(TW: even more sexual assault, and another suicide attempt)
Roberto!: And it sure is making fun of what I thought it was. Before that, I once again have to perk up during the credits. This episode is once again directed by Scott Bakula himself. There's nothing so chaotic and terrifying as the climax of "Permanent Wave" going on with the direction here, but there's a few neat ways he shoots things. Like how, since this is a leap into a TV host this time, all the mirror shots of the leapee are replaced with seeing him on TV cameras and monitors. There's another great shot with Bakula on the computer which zooms in on a pair of glasses to reflect the computer screen lighting up in one lens, to show that words are coming up on the screen. You notice interesting shots like that, and I like them. It feels especially meta for Bakula, an actor, to lean full-in on seeing the leapee through a TV camera because that's how Bakula himself is seen every day on the set of this show.
For now, Sam is paired up with an antagonistic reporter named Jani Eisenberg. Roberto and Jani don't care much for each other, exchanging somewhat playful barbs before they enter a bet that Roberto can't do a serious and hard-hitting story. This leads Sam to take the bet, agreeing to take on the next story that comes in to Jani's desk. Immediately she gets a phone call about a farmer who swears he saw yellow one-eyed aliens roaming around at night. Later, they get calls about a whole bunch of missing sheep. So, you know, Jani may be right to smugly boast about what she'll buy with her hundred bucks.
No, there is an actual story happening here, one of corporate corruption and cold coverups. It all has to do with the Saxton plant, a new industrial factory which has come into town thanks to the business tycoon it's named for, Ed Saxton. Sam gets a call from a whistleblower wanting to talk about stuff going on at the plant, but when Sam and Jani make it to the bar to talk to the guy, they find he's been killed by a mysterious hit and run. Now would be a good time to mention the future Sam is here to change is Jani mysteriously driving off of a cliff in two days' time. Helpfully, they find a plant ID card at the scene of the crime, do some sneaking around to find the locked card reader it opens, to find... Yellow hazmat suits!
Yes, the Saxton plant has been carelessly fucking around with nerve gas to sell as a weapon to the army so Saxton can make a shitload of money. They are doing this in secret and willing to kill anyone who would dare expose their scheme because there's so much money to be made. The next day, Sam and Jani head back to the plant with a TV camera and a live feed to expose Saxton's evil scheme! Look, you know how this is going to down. We all know how this is going to go down. Sam opens the door and there's nothing there. Saxton covered up the evidence but there's no way for Sam to prove it, and he looks like a complete idiot on live TV as he's opened a door which is supposed to have shocking secrets within, but turns out to have nothing in it.
It is at this point I'd like to tell you about The Mystery Of Al Capone's Vaults, a sensationalist live TV special from the 80's which was going to open up a secret vault belonging to the legendary gangster, speculating about what sort of shocking secrets would be inside for two hours... only to open the thing up live on the air, find absolutely nothing in it, and have the host and everyone involved look like complete idiot on live TV. By the way, the host in question who got egg on his face? A sensationalist talk show host you may have heard of named Geraldo Riviera. Funny joke, Quantum Leap. Very funny joke.
Not so funny a joke: Saxton deciding to kill Jani to protect his precious, precious money. His scheme is pretty devilish, too. I haven't mentioned it, but Jani has asthma. So, Saxton has his hired goon sneak into the newsroom late at night, and swap Jani's inhaler for one laced with the nerve gas. Oh yeah, breathing in a bit of the nerve gas makes you suffocate in a way that would look to all the world like a severe and fatal asthma attack. We cut from this, after a late night of Sam on the computer playing hackerman to get into Saxton's system and learn about the gas, to Sam calling Saxton the next morning to tell him that Jani is dead. After some accusing, Saxton basically arranges for a "scholarship" (read: bribe) in her memory, and Sam manages to get him to double it in exchange for coming onto his show so Roberto can apologize for his accusations.
What follows is a thing of beauty. Yeah, sure, Quantum Leap, you're going to have this be a failed leap and kill Jani offscreen. I totally buy that. So does Saxton, who appears on the show to get his apology. But then Sam keeps going, talking all about this gas, and how you could slip it into something like an asthma inhaler... like this one here. Just one little spritz and it could totally kill someone, and it would look to all the world like an asthma attack... and then he spritzes Saxton. Saxton freaks the fuck out as if he's been poisoned, but nah. That was just a regular old asthma inhaler... but isn't it curious that you thought it was deadly poison? Oh, look at that, Jani's alive and well and has a warrant to search your plant thoroughly. What do you know?
I really enjoyed Roberto, and there are wild parts I didn't even tell you about. Like a cameo from Dr. Laura? I don't know why the fuck she's here, but she sure is here for a few minutes! It manages to both be a fun parody of sensational talk shows as well as a serious look at corrupt big business and exposing it via investigative journalism. I also really like the dynamic between Sam and Jani, and they don't become lovers at the end either. Just... I dunno, frenemies? Fun leap, aside from all the murder and attempted murder. Let's move on, and we're getting closer to the end of the season now. I should be worried.
It's A Wonderful Leap: This episode's a wholesome heartfelt thing, with a little ambiguity and just one or two points that I have problems with. It's 1958 in New York City and Sam is Max Greenman, a cab driver who's close to winning a contest his cab company is holding. If he can make 15,000 dollars in a year he gets his own medallion, which will let him own and operate his own taxi. Sounds good, except for the part where Max will get robbed and killed on the last night of the contest, so obviously they have to prevent that. There's far more going on than just the cab story, though, as Sam immediately runs a woman down on the street in the opener... and she's fine.
We've done this song and dance before of each of our leads arguing between the supernatural and the skeptical. Kind of funny that the roles are flip-flopped from the last time we saw this kind of debate in "Ghost Ship". Al can believe in the Bermuda Triangle but not in angels. He's very prickly with Angelina, and it does make for some funny back and forth interactions between the two. She even calls him the devil, which hey, has she seen the Halloween episode? On the other hand... Well, it's hard not to equate the two facts of "this is the one woman on the show Al doesn't want to fuck" and "Al makes a few ribs about how Angelina is fat". Hmmm, no, I don't think I like the implication the show stepped in there one bit, thank you.
And while we're in complaint mode, let's just get this out of the way. After a very long time, we have the return of the good old "Kiss With History" running gag where the episode stops for a minute to have Sam meet and unintentionally influence someone who will go on to be famous. Now, look. I like to think I've mellowed out a bit as I've gone through this show, and have grown past the angry polemics of how Buddy Holly is an attack against the heart and soul of Quantum Leap. Any other day, I would just tell you who the cameo is, roll my eyes with a "har har har I know who that is" and we'd move on. I can't do that and feel obligated to scream into the void a little, because of who the cameo is. So, here it is.
In Sam's cab, he's driving a businessman and his young son to a broker's meeting about real estate. When Sam offhandedly mentions that real estate will be big in New York in the future, the son asks what he means. Sam comments that there will be lots of new tall buildings in town. Maybe even a big glass tower right next to Tiffany's there. The businessman pays Sam for the ride, opening the door and addressing his son as someone is there to meet them. "Come on, Donald." says the businessman. "Here we are, Mr. Trump." says the man outside escorting the businessman. I-- You-- They-- Oh dear GOD! Okay, I'm not so much yelling at the show here because it was 1992 and he was still a kooky businessman and not a fascist president yet. I am yelling into the void of the poorly-aged. Nevertheless. OH DEAR GOD!!! AAAAAGH!!!
Where was I, before I went off on that horrible tangent? Ah yeah, Angelina. Usually, when the show does this spiritual vs. skeptic debate, the spiritual wins. Ghosts, ESP, and the Bermuda Triangle are definitively real. With Angelina, things remain ambiguous. We never are explicitly told whether she's an angel sent by God to watch over His little Quantum Leaper, or just an eccentric homeless person with delusions. That being said, given that it's more interesting, I'll believe that she's an angel. Certainly, when the robbery happens thanks to Al not setting Ziggy to EST and getting the time of it wrong, Angelina provokes the gunman and takes the bullet to absolutely no personal harm at all. Al explains it as the bullet just going through her coat, but Sam is convinced she's an immortal angel.
The robbery, though, that's interesting. It was not random happenstance. One of Sam's fellow cabbies was put up to it by their boss, who didn't actually want anyone to win the contest and get their medallion and presumably just wanted them working extra hard for a perceived incentive. He does not want to pay the 20,000 dollars for a medallion, and so has sabotaged Sam so awww, too bad, guess you still have to work for me. Then he fires Sam when he talks back, and Max Greenman's dad is so despondent over this that he heads to the cab company to threaten the boss at gunpoint. That escalated quickly. Sam stops him, and in the process manages to expose the cab boss's evil scheme of sabotaging his own worker's attempt at independence. A capitalist pulling the carrot back at the last moment before he has to lose any of his money? Color me shocked.
This is a good one, though. It definitely has its bad moments and we don't need to relitigate those, but I adore Angelina and all the sweet and quiet heartfelt moments between her, Sam, and Mr. Greenman. I enjoy her unflinching sass towards Al, and it's even got a story about capitalists being greedy and getting their comeuppance! What more can you ask for from a Quantum Leap? How about no cameo from a capitalist who will go on to do terrible things in a seat of power? Okay, I said I wasn't going to relitigate it, for the sake of stopping another rant let's move on.
Moments To Live: This is, at once, a very tense and very bizarre episode of the show. It seems to be riffing on a popular thing in very broad strokes, but what it has to say at the end is handled with Quantum Leap's usual microcosmic empathy. In 1985, Sam is a soap opera star named Kyle Hart, who plays a sexy doctor on daytime drama "Moments To Live". There are a few jabs at the melodramatic and absurd nature of soap operas from Sam, but what's funny is that very soon this episode itself will be as absolutely gonzo and sensational as a soap.
We have to be very careful in how we tread here. There are two possibilities at play. Either Norma is deluded enough to think that the kind-hearted doctor from TV will see it her way and agree to make love to her to make a baby... or she is going to get what she wants whether Kyle likes it or not. The first flies in tune with the theme of the rest of the episode, about how Norma is very troubled and really needs mental care. The second is rape. The second would be the unambiguous rape of Kyle Hart/Sam Beckett occupying Kyle Hart, and Sam reacts to the entire situation with a weary sort of "OHHH NO WHAT KIND OF WACKY MISADVENTURE IS THIS?". In a mad way, both readings are in play at once, I feel. Hmmm. The show already treated sexual assault with the seriousness it deserved in "Raped", but to have it be a wacky outlandish consequence in a mad scheme that has Sam all flustered is kind of treating it as a joke. I don't like the whiff of that implication.
I mentioned broad strokes before, and the whole idea of a famous person being kidnapped by their obsessed fan? That's just the infamous Stephen King novel/film Misery. In broad strokes only, of course, because Misery is very much about fan engagement, reaction, and outrage against creative decisions they don't agree with. It's prescient in a lot of ways, but that's not at all the story this episode is telling. Instead it's a story about Norma, and Sam trying to do his best to get his captors the help they need. Hank is all mixed up in this, only doing this for his wife out of love and thus someone Sam can work on and reason with. They hatch a scheme to help Norma distinguish between fantasy and reality, where Hank collapses and Sam says he has to operate on Hank's heart, but Norma won't let him and has to admit it's because he isn't a real doctor and only plays one on TV.
Unfortunately the grief and shock of seeing that Hank betrayed her to teach her this lesson sends her into a spiral, and she runs off to the nearest bridge to fling herself off of it. Sam has to talk her down, and this is interesting stuff. He's not the doctor she fell in love with on TV... but he's not the actor who plays him either. He's Sam Beckett, and he's the guy who helps people. Of course, he's also an actor named Scott Bakula, making everything delightfully meta in a wild way. Still, even after all of this, Sam empathizes with Norma and doesn't want her to die. She's very troubled and tried to do some bad things, but she did them because of the state of her mental health. She doesn't jump and does end up back in the hospital, where hopefully she gets the type of care she needs to get better.
Again, it's a really strange and melodramatic episode, but the tension is high for poor Sam shackled to a bed as a prisoner and doing what he can to escape a wild situation. The meta touches of the artifice between TV and reality are something, and it's just a weird episode that ends up empathizing for troubled people with bad mental health issues. It has something to say and says it in the most gonzo way possible. The male rape implications are a little icky, let's be fair... but with her issues I'm more sympathetic to Norma in hoping she gets help than I am for Kevin fucking Wentworth. I would rather not talk about rapists any more, so let's move on.
Now, knowing that fact from a Quantum Leap rerun from three years ago isn't required for you to get into this show. What do you think this is, the Chibnall era? Any hypothetical casual viewer catching this strange Egyptology episode would get a nice scene with Sam by a campfire explaining how he was fascinated by Egyptology as a kid, and get it. This is a childhood passion for him, and here in Egypt in 1957 in the body of archeologist Dale Conway, he's found the lost tomb of Ptah-Hotep. What a great find this will be for archeological history! How impressive Ptah-Hotep's treasures and trinkets and tomb are! How... horrific it is that bad things suddenly start happening and people start dying.
We're once again in the realm of "supernatural vs. skeptic" that we've played around with so many times before. Sam explains away all the bad shit like a cobra eating his canary or scorpions stinging and killing one of the poor Egyptian guys helping on the dig as just the way it is out here in the desert with wild animals. Al is completely spooked by the pharaoh's tomb and gets real bad vibes from it. We've played this song and dance before, but what's interesting is that both of them are actually right this time around. All of the bad shit that has happened up to this point is just coincidental bad shit. Even when the broken-down car of Dr. El-Razul, the Egyptian funding the dig, falls on top of another Egyptian working on the dig, it's all just coincidental bad shit. Sam, undeterred, busts a hole in the wall of the tomb on a theory and discovers the real burial tomb of the pharaoh. Sam, you call just breaking a wall on a hunch archaeology? Good Christ.
Well, breaking that open "caused" the camp to catch on fire and burn down. Or it was just unlucky. Sam, in a desperate bid to prove that there's no fucking pharaoh's curse, waltzes down to the tomb with his fellow archaeologist Jenny, and says that if there's really a curse then something bad will happen if he takes the great big diamond out of the sarcophagus. Which he does... immediately upon which he activates a booby trap to seal them in. Dr. El-Razul leaves to get help while Sam and Jenny are left to stew, a cataclysmic sandstorm also on the way which will bury the tomb once again for good... until the building of the Aswan Dam in the 60's destroys it. Helpfully, though, the stolen jewel also has a clue on it for how to escape? You push a particular part of the wall in the tomb and the door opens back up. So Sam and Jenny do that, put the diamond back, and they're free!
Free to run into Dr. El-Razul with a gun, who has decided to become a baddie and kill them to take all the treasure for himself. He didn't do all the murder and shit, though. That really was just random happenstance. This is the first premeditated bit of the episode, and so they go back into the tomb... but Sam tricks him and gets out with Jenny just as they take the jewel out of the sarcophagus again. Ah, but they can't just leave Dr. El-Razul to such a horrible fate. The good-hearted Sam tells him to push the wall and he does... as a blackened hand grabs Dr. El-Razul by the shoulder and we hear screaming. Al walks into the wall to check it out and he looks horrified. Yeah. Oh yeah. I told you that both of them were right. All the bad stuff was coincidence. ANCIENT EGYPTIAN PHARAOHS COMING BACK TO LIFE AS MUMMIES TO KILL GRAVE ROBBERS, THOUGH? 100% REAL!
It's interesting to have leapt outside of America for only the second time, and to have an episode focused on Egyptology based on that one passion. It's also very interesting that they managed to have their cake and eat it too in regards to supernatural stuff vs. skepticism. On the other hand, you know. White people "discovering" ancient Egyptian tombs and doing an archaeology/colonialism, and the fact that every Egyptian player in the show dies horribly. A whiff of the poorly-aged, but man is that mummy reveal something that made me cackle. Only two left now. This is the last bastion of stability before some massive narrative collapse and threat to the ethos of the show itself. Hope it's good.
Stand Up: Not really? I am afraid I really bounced off of this one, and it's entirely because of how unlikeable they make one of the guys Sam is here to help. That's really a shame because, as you'll see, I was really excited to enjoy this character. It's 1959 and Sam is Davey Parker, a comedian who's part of a comedy duo with the unlikeable guy I've been talking about, Mack Mackay. The immediate thing that makes one perk up is the casting: Mack is played by the late great Bob Saget, and this would have been right at the height of his appearances in 90's fare like Full House and America's Funniest Home Videos. Of course, Bob Saget was also one of the raunchiest comedians who ever lived, and even though this is still a network TV show you wonder if he'll push the envelope a little. At least he'll be funny.
If that weren't bad enough, Mack is also a sexist jerk to Frankie. Degorio liked the three of them on stage and so the trio is invited to Vegas, but Mack doesn't like this. He doesn't think much of Frankie, and doesn't think women can do comedy good. So he's a sexist with a short temper. Great, just the kind of person I want to watch for 45 minutes. Frankie doesn't care much for Mack either, the pair unable to help from getting into full-blown arguments every two seconds. Oh, by the way, they're in love with each other. All this anger and yelling is just hot and cold courting bullshit. Al horrifically psychoanalyzes Mack according to the "Woody Allen theory", and I assume he's talking about the man's self-insert in his movies. I would fucking hope so, because any theory about Woody fucking Allen I would come up with would be much worse.
Somehow, by some divine miracle, Sam plays matchmaker and gets these people to actually share a positive feeling between them for once in their lives and puts out the fire for a moment. Exactly one moment, until Degorio tries to take Frankie out to dinner and Mack loses it, punching the mafia man in the face and having all that latent sexism build confirmation bias in his head, making him convinced that Frankie is just a promiscuous girl who was leading him on. Good Christ this guy is just the worst. Sam manages to mend them enough again to do their show, but as soon as it's done hired goons are ready to cart Mack off to get whacked. Sam tries to stop them, ending up getting the shit beat out of him and whipped cream on his face before he can convince Degorio not to whack Mack... by telling him that Mack and Frankie are engaged. That makes them want to get married for real, and all Degorio does to get even is one punch in the face for Mack. Now they're square, and now they can plan the wedding. Sam tries to throw a pie in Al's face for a gag, and that's the leap.
Christ, I bounced off of this hard. I was never going to be won over with "unlikeable asshole who actually has a heart of gold", to be fair. Mack is just too much of a jerk for me to really vibe with it, and that's a shame because I really wanted to like Bob Saget in this. The jokes aren't even that funny. I honestly would have been better served watching 45 minutes of his own material, and that's really a damn shame. Worse yet, this is the penultimate episode of the season. I've been through this shit before, I know how it goes. Batten down all the hatches, prepare for the worst storm ever, and bunker down through the season transition as we experience a series of narrative collapse threats and ideological challenges to the very heart and soul of Quantum Leap itself. You all strapped down? Good. We're going in.
A Leap For Lisa: Well, I was definitely right about the narrative collapse part. As a season finale, it absolutely attempts to attack and destroy a part of the show, even succeeding at one horrible point. It's 1957 and Sam leaps into a dream to begin with. I guess this was done to make the nature of the leap vague, but it's an interesting idea to leap into a dream and it's not played with more. In the dream he's making out with a beautiful woman on the beach. In reality, he's a naval officer nicknamed Bingo who's confined to quarters and who has been accused of raping and murdering the wife of a high-ranking officer, Commander... Riker? Like, this man is actually named Riker. It's 1992, you knew full well what you were doing, guys.
Oh. Oh, he did have Lisa vouch for him and tell the defense attorney about their alibi of being together that night. Well, that's okay, Sam can just tell her he changed his mind and she should tell the truth! One problem with that. Al realizes the date, immediately centering on Lisa as she drives down the highway in tears before crashing and dying in a flaming wreck. The tragic loss being relived again in real time with no way to stop it is one thing. Thanks to Sam's altruistic nature and Al's nostalgic delaying, history has been changed so that now Bingo will be found guilty of the rape and murder of Marci Riker, and killed for it. So that's bad, and needs to be stopped before one of our leads ceases to exist.
It doesn't help that Commander Riker is deathly certain that he witnessed Bingo commit the assault and murder with his own two eyes. Marci Riker was always a bit promiscuous, stated to enjoy getting with all of her husband's subordinates one time each as some sort of initiation ritual? There's some deep-seated victim blaming going on here with Commander Riker, but on the other hand he does lament the loss of his wife... albeit as a kinky kindred spirit whom he'll never find again. Riker's going to nail Bingo for this, and indeed his testimony seems pretty damning, as much as the defense attorney tries. During the recess, Al is panicking as nothing seems to work and the odds of his execution are rising... and rising... and rising... and then...
The clue is a cigar in Bingo's car, and as soon as Sam finds it... Al is back! On the one hand, thank God. On the other hand, if you were going to bother flirting with an alternate timeline where Al ceases to be and Roddy McDowall is the other half of the duo, there should have been more of it to really marinate in the narrative collapse despair and wonder how we're getting out of it. The cigar is just the clue they need, as it belongs to Bingo's Navy pal Chip. Chip borrowed his car, picked up Marci, took her to the beach and tried to get forcefully frisky before she slipped and fell, bashing her head on a beach rock. Chip confesses all of this as we see it in black and white. Well, we can get Al out of being killed... but is that good enough? We change history all the time on this show. Sam is suggesting something far wilder.
They are going to leap Bingo, who we've seen talking to Al in the waiting room in 1999, into himself the night before the murder to keep Chip in his sight and prevent it from ever happening. Al does it, and Sam looks outside the room to see that the posted guard is gone... before Chip comes, acting like nothing is wrong. Oh, and Lisa's alive now too. In case you were wondering why this leap was titled after a woman who died five minutes in. We've done it! We've averted the narrative collapse, and created a better future for Al after almost having him plunge into timeline oblivion. Let's pause here, before the tease of next season, and sum all this up.
In a mad way, this combines the approaches of the last two season finales. "M.I.A." was a deeply personal story about trying to give Al closure for a terrible event in his past. "Shock Therapy" was a horrific narrative collapse which threatened to destroy the show itself. We get a mix here. We've delved into Al's traumatic past for a deeply personal story which almost goes terribly wrong and destroys the show we've been enjoying for all this time to replace it with Roddy McDowall like nothing happened. It definitely deals with some heavy subject matter, the idea of sexual assault and murder coming up once again. As flawed as Al is, as bad as we've seen some of his views, there was no way the show would have had him do something like this in his past.
This is, in some sense, coming back full circle to the opening of the season. There, Sam paid the price of narrative collapse by bravely leaping back into the past to save Al as repayment for all the times Al had saved him. Now, Sam saves Al once again and builds a better future for him. Even the most charitable reading of the horrors of "Running For Honor" has the altruistic instincts of Sam rubbing off on Al and cleaning the dark stains of bigotry from his heart to make him a better person. I'm thinking of Doctor Who again, and how the Doctor makes the companions better by their travels with him. In that respect, you can read Al as Sam's companion in one sense. Yes, Al has the future know-how and the guiding thanks to Ziggy, but morally? Al was a washed-up Vietnam vet and womanizer when he met Sam Beckett, and this boy genius and his quantum leaping pipe dreams made Al into a better person after all of this. That's something to strive for, and I did enjoy this episode for coming to that point in the end. Well, let's keep things paused and talk about Season 4 as a whole before moving on.
I mean, holy shit. It may be the heaviest season yet of the show. That trio of "Justice", "Permanent Wave", and "Raped" are emblematic of what the season does: it's two of the most raw uncomfortable takes on the subject matter of racism and sexual assault, and sandwiched in between is still a grim episode with attempted child murder and drug empires. Not to mention the likes of "Running For Honor". It really does feel like Season 4 tried to ratchet things up a notch, and not play around anymore in tackling the important issues of the real world. Racism, rape culture, homophobia, all of them tackled. Okay so the homophobia they could have critiqued better, but for 1992 it was progressive, I'll give it that. Often I ended up dreading having to throw these on knowing what was coming, but I went with it anyway. We're a long way from the time I delayed watching "What Price Gloria?" for a week because I was afraid of how to handle the issue of the first leap into a woman. Now I just bumble into trying to talk about the KKK, rapists, and homophobic hate crimes. I only hope I have handled those topics with the same grace in my analysis, and that the final season of the show will do the same. Speaking of, let's just finally unpause and take a look at what sort of earth-shattering leap Sam's hopping into this time--
NO NO NO WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN, "SAM LEAPS INTO LEE HARVEY OSWALD"???
Don't know if you're familiar, but a few years ago, Scott Bakula was a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and they referenced the History Kiss from "it's a wonderful leap" - Bakula as a cabbie picking up a young Trump. Stephen, as Al, tries to convince him to take one for the team by driving the pair of them into the river. Bakula instead tries to dissuade young Donald from ever going into politics, but the little asshole swears he will one day run for president just to spite this random cabbie.
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