A Quantum Microcosm, Adrift On The Sea Of History: Part 5 (Quantum Leap Season 5) [5.3]

(Continued from 5.2)

(TW: sexual assault attempts, animal death)

A Tale Of Two Sweeties: Oh, god. To use some modern parlance, this episode was cringe. I don't mean that as an insult, as it's designed that way. You are supposed to wince and cringe and be somewhat uncomfortable watching this one, but not in an overtly triggering way like any of the unflinching looks at serious subject matter like... take your pick out of Season 4, you're bound to hit one. Even with its wince factor, there's still enough actual tension here to keep you invested in places. It's 1958 and Sam has leapt into Marty Elroy, a real piece of work. Marty is an absolute scumbag of a human being, a bad gambler who owes a lot of money to a lot of bad people, and who has many other flaws. The biggest, and the tension inherent in the episode, is that he is a bigamist. He has two wives and two families, one in New York and one in Florida, and neither knows about the other. Marty Elroy seems to have shit all figured out, until his New York family come down to Florida to surprise him. Oh boy. SHENANIGANS ENSUE!!!

On the advice of Al, Sam has to try and juggle having two families without either of them learning about the other. Watching Scott Bakula playing the earnest and kind-hearted Sam Beckett trying and failing and flailing to play this real piece of work of a man is some sort of comedy. A special highlight has to go to Sam taking both families to the movies at once, shuffling back and forth between seats. Dear God in heaven, did he leap into Marty Elroy or Jack Tripper? The episode's smart and plays at both wives going to find Marty at the same time, which leads you to think this is where Sam will be caught. Nope! Phew, glad we avoided that! Oh hey, it's some guys threatening to break Marty's thumbs if they don't pay them 2000 dollars in 24 hours. There's the tension!

Which Sam defuses, once they pick him up a day later after more flailing around trying to keep each wife from catching on, with a last-minute bet against a terrible horse named Lead Balloon with 40 to 1 odds. In a shocking coincidental twist, the horse wins the race and Marty's debts are paid off with no thumbs broken. Al is helping in his own way while this is happening, as the youngest daughter of Marty's New York family is going to run away. She's young enough that she can see Al, and so Al has a heart to heart with her and tells her how lucky she is to have a mother to take care of her, as Al grew up an orphan. Out of nowhere in this farce is this genuinely really sweet moment between Al and this kid. It's nice and welcome.

As is the resolution. All episode, Al has been urging Sam that he has to pick a wife and stick with her, dumping the other one... but that Ziggy's odds were split right down the middle so which wife to choose couldn't be advised. Sam has it all figured out, though, as he's invited his wife to dinner. Both of them. At once. So, we finally get the pin pulled out, and Sam reveals the truth of how scummy Marty Elroy was to have two families at once behind the other's back. In doing so, he manages to break the deadlock and create a better future... because both wives leave Marty on the spot. They'll remarry and get better lives, and even loveless Marty here apparently cleans up his act in the future, so that's a job well done-- OH GOD THE END TWIST BEFORE SAM LEAPS IS THIS FUCKER HAD A THIRD WIFE!

I mean, it's a big dumb comedy episode meant to make you wince and cringe at how awkward it is and how much more awkward it would be if Sam gets caught having two wives. On that level, I can't exactly be mad at it. It's not going to be my favorite or anything, but it has its moments. Mostly the Al stuff with the kid, or how genuinely subversive it is for Sam to finally go "You know what, fuck this pretense, I'm shattering it, make a better future out of that". Marty Elroy sucks, that's kind of the point, and now we're done with it and we can move on to hopefully better things. 

Liberation: I moved on to better things, alright, like another vacation in between episodes. While I was there, other big shifts happened! I am writing about Liberation on the morning of September 23rd, and thus this is the first Quantum Leap writeup to be done in a world where the new show exists. I haven't seen a frame of it and am saving it for when I finish... do we call it Classic Leap now? Like Doctor Who? Well, whatever it is, we get to talk about this episode of it... and I'm walking into a bit of a minefield. Ah well. If I bravely faced talking about all the other heavy shit, surely I can handle taking this on. Welcome to the Quantum Leap episode about second-wave feminism.

In 1968, Sam leaps into Margaret Sanders, a housewife currently at a women's liberation rally along with her daughter Suzanne. The leader of the rally, Diana, is making very sensible points about equality while a bunch of drunk letterjackets from across the street yell Very Insightful Rebuttals about going back into the kitchen. Then the cops come and arrest the women. Oh, good. It's in jail that we meet the chief of police, Don Tipton, who also decides to be a little mean to the uppity leader of the feminists. This doesn't sit well with Sam, who shoves the guy back and tells him to go to hell... but Margaret and Suzanne are soon bailed out by their patriarch, George Sanders. George also has connections with Tipton, as Tipton's son works for George and is up for a big promotion, so there's just a whiff of "oh well I'll look the other way just this once" about it. Hmm. 

From here the leap splits into a dual balancing act of sorts. On the one hand, you have George Sanders, who will leave his wife due to this sudden change where she's suddenly a big scary feminist and not his happy little housewife any more. As such, Sam has to be careful not to poke that sleeping old bear any more than he already has. On the other hand, one of Diana's feminist rallies is going to get violent, involve a struggle with Chief Tipton for his gun, and end up getting people shot. So, Sam has to prevent tragedy from occurring at the feminist rally... but if he goes to the feminist rally he's disobeying the orders of the head of the Sanders household and George will leave Margaret. Tricky.

Now, one of these plotlines gives me some pause, and the other has at least an okay resolution. In the end, it all comes back to the idea of the system and the status quo. George, Tipton, Tipton's son, and even those letterjacket assholes are all nice and comfy with the way things are in 1968. The men are the breadwinners and go-getters, and the women are happy homemakers who cook pot roasts and do what the men say. It's just The Way Things Are, and it's a happy little coincidence that The Way Things Are has them on the high ground of privilege. All this outlandish talk about feminism and equality? That's not The Way Things Are! That's something different entirely! That's terrifying! 

You can really see it in an early scene where Sam suggests that George promote one of his outstanding lady employees instead of Tipton's son, and George thinks it's a great idea... because he'll save money on wages. Sam is appalled that George would pay a woman less for the same job, but George is just confused. Paying a woman less than a man? That's just The Way Things Are, Margaret! Wh-- WHAT DO YOU MEAN, CHANGE THE WAY THINGS ARE? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? WHAT'S GOTTEN INTO YOU? To George, changing the policy to pay a woman the same as a man is so utterly out there as to offend him at the suggestion. Build on that mentality all the way up, and you have how the men in this one react to the idea of feminism. Even Al is a little weird about things, but the episode does take care not to shove him over the line a la "Running For Honor": yes, he's devil's advocate in this one so Sam has someone to argue about the virtues of feminism with, but he also mentions that Tina ended up siding against him on the issue. So there's that.

Then we come to Diana. Lord, okay. Why don't we just talk about that climax? It's where I bristle a bit. Over the episode, Sam has tried to get her on the path of nonviolent protest, like Ghandi or MLK Jr., so that she doesn't go guns blazing on her rallies and ending up killing people. For the sake of drama, this approach does not work, and we're still going to get a climax with a gun. We also learn from Diana that she was an abuse victim, and so lashing out against a police officer like Tipton using unnecessary force against her is kind of a trauma response. Anyway, here she is in a boy's club, struggling with Tipton as Suzanne pulls his gun from his holster and Diana grabs it, just in time for Sam to come in and talk her down...

And, hmm. The way Sam talks Diana down is... something. It makes sense from his perspective, of course, but that doesn't mean I have to love it. The basic argument is urging Diana to fight the system of oppression from within the system itself. They're occupying a gentleman's club, so Sam asks if she tried to join it officially. No, they'd never accept a woman's application. Why? It's in the bylaws. Then change the bylaws. You can't, it's in the Constitution. Then change the Constitution! Sam's talkdown is that Diana shouldn't rebel against the system, but to use the system to change the system. That gets her to calm down enough to drop the gun, and Al informs Sam that after a bit of jail time, Diana will do just that and work on constitutional law.

I get that this is the path Sam would take. I really do. On the other hand, there's a bit of a smell here that I have to waft out. The idea of the system being this innocuous tool used by good and bad players alike, one that can be used for good as well as evil? It's a lovely idea, and maybe at one time it was true. I can't speak for 1968 or 1993, but all I can do is look at it from a modern lens. I am uncomfortably reminded of the political benchmarks of Chris Chibnall's Doctor Who, namely "Kerblam!" and "Orphan 55". The idea that the system can't be at fault, just the actors within it. The idea that you can do good work within that system and make better things happen by working within the framework of that system. At one time that might have been true. Women in America did change the laws and the systems for the better to get more equality, and it was an admirable fight and they should be applauded for it.

Hey, what's that in sight of our modern lens? Oh, just the system with a bunch of deep-rooted bad actors ripping away a bunch of reproductive rights. Just a bunch of old Republican fucks entrenched in the system for life turning what they believe into their policy, material social progress be damned. Just a bunch of people that you can't oust from the system, even if you are good and play within its framework. So, from a modern lens, this resolution doesn't quite work for me. I can't blame the show for not looking 30 years into the future and seeing Roe v. Wade being overturned. What I can wince at it for is that same mentality which was present in "Animal Frat": the idea that we future people know how this fight for social justice ended, so all you people in the middle of it should just relax and stop being so radical because everything is going to work out. Yeesh.

At least the resolution of George and Margaret is something nice. Yeah, you can't fuck with the system, but you know what you can do? Make one old guy realize that change and progress isn't the scary boogieman he makes it out to be. Instead of mourning the loss of his happy homemaker, he can get to know the woman she's changed into and love her for who she is. You know, keep up those vows he made at a church altar. That's very Quantum Leap, and I at least appreciate that... and, see? It was a side character who held outdated views who learned to be better, who we also never have to see again! That's how you do shit like that, I'm looking at you again, "Running For Honor"! Liberation is... a bit of a mess, albeit one that has its heart in the right place. Though I compared its climax to Chibnall-era Doctor Who, the fact remains that I'd throw this one on over any of his era in a heartbeat. Speaking of, instead of throwing on one of his episodes, let's throw on another Quantum Leap episode.

Dr. Ruth: Season 5 continues to be this radical thing that throws anything and everything at the Quantum Leap formula to see what sticks. In this case, we have an honest to God celebrity leap. Granted we did leap into Lee Harvey Oswald, but he was more infamous than famous, and also was portrayed... shall we say unflattering. This, on the other hand, is Quantum Leap getting an actual contemporary celebrity onto the show and having Sam leap into them to do his usual Quantum Leap thing. The celebrity in question, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, is a famous sex therapist who opens the floor for all sorts of frank discussions on the topic. On paper this sounds like a dreadful gimmick, a bit of stunt casting to bolster ratings that flies right into the jaws of macrocosm and gets away from what this show's heart and soul is. That's not the case at all. In fact, this is one of the highlights of Season 5 so far.

Really, you could rewrite this episode to be about any anonymous sex therapist with a platform, and it would still work. The fact that it's Dr. Ruth, one the audience and characters recognize, is just a little bonus treat. This episode's got a little bit of everything for everyone. It's wickedly funny, it's charmingly sweet, and terrifyingly real about a serious subject. It does this while managing to keep these tones from bleeding into each other. The comedy bits don't leak into the mature subject matter to spoil the affair and make a dissonant atonal mess. The show does a little of everything Quantum Leap does well, and does it extremely well. I'm amazed. The fucking Dr. Ruth episode of Quantum Leap is a high-water mark. Let's talk about those tones a bit, then.

The comedy beats come from Sam, and it's the familiar setup of "Oh boy I have to act like I know what I'm talking about with this leapee's field of interest!". Except Dr. Ruth's field of interest is answering unfiltered questions about sex and sexuality in a mature and healthy manner. Meanwhile, Sam in this episode is written as a shy flustered mess when it comes to the topic. It's not quite prudish, more that Sam is a wholesome farm boy who stammers and sputters when he hears people ask about multiple orgasms or premature ejaculation. What is a little weird, though, are the brief moments where Sam psychosynergizes with Dr. Ruth. Yes, this leads him to be more confident and give out better advice, but... Well, if you've never heard Dr. Ruth speak before, she has a German accent. Scott Bakula replicates this whenever Sam psychosynergizes, SO AT SOME POINTS IN ZE EPISODE HE VILL START TO TALK LIKE ZIS UND IT IS QUITE A SILLY COMEDY ACCENT! It's a little silly, but again, it only happens in the parts of the show that are meant to be silly. Not in the serious parts. Let's ramp up and talk about some more serious stuff.

This is another leap where two problems have to be fixed at once, and immediately one can be seen. Two of the workers on Dr. Ruth's radio show, Doug and Debbie, are having relationship trouble. It's once again another hot and cold romance portrayed on the show, but it's less frustrating when Sam is on the outside of it playing matchmaker. You get good advice from Sam's perspective, and then also good advice from Dr. Ruth's perspective whenever Sam psychosynergizes, which keeps on almost working before one of them puts their foot in their mouth and offends the other one, leading to them arguing again. Sam's eventual solution is to make them hash out their relationship on the air, which he sort of does on the fly? Just "OKAY LISTENERS NOW WE'RE GOING TO HEAR DOUG AND DEBBIE'S ARGUMENT ON THE SHOW, GO GUYS!". Weird, but it works and the two end up together.

While this is happening, we also have the crossover of a lifetime occurring. Getting Dr. Ruth onto Quantum Leap calls for something that's both obvious and brimming with potential: Dr. Ruth interacting with Al in 1999. I mean, come on. A famous sex therapist discussing sex and sexuality with a major "horny on main" personality like Al? It sounds amazing, and indeed it does happen. I mean, they weren't going to get Dr. Ruth on the show just to see her mouth "oh boy" into a mirror, now were you? These scenes are actually pretty good, though. Dr. Ruth manages to psychoanalyze Al pretty well, citing his multiple divorces as stemming from abandonment issues. There's a wild bit where Dean Stockwell says practically every synonym for breasts instead of the word breasts, proving something about his flippancy. At the end of it all, he really opens up about how it's difficult for him to say he loves anyone because of how he loved his first love, Beth. To which Dr. Ruth replies that there are different ways of loving someone that don't have to compare to how you loved someone else, and a little trick gets Al to be able to admit he loves his current girlfriend Tina. That's genuinely really sweet and moving, and a little resonant to me. I myself have a little difficulty saying love, so that hit me in the right spot.

Ah, but now we get to the serious stuff. One of Sam's first calls he has to take on Dr. Ruth's show is from Annie, a woman asking for advice on how to stop her boss from flirting with her and not taking no for an answer. Though Sam can't give her much help before she has to hang up the phone, he does meet Annie at a book signing and talks to her a bit... before she flees. As the camera is lingering on a man in a long coat staring at the book signing, we can only conclude that she's fleeing her boss who is stalking her. Sam can't get back to her in time again, but things seem serious. They only get worse as Annie calls Dr. Ruth again, worried about hearing noises outside her apartment before suddenly dropping the phone. Sam rushes to her apartment and finds Annie passed out after a gas leak... which he suggests that maybe Annie lit the stove before she heard those noises and forgot, flooding the place with gas. Except, Annie can't find the match in her trash can...

Great, so now we're literally gaslighting Annie. Sam eventually convinces Annie to quit her job, helping her clear out her desk only to come face to face with her ex-boss, Jonathan. Sam and Jonathan have a chat after Jonathan recognizes Dr. Ruth, claiming that actually Annie is the sexual harasser and not him. It couldn't be me, I'm just a normal man! I'm just an innocent man, I have a wife, it's that woman, she's crazy! Yeah. Uh huh. Sure. You can't trick me with the uncertainty game, Quantum Leap, 'round these parts we believe women. And we're right to, because Jonathan is indeed an entitled monster who thinks Annie is just playing hard to get, and he wants her, and so he is going to have her. We get to see, in shockingly real detail, the kind of shit that Katie McBain struggled with at the hands of Kevin Wentworth. Let us not beat around the bush. Jonathan breaks into Annie's apartment with full intent to rape her, and the two struggle for an uncomfortably long time while Sam tries to get there.

The second Sam bursts through that door, Jonathan shifts into victim mode and starts crying OH THANK GOD, DR. RUTH, THIS CRAZED WOMAN WON'T TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER, LOOK AT THESE WOUNDS SHE GAVE ME WHILE I TRIED TO DEFEND MYSELF, I AM THE VICTIM HERE! This fucker. This fucker. I will repeat to Jonathan what I told Kevin Wentworth in "Raped". You're not here with the eldery Dr. Ruth Westheimer, an old lady you can beat the shit out of to make your escape consequence-free. You're stuck here with Scott Bakula. So another rapist gets roundhouse kicked into next week, with the added indignity of the fact that Jonathan will now live with, among other heinous crimes, the fact that Dr. Ruth kicked his fucking ass. 

And that's the Dr. Ruth show. A little bit of everything, and all of it done well. Like I said, on paper this had the potential to be disastrous. As it played out, it kind of worked. It worked because it was well-made first and a celebrity episode second. It's not exactly the kind of thing you can get away with every week on this show, but it's very likely a one-off given we only have a handful left. As a little treat, it manages not to be too macrocosmic. It even gives us the leap out from Dr. Ruth's perspective in the waiting room, just to be cute and do another thing the show's never done before. I really liked this one, what's next-- A VAMPIRE WHAT THE FUCK??

Blood Moon: It is once again time for spooky supernatural shit to intersect with Quantum Leap. This time it's vampires. As haunting and gothic as the aesthetic of the episode is, and as wild as the human story of the show is, I have to be honest. This one let me down a little, and it's because it's in Season 5. Season 5, which has already been daring and strange and willing to experiment and test the limits of what Quantum Leap can be, is playing this supernatural story about vampires exactly the same as any other supernatural episode of the show.  The formula hasn't changed, and in fact I'll just tell you it now: Al is spooked out of his wits and convinced that Sam has leapt into some situation that proves the supernatural force in question is real. Sam, the skeptical scientist, tells Al that he's being a big superstitious baby and that there's a logical explanation for everything that's happening. The mysterious events of the episode play with that ambiguous tension, never committing one way or the other until the climax which reveals that things did have a logical explanation all along. Sam solves the crisis and saves the day, and just before he leaps out there's a last-minute bombshell that reveals oh shit, the supernatural thing was real all along!

"A Portrait For Troian" in Season 2 did it with ghosts. "Ghost Ship" in Season 4 did it with the Bermuda Triangle. "Blood Moon" does it with vampires, and never deviates from the formula in any gonzo envelope-pushing way. The Dr. Ruth leap ended with showing a man who bared his fangs to the camera, and Sam indeed wakes up in a coffin in a spooky castle during a lightning storm. He's Lord Nigel Corrington, in his London castle in 1975, along with his beautiful wife Alexandra and his hired help Horace. Soon the castle has company, Victor Drake and his companion Claudia, and it becomes apparent that some sort of ceremony is to take place tonight, during the height of a blood moon.

Again, that tension comes from wondering whether or not Carrington and Drake are vampires, as the blood moon ritual goes back to the early days of vampiric legend. Certainly Drake and Claudia are ominous enough to make it a possibility as one watches. They're not, though. They're play actors who put on fangs, but are deluded enough to want to kill Alexandra (and Sam, too, when he tries calling shit off) and drink their blood in order to absorb their souls and power and grow stronger themselves. Indeed, in one of the crueler moments this show's offered, they kill Alexandra's dog offscreen. Uncalled for, absolutely. You vampire LARPers are already going to kill Alexandra for her blood, and you're not really vampires so you're not hungry... so why do away with the dog? Nasty.

In the end, that gets at something interesting, a truth obscured behind all the spooky vampire myth. Eccentric aristocracy which drains the lifeblood out of other people to secure its own power? Vampire, or deluded nobleman? Drake is the former, utterly crazed and power-mad enough to kill and play this sick little Dracula game. Quantum Leap is getting at the truth behind the vampire myth, and taking it down a peg. Indeed, it's ultimately a lightning bolt which takes out Drake as he holds his ceremonial dagger high on the castle ramparts. An act of God, I guess. So vampires aren't real, and they're just sadistic rich people playing at blood rituals because they can. Oh, except Sam doesn't have a reflection at the end. OOOH CARRINGTON WAS A REAL VAMPIRE OOOOOOH! It's a fine spooky episode and even has a neat bit of subtext to say about the rich. I just wish it had done more to break out of the usual supernatural story framework of the show. It's become a bit old hat, especially with the brave steps Season 5 has taken. Speaking of brave steps...

Return Of The Evil Leaper: They're baaaack. I knew this was coming from the episode titles, of course. Something so monumental as evil counterparts of Sam and Al had to come back at least once. Indeed, the show makes no bones about it. It opens with "Evil Leaper I: Reprise", a quick primer from "Deliver Us From Evil" on who Alia and Zoey are and what they tried to do in that episode. This retroactively makes that episode the first of a trilogy about the evil leapers, as the next one's also tied up with them. I haven't seen it yet, but that's a job for right after I finish watching this.

In 1956 Sam has leapt into Arnold Watkins, a college student with a very strange hero complex. There's a fraternity of dudebros who initiate their pledges by playing chicken with their cars, and Arnold does not like this. As such, he works to stop such dangerous behavior by dressing up as a costumed superhero called the Midnight Marauder. If I don't have a picture up of Scott Bakula in this very silly getup, imagine Future Boy from "Future Boy" crossed with the Flash. The fraternity leader (played by a little baby Neil Patrick Harris, hey this isn't the Doctor Who 60th anniversary!) is not pleased by this comic book dork trying to ruin their shit, and wants to plot to stop him somehow.

Oh yeah, and his girlfriend Dawn isn't Dawn, but ALIA THE EVIL LEAPER OH MY GODDDDDD!!! The show sort of has its cake and eats it here, as Sam shakes hands with Dawn and the leap disguise falters... but only for us. Now we know that Dawn is Alia, and she'll be played by Alia for the rest of the episode, but Sam and Al don't know that. Alia seems to be plotting a scheme where she pretends to like Arnold only to humiliate him at the homecoming dance, creating a worse future. Pretty small-scale for an evil leaper, but they can't all be big ones on the dark side too I guess. Alia's holographic advisor Zoey sees Arnold talking to himself, mentioning an Al, and already knows what's going on... and so Alia escalates things, pretending to break up with her boyfriend and implying she's leaving him for Arnold, so that both Sam and Arnold will get in trouble. This is when Sam finds out that Dawn is Alia, and things get... interesting. Alia claims that after her failed leap to ruin the LaMotta family, Project Evil Leap or whatever we want to call it tortured her for her failure? She also seems to agree to a plan from Sam to save her and get her out of there, Sam figuring that if they leap together then maybe that will free Alia from the clutches of Project Evil Leap. Alia agrees, but I am still quite suspicious of her and not sure if she can be trusted.

Lest you think there's nothing ordinary and microcosmic happening in this show, it is. In 1999 Al is talking with Arnold, and eventually thanks to analysis he figures out why Arnold is running around saving people in a cape. As it turns out, Arnold lost his parents to a wild gunman when he was 7 years old, unable to save them and thus harboring the guilt as he tries to do selfless and risky acts of heroism in atonement. This kid is basically Batman, and Al is psychoanalyzing him and telling him that it wasn't his fault and that it's okay to just live his life without risking it as some sort of penance for surviving. It's heartfelt, it's moving, it's human, and I really like it.

As for Sam and Alia, they play chicken with Neil Patrick Harris except one of his goons cut Arnold's brakes, so the pair have to bail. As Sam hops onto her, the pair begin to leap, red evil leap energy being overtaken and merging with Sam's blue good leap energy... and the pair now find themselves prisoners in a women's prison, the guards sadistic and eager to wring a confession out of them for a murder. I have no idea where things will go from here for Sam and Alia. I'd like to hope for some redemption for Alia, but if it doesn't come and she was playing Sam all along, then I won't write off the whole show or anything. It'll be disappointing, but I'll roll with it. This part had some good stuff, namely Al and Arnold in 1999, but I admit I am intrigued by what else this encounter with Project Evil Leap has in store for us. Let's find out!

Revenge Of The Evil Leaper: Well, it certainly concluded things with Alia and Project Evil Leap. It was messy in a few places, but it did manage to do that. The main danger with this sort of macrocosmic lore is that it subsumes the ordinary stories that Quantum Leap is known for; the kind of stuff I came to the show to see. The everyday goings-on of the women's prison in 1987 (hey, the furthest into the future we've ever leaped, practically on the doorstep of the series premiere!) melt to be little more than a battleground for the time travellers in this story. That being said, there is a good alchemical connection that ties the microcosmic story of this prison with the macrocosm of fighting against Project Evil Leap.

Sam and Alia have leapt into two prisoners; Sam is a convicted murderer named Liz Tate, and Alia a drug possessor named Angel Jensen. The pair are in trouble for the murder of another inmate, Carol Benning, and the mean prison guards take delight in roughing the pair around for any hint of insolence. Left alone in a janitor's closet, Sam manages to sever any link that Zoey could use to trace Alia by putting Alia under hypnosis and using the psychosynergic imprint of Angel Jensen in her head to make Alia believe she is Angel, thus making her impossible to pin down by Project Evil Leap's future computers.

Unfortunately for the pair, Zoey is here, doing an evil leap herself into the warden of the prison. It may seem wild for the hologram to willingly quantum leap themselves, given that from what we've seen a quantum leap is sentencing yourself to pinball through time and space forever at the whims of a higher power. Zoey seems to think there's a 48-hour window where Project Evil Leap can pull her back out and back to her own time. She's also got a very camp and evil British hologram of her own who's literally named Thames. Zoey has leaped here for one purpose: she is the titular evil leaper, seeking revenge on Alia for betraying Project Evil Leap and ready to kill her as soon as she finds her.

For now, though, Zoey doesn't know that Angel and Liz are the leapers she's looking for, and so she plays along as the warden in asking about the death of Carol Benning. Sam manages to convince her to let him go back to the prison block to ask questions and investigate. Now here's where the show could have tied itself in more to the microcosm of Sam doing a good deed and discovering the truth. We don't get that, and the resolution to this murder mystery will be... a thing. There's all of one scene of Sam talking to an inmate about what she saw before we get right back into the machinations of Zoey and Project Evil Leap, as well as Sam and Alia's escape attempt.

There is very little revealed about Project Evil Leap here. Lothos apparently has some sort of grand plan which Zoey has been working for years to make a reality, by ruining ordinary lives? I kind of like that it doesn't go crazy with lore. Maybe it would have in Season 6 of the show, but there is no Season 6 so this is almost certainly all we're going to get. More to the point, we have Alia as Angel locked in solitary confinement and traumatized out of her goddamn mind because Angel is claustrophobic. The one prison guard in this place who isn't a bully, Vivian, takes Sam down to see her and then things escalate enough for Vivian to take Alia out of there while Sam replaces her in the cell with another unconscious guard who tried to stop them.

Zoey confronts Sam, and the pair end up touching and the jig gets revealed. Cue the climactic prison escape, with Vivian helping Sam and Alia to get out as Zoey and her guards scour the place for them, Zoey determined to make Alia suffer. It's here we get the connection between the microcosm and macrocosm. Vivian's reason for doing this is that she wants to start doing good in the world, which seems to resonate with Alia. As we hit the climax, the pair of Sam and Alia are cornered by Zoey, ready to finally get her revenge and blow Sam away. Alia pushes him out of the way of the shotgun blast...

...and leaps, in a cascade of blue light. That's what all this was about. I mistrusted Alia in the last episode, wondering if she was really legit. It turns out that she was. She wanted to break free of her evil ways, and be a person who does good things. Like Vivian, stuck in a sadistic system of prison brutality, who decided today was the day to do a good deed. Oh, and who's that sitting at the head of this sadistic system? Why, it's Zoey. This was a story about Alia's redemption, about breaking out of Project Evil Leap and becoming better. I've no idea where she leapt to, but one hopes she's free. Too bad Zoey is about to shoot Sam... but he shoots first. I'm not sure if Zoey is killed here because she leaps out and the warden is fine, but either way, she's gone.

And then we wrap up that intriguing murder mystery with some deus ex machina. I'm usually not one to complain about a sprinkling of magic dust from the "Plot Convenience Fairy". That's not the type of media critic I am. With this, though, I can't help but balk at how neat and tidy it is. In the final minute of the episode, Al via Ziggy just explains the entire murder mystery plot. How the warden got Carol Benning pregnant, forced her to have a makeshift abortion, and how it went wrong and Carol bled to death. Oh, and the particularly sadistic prison guard in this episode was in on it. Yes, it's bringing corrupt misdeeds to light and showing that this prison complex is as noxious as Project Evil Leap, but it goes to show how the macrocosm time travel story crowded out any room for intrigue and it all had to be wrapped up in a neat bow, and fast, once Zoey was out of here.

Regardless, it is a good episode of the show. I like that it did come on the side of giving Alia some redemption and freedom from her evil project, and comeuppance for Zoey. Maybe she's dead, maybe she's not, but Project Evil Leap is still out there. Thames is still alive in the future, at least. One wonders what the deal with them and Lothos would have been. Ah well. Ending aside, I do like that it tied the microcosm and macrocosm together, and I enjoyed myself. Now let's settle down for a nice ordinary story about-- MARILYN MONROE??

(Continued in 5.4)