old lady visits to lend the haunted house some candelabras, only to get bit by a venomous snake that Joshua Ray had in a glass case which got loose somehow. Two deaths in one day. This is a terrible leap, but what could be going on? There are inklings and rumors about the house being haunted. There's more evidence for that with Joshua Ray's typewriter. Each time someone dies, the current page on the typewriter updates itself and tells a brief lurid horror novel description of their terrible death. Later, when Mary confronts Sam after he's been talking to Al, she gets furious with him and a skull flies off of the wall via psychic force before Mary has a seizure and has to go to the hospital.
At the hospital, Sam seems to imply to Al that telekinesis is real? Like he has a bit of technobabble about it which I don't exactly have memorized, but that's the vibe I get. He's scientifically explaining how someone could move things with their mind. Al thinks Mary is the killer in this case, but Sam suspects the sheriff. They head to Mary's house, which has the street number of 966... and in a great gag, as Al goes in before Sam, Sam doesn't notice the wind spin that 9 around. Let's fast forward a bit here. More spooky shit happens, like that goat showing up in the middle of the road to drive Sam off the road in Joshua Ray's red Plymouth Fury. Lucky Stevie is there, as Sam remarks that the car had a mind of its own. You know, like that John Carpenter movie, Christine. Oh right, it's 1964, you have no idea what I'm talking about.
So then Sam finds the sheriff dead in his car, having been on the way to pick up Mary. Back to the house he goes, only to find Mary there with the sheriff, very much alive... and here's where shit goes crazy. This reveal completely blindsided me, but all the clues were there to an extent. Sam grabs the sheriff and he morphs... into Al. It was Al all along, y'all. Or rather, someone taking on the guise of Al. Sam points out some inconsistencies and clues that a really attentive viewer may have picked up on. Like how Al knew what the old handyman had said to Sam before falling, or the fact that he never opened up the big white door to leave the scene this time around. All of Al's data has been inconclusive this leap, keeping Sam from saving people and helpless as they kept dying. To hammer the point home, the real Al shows up and apologizes for being late, only to do a double take. Okay, so if this isn't Al, who the hell is it?
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| THEY PUT A RED LIGHT OVER MY EYES, SAM! THAT MEANS I'M THE FUCKING DEVIL! |
Yes, we're really rolling with the old "it was all a dream" resolution... or are we truly? I'd like to believe in a certain level of ambiguity here. Yes, the episode itself was a terrible nightmare... but who dreamt it up? Was it all Sam's subconscious, his fears and anxieties creating this terrible scenario where people got killed and he couldn't save them and the devil himself stood in opposition to him and his ethos? I could buy it, but on the other hand... if we're going to theorize and believe that the Lord God is guiding these leaps, then that would naturally imply that the devil has something to say about that. It could very well have been the devil influencing Sam's nightmare, diving in directly to really mess with him and make his presence known. I'm partial to that reading because of the absolutely gonzo implications of it. Ghosts are real, telekinesis is real, and Lucifer the fallen angel has a bone to pick with Sam Beckett.
And so we close with Sam, Mary... and Stevie. Which, have you pegged it yet? I admit I didn't because I was so compelled by figuring out what the hell was happening here. I'll spell it out. After mentioning telekinesis and kitchen knives offhandedly, Stevie thinks that'd be a killer story idea. Then his mom picks him up as he pets his Saint Bernard named Cujo and Mary bids a hello to Mrs. King. Oh yeah. OH YEAH. THEY WENT THERE. They went and did the "Sam Beckett Inspires A History" thing and applied it to Stephen King. Telekinesis and kitchen knives? That's part of Carrie, King's first novel which he'd write a decade after this episode was set. You'd think I'd be madder about them doing this history-making thing to one of my writing inspirations, but I'm not actually. Yes, it's absolutely inaccurate and boiling him down to the signifiers a layperson would know about his work via osmosis (haunted car named Christine, rabid dog named Cujo) but some things save it.
Namely that I'm enough of a fan that I've actually read enough King to have actually read his nonfiction work, specifically the bits where he's talked about his actual inspirations and idea seeds for what would become Carrie. With that knowledge, I can easily headcanon that all Stevie got from Sam Beckett is that one scene with the knives. The Christine thing happened in a dream so it doesn't count. Before I forget, another fun bit of synchronicity involving Quantum Leap and King. This episode aired in October of 1990. The most recent King novel on the bookstands at the time was called Four Past Midnight, a novella anthology. The first novella of the set is a little story called The Langoliers, which is a completely bonkers time travel story. In 1995 or so it got a TV adaptation, and who should be playing one of its characters but... Dean Stockwell! If I have the math right, this would have been right after Quantum Leap wrapped up. Fun to think about, eh?
(Continued in 3.2)
I didn't have the context the last time I saw The Leap Home, Part 1, but looking back at it now, Sam's reaction reminds me of nothing so much as the end of Our Town, when Emily revisits her own past as a ghost, and her joy at reconnecting with people long gone turns to torment at the way everyone around her is unable to treasure the moment.
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