It all comes down to grief. There was another member of the family, an elder son named Danny who was of college age and pleaded to go backpacking in Europe, which Joe opposed but Irene agreed to. He got to go, but he never made it; the plane crashed on the way. The wound of Danny's loss hasn't healed, and Joe is emotionally distant to his family because of it. He buries himself in his work, doesn't really interact with his daughter or wife, and is generally just cold. The pair of them are dealing with the loss of Danny, too, and to have the man of the house disregard them in order to close his own heart off is hurting them. That's part of what will drive Irene into another man's arms, but Sam does his best to try and help them. He learns this at the same pace we do, and does what he can to try and reassure Karen and Irene that Joe still cares for them. He tries to get Irene and Joe on a romantic vacation to their beach house, but Joe doesn't want to go; the beach house only reminds him of his dead son. Joe even has refused to put up a headstone for Danny, perhaps opting for the "if I don't acknowledge it he's not really gone" approach. Not great.
Then we get to the antagonist of the episode, the perfect scummy intersection of grief and infidelity. Let me tell you about fucking Bert Glasserman. He's introduced to us as a widower with a greying beard who's constantly smoking a pipe. Bert is writing a book about grief, and likes to discuss the shared mutual subject of grief and loss with other women as research for his book. Bert, my friends, is a fucking pick-up artist. He's been lying about losing a wife, in order to try and empathize better with the women he approaches. I could say Bert's a piece of shit who doesn't care about the grief and loss that's wounded these women's hearts, but that's not entirely true. He does care, in two major ways. Crucially, none of them are in the decent human being way of "I genuinely care about letting you express your pain and loss in a way that will help you come to terms with it and heal a little from sharing.". No, here's why Bert cares about their stories of loss. One: The immediate gratification of being able to leverage their most vulnerable moments into putting the moves on them so he can sleep with them for his own pleasure. Two: Taking their stories and adding them to his book, which will become a best-seller in the future and make him a shitload of money. Bert Glasserman only plays along with caring because caring will get him laid and get him rich. He couldn't give two shits otherwise, and for that he's a opportunistic homewrecking slimebucket.
Luckily Sam shows up just in time to stop him and reveal the truth to Irene, so Bert can slip out the fucking door. Unluckily, Joe arrives at the beach house just in time to see Sam and Irene hugging it out and he thinks they're fooling around behind his back, and proceeds to punch his own brother in the face. This, surprisingly, is character development for Joe. Not only was he emotionally distant all episode, but he even admitted to Joe in the car near the start that he was considering having an affair himself. Now, thinking his own wife has gone behind his back, he's mad enough to smack the proverbial fox in the henhouse. Hey how about that, he actually does care about his wife! Well, then it all comes out: he's been resenting Irene for Danny's death this whole time because she was the one who let him go to Europe. Irene, by contrast, has been resenting herself for letting him go to Europe, and the two break down sobbing as they each share how they keep Danny alive in their own hearts, bonding over their loss. Not for sex, or for hitting the fucking best-seller list. Because they love each other, and share this loss, and want to each heal the other. Joe lost a son, and it's a devastating and raw loss... but he still has a wife and daughter he can hold on to. He can't let grief and resentment drive them away, too, and he almost did.
It's the first step to healing from the loss. They put up Danny's headstone, and Sam gives Joe one last bit of advice to go to his daughter and console her, to be a good dad... and that's the episode. Well, before we go, I just want to tell you about another Sam Beckett Does A History Gag. The Quantum Leap wiki calls these "kisses with history". If the show keeps this up we'll have to call it a hot and heavy makeout session. Anyway a guy's choking so Sam grabs him from behind to force the obstruction out, saving the guy's life. As he's led away, the lady with him asks OH MY GOSH DR. HEIMLICH ARE YOU OKAY? Ahahahah you get it, Sam did that maneuver and the guy will patent it and be named for it. Funny joke. This is a great episode, though. It deals with heavy subject matter and combines it all together quite well, using it effectively with a real scumbag of an antagonist to boot. I cried a little at the end, but I really enjoyed it! So far this run of episodes has been on fire, what's the show got next for me--
OH-- OH MY GOD WH-- SCOTT BAKULA SAID WHAT? BUT HE CAN'T-- I MEAN, THAT WORD'S-- OH GOD HELP ME!!!!!
Jimmy: Okay, we have to tackle this one different, and deal with the elephant in the room I was screaming about there. This episode's major issue involves (and I apologize in advance if this isn't the respectful term for it, I tried my best and did some Googling) intellectual disability, which our titular leapee has. Except they don't say "intellectual disability" or anything of a more graceful nature. They say a word I will not repeat, beginning with R, multiple times. Lest you think it's just the prejudiced time of 1964 saying it pejoratively about Jimmy, Sam and Al say it too. The thing I reacted to in horror was the teaser/opener for the episode, where Sam looks in the mirror after Jimmy's brother has exposited this fact to him and says, questioningly, "I'm [REDACTED]?". So, you know, major major poorly aged alerts all around for this one. Even before we begin, that's not great and is a black mark against the episode.
One would think Sam has this in the bag. After all, the blind pianist episode proved that any sort of disability the leapee has doesn't transfer to Sam upon leaping. Sam could see, and as Jimmy he has all his neurotypical mental faculties. Keeping that job and keeping Jimmy from being sent away again isn't so easy. The entire damn world seems to be against him here. Most of the dock workers, in particular an ornery man named Blue (played by Michael Madsen, who went on to feature in many a Tarantino film) bully and belittle Jimmy. Connie, as I said, has a short fuse of patience when it comes to Jimmy. The neighboring kids tease Corey about hanging out with Jimmy and imply he'll become dumber for doing it. All of this gets to Sam, and Sam in this episode is a little... klutzier than usual. He'll drop breakable things or mess up in little tiny ways. Simple small little mistakes that the average person makes every day. What's fucking unfair, and the point of the episode, is how much harsher everyone treats these small mistakes when Jimmy does them. They become unforgivable sins, another chip on the pile, another building reason as to why they should just lock him up and throw away the key. It's as if everyone in this world has a Subway card to stamp and keep track of Jimmy's mistakes. THAT WAS SCREW-UP #4, JIMMY! JUST SIX MORE AND YOU GET INSTITUTIONALIZED!!! HAVE A GOOD DAY AT WORK TOMORROW, NO PRESSURE!!!
That's the point of the episode. To highlight how bullshit and unfair the double standards of 1964; hell, the double standards of 1989 and 2022 were/are towards people with these disabilities. Al, in particular, is especially motivated to make this leap succeed, as he shares with Sam the sad story of his sister Trudy. She also had an intellectual disability, and she was institutionalized and died in there. You can see poor Al's heart break as he asks, "how does a 16-year old girl in 1953 die of pneumonia?". Things go from bad to worse, as a screwup from Blue causes him to blame Jimmy, and Frank stakes his job on Jimmy not getting fired and they both walk out. This seems to be the low point where it's "just not working" and Jimmy has to go away. Yeah, it's "just not working" because you stacked the deck so much against him ever succeeding with your unreasonable expectations of absolute perfection and treating every little tiny fault like a complete disaster.
Sam's not giving up yet, though, and steals Frank's truck to go and convince the boss that he didn't fuck up and Blue did. Not only does he prove it, but he gets out why Blue is so judgmental towards him: Blue has dyslexia and can't cope with the fact that even someone with a disability like Jimmy can read the numbers off of crates better than him. There's no way someone like Jimmy could be smarter than him! Well, the climax has Blue try to run down Jimmy with a forklift, but the miss and crash knocks a nearby Corey into the water, where Sam has to convince Connie to let him try to perform CPR, that he damn well knows what he's doing and isn't a complete fuckup who can't be trusted. He does it, he saves Corey's life, and Connie seems to trust Jimmy a little more. Jimmy's got a job back, and it seems like it's going to work out for him.
I mean, it's effective, I'll give it that. It exposes the uncomfortable prejudice against Jimmy for what it is, and it frustrates you to see Sam not be trusted to do simple tasks and treated badly for minor mistakes. Good! You should be frustrated about that sort of treatment, because it's terrible and you should strive to do better and inspire others around you to do better! The episode's heart is in the right place, the general correct vicinity. I just wish they didn't say that damn word so fucking much in those 45 minutes. I have to ding it a few pegs for that, but even so it's still an effective episode, like I said. Let's hope we don't get anything quite that prickly in that way for a while, and can have another run of bangers.
 |
| Nothing but the truth. |
Not so good are the stacked odds against the defendant, Lilah. Sam immediately hopped in as the judge was asking how they were pleading, and Sam took one look in his client's eyes and believed she was innocent, pleading not guilty to the consternation of the entire courtroom. WE HAD A DEAL, DAMN IT, YOU PLEAD GUILTY AND SHE GETS 20 YEARS! Yes, that would be a better outcome than her getting the electric chair after a damning trial... but that's just it. These fuckers are mad because they already decided the outcome of the trial and Sam's not playing ball. There's no fair trial happening here. They have decided Lilah did it and are ready to throw her in jail for 20 years. There's a reason for this, and it goes beyond the color of Lilah's skin. The truth is afoot, and Sam has to dig it up.
Sam and Al's window into the legal world is Perry Mason. Well, shit, that's okay. Mine is Phoenix Wright. What Sam uncovers is one hell of a tangled web involving Lilah working as a servant for some rich southern folks and being involved with their son, a man named Houston. Who we find out beat Lilah and had his way with her. When she was 14. And the lawyer's wife has the gall to call her promiscuous? Jesus Christ. Well, the accepted story is that Lilah couldn't take any more of Houston's abuse and blew his fucking face off with a shotgun. Sam tries to get the truth out of another servant at the house named Myrtle, and while she has some info that contradicts Lilah's signed confession/account of events, Myrtle refuses to testify. At every turn, the truth refuses to come out. From Myrtle, from Houston's father who everyone refers to as "the Captain", and even from Lilah herself. She seems resigned to her fate, uncooperative with Sam's attempts to have her clear her name.
Well, the truth does come out, despite everyone's attempt to resist it... and a lot of why it was kept under wraps comes down to faith. It is in the title, after all, and that's what you do in a courtroom when you swear to tell the truth. You swear to God, on a Bible, that you'll tell the whole truth. Myrtle shows up again, revealing that she can't take the stand because the Captain made her swear on a Bible that she'd never tell the truth about what happened to Houston, and if she did she'd be damned to hell. The Captain, using god-fearing faith to keep the truth suppressed. Nasty. He has his reasons for wanting Lilah to take the fall on this, and it's more than just "I am a huge racist". Still, Sam helps Myrtle see that the Captain's word isn't stronger than the Lord's by reading a passage Al suggests from the Bible itself. That gets the truth out of her, and good lord.
It ended up being Houston's mother, who Sam had to get a subpoena to put on the stand, much to the Captain's protest. There's a slow creeping horror as she cheerily testifies to what happened as you realize "ohhh the trauma of this fucked her up" as she witnessed Houston and Lilah get in a fight, and she was the one who stopped it with a shotgun to the face. She doesn't even have the faculties to realize that he's dead, thinking he's just been gone hunting. She seemed unusually casual for a grieving mother earlier in the episode, but no first-time viewer would have expected this. There's justice for Lilah, but we never find out what happens to Houston's mother. This is the dark secret that everyone wanted kept hidden away, and Lilah was ready and willing to die for it. Noble of them, perhaps, but Sam brought the truth out and saved Lilah. She has a second chance now, and it may not be a happy ending for the Captain and his family, but it is one for Lilah. It's a good episode, sure, just another really really prickly one. Thankfully, I think we might get some levity with the next one. Or I could be wrong. Look down below and find out.
Catch A Falling Star: Yeah, I guess we can call that levity. If anything, this episode reminded me of "Star-Crossed" from the first season, way back a bit. Zoomed out, we have the same basic beats playing out again: Sam's leap has him encountering a woman from his past, a woman who he felt love and affection for, and he tries to use this as his own second chance for finding true love with a lost love despite Al's insistence that he can't use leaping for his own personal gain. He'll get a little wiser, learn a little more about himself and the person he loves, and do the right thing with his leap and leave things a little better than he found them. One wonders if this sort of plot will become an archetype for Quantum Leap, but that's all in the future.
What he does know is this familiar love interest waving to him after the show. Nicole, an old flame of Ray's, and someone who Sam recognizes. She's a piano teacher, and in fact she taught a young teenaged Sam how to play the piano. Teen Sam had a loving crush on his piano teacher, but nothing ever came of it (because that would have been inappropriate, to say the least) and so time moved on. Now, though, he's grown up and the time frame means it's only been a decade since those piano lessons. Sam wants his second chance, and wants to express his love to Nicole. He's doing so as Ray, yes, but there's that naive idealist hope that Nicole will see the Sam inside Ray and reciprocate that love he's held close to his chest for all these years.
Well, since the thing Sam's here to do is save his drunk leading man from breaking his leg while tripping down the stairs on stage in 3 days' time, there's nothing much else to do but rekindle that romance with Nicole. It's interesting to compare this with "Star-Crossed", as one of my takeaways from that episode was how grandiose and theatrical the gestures of love there were. Both Sam and Jamie Lee were expressing themselves via these big sweeping declarations of it being fate and destiny that these lovers should entwine and let their feelings blossom. Here's this episode, and while it's Cervantes and not Shakespeare it's still literally about the artifice of acting and the theater. The episode really plays with that when Nicole is cast as an understudy as well, playing the role of Don Quixote's love interest Dulcinea. Watching the two rehearse, getting into their characters, you can feel the sense of using them and the words of the play to express themselves to one another. Really, who is Sam if not an actor, given a different role every week and having to play his part? With the Quantum Leaping, all the world really is a stage.
Of course, we need a little conflict, so we have some mild contrivance and misunderstanding involving the jealous leading lady who's currently playing Dulcinea manipulating things so Sam thinks Nicole made it with the leading man, making Sam bitter and not prone to saving him from breaking his leg. Long story short, he does come through at the last minute, Sam and Nicole hash out their misunderstandings, and the pair get to play Don Quixote and Dulcinea on the stage. Goddamn, Scott Bakula's got pipes, y'all. This is a good little episode, a nice bit of light levity from the serious thorny takes on prejudice and bigotry I've had to deal with for a little while now. I like the metacommentary on theatricality and playing a role, and the episode even plays with it a little. The end credits are usually just stills from the episode and static credits. This time it's an actual curtain call featuring both cast and crew on the theater stage, the credits scrolling like the end of a film. All they needed was to link hands and bow. Exactly the levity I needed. Not a bad one at all.
Right away there's equal parts atmosphere and tension. The Claridge family home, where Troian lives, definitely fits the bill of a gothic old house that could be haunted. The only other people living in the house are the housekeeper Ms. Stolz, who's very old-fashioned and ice cold, and Troian's brother Jimmy who looks about as fitting as you can imagine in your head when I tell you this story is set in 1971. Neither of them are particularly friendly to Sam, Jimmy outright calling him a quack who's running around chasing things that don't exist while also feeding his sister's delusions, risking getting her institutionalized for enabling them. Hostility's afoot at Claridge House, and so is a bunch of spooky shit. Like Troian hearing a whispering echo call her name, and following wet footprints in the carpet only to find the soaking wet painting she did of Julian on the lake in his boat, which she was painting the day he fell in the water and drowned. Troian can't swim, so she couldn't help him, and she threw the painting into the lake... but now here it is, fresh and soaked as if the spectre of Julian took it out of the cold depths of the lake with him.
Here's where the episode gets really smart and interesting. Quantum Leap, up to this point, has been many things. It's sci-fi with its premise of quantum physics and time travel, and it's poked at spirituality by implying that God is guiding Sam's seemingly random leaps through time and space. Watching all this play out, there appear to be two distinct possibilities. Either ghosts are real and Julian is back from the dead trying to reconnect with his wife, or there's a scientific explanation behind these strange phenomena. Interestingly, Al is actually the one who's spooked and superstitious enough to believe in the former. It's Sam, the guy stuck in the body of the parapsychologist, who's insisting to the trembling Al that there's no such things as ghosts. The question then becomes, what will Quantum Leap pull the trigger on? What's going on here?
There's a real sense of ambiguity and mystery in this one, and it lead me to watch it with an extra-analytical nature, theorizing off the top of my head with every line spoken and action taken by its players. I did not think Quantum Leap was going to go the "ghosts are real" route, so the suspects are Ms. Stoltz or Jimmy. Jimmy seemed to care for his sister enough to try and protect her from Sam and his ghost hunter bullshit, so at first it seemed like it must be the old housekeeper. She's cold and sinister enough, it could be it. Ah, but then Sam raised the possibility that Troia was being gaslit by someone early on. Probably not the case, then, if he says that early enough. There's also more wild stuff, like how it seems that Ms. Stoltz and Jimmy can hear Al? Or how the parapsychologist's equipment actually recorded Sam's brain waves as he leaped in, and can record Al's presence in them as he communicates with Sam? Science meets spooky stuff. Am I watching Prince Of Darkness here?
Well, to fast-track it along, it was Jimmy all along. I can even tell you the moment I noticed. After Troian is nearly trapped in the mausoleum when a sudden earthquake hits, Jimmy is fiddling with the TV to try and get it working, and Troian calls him an electronic genius. Aha! That sounds like a clue, and you're right! Jimmy has rigged an entire system of tape recorders with wireless antennae all over Claridge House, as well as in the mausoleum and on the pier of the lake, broadcasting a spooky ghost voice that calls out Troian's name at an ultra-high frequency only she can hear. His motive is to drive her mad so he gets control of the monetary assets to pay off gambling debts. There's another great clue to this I only realized in hindsight: the ominous stock sounds of dogs howling whenever spooky stuff happened. It's because the dogs were going apeshit over the high frequency noise that we couldn't hear! Like a dog whistle!
Sam gets locked in a room by Ms. Stoltz for... some reason, and it's up to Al to try and stall Jimmy as he confronts Troian on the pier. How the hell can Al do that if he's a hologram? All this cutting-edge 70's tech can pick him up, remember? So Al starts whispering in spooky tones, pretending to be Julian and saying Jimmy's name and shit. Earlier on, Jimmy could even hear Al, and accused Sam of throwing his voice. Now we know that was probably him being able to hear back his own high-frequency broadcast stuff. Before I sat down to write this, I wondered why he was so pissed off at Sam for being a parapsychologist "quack" who was going to drive his sister mad when that was his evil scheme the whole time. Easy answer: He would have pinned Troian's mental state on the doctor's bullshit theories, and have an easy scapegoat. Though Jimmy hurls Troian into the lake, Sam is able to football tackle Jimmy off of the pier, and he manages to save Troian. Jimmy, like the dark history of so many Claridges before him, drowns in the lake.
So, there's your answer. Quantum Leap sits firmly on the side of rationality when it comes to matters of the paranormal. Ghosts aren't real, it was just an asshole gaslighting his sister for money. Another earthquake forces up all the bodies of the many Claridges who drowned in the lake beforehand, and Troian is able to finally say goodbye to Julian as his body is at last recovered. There's some healing there, and it isn't ghostly but something very real and material. Ahh. Well, we should head home and get Ms. Stoltz to make us some hot drinks. Stoltz? Did you say Stoltz? Oh, that's interesting. Did you know the maiden name of Priscilla Claridge, one of the family who drowned in that lake a hundred years ago, was Stoltz? Wait. Wait. Yep. YEP! MS. STOLTZ WAS A FUCKING GHOST ALL ALONG! After stringing us along this spooky story and eventually proving it was a gaslighter all along, Quantum Leap pulls one final swerve and reveals that yes, ghosts are real in the world of Quantum Leap! The episode manages to hang on this debate of whether or not it will pull the trigger, swerves into science, and then right back into the gothic and spooky! I really enjoyed this one, as it not only leaned into my spooky aesthetic, but also just kept me guessing and analyzing. I'm still guessing and analyzing because this episode has such rich ambiguity to it, so I'm a real fan. What have we got next-- Wait, why the fuck are we back in "Camikazi Kid"?
No comments:
Post a Comment