Basically Al would have become the quantum leaper, and the major goal would be the search for Sam. There's something really sweet and moving to me about that. Not only does it show a deep level of camaraderie and loyalty in Al's heart for Sam, but it shows the fundamental truth of Sam's making the world a slightly better place: he made Al a better person. Not just that being with Beth for years would make him less of a womanizer, but even just being his guide on this journey has enlightened Al enough that now he can take the leap to do good too. All those times Sam changed Al's mind on something, all the times Al learned better from watching Sam's altruism (We'll even count "Running For Honor" here, mad as I am that they took Al that far to make him better), all those times and more. I wonder how the late great Dean Stockwell would have played this new Al, and what sort of things he'd have faced. Would he have gone back to the everyday microcosm, or would he be set loose in the new wild macrocosmic foundations Season 5 built? We'll never know, but I do know this: Al changed for the better on this journey, and so did I.
Al the bartender, or God or Time or Fate or whatever Bruce McGill was, asked Sam why he started time travelling in the first place in order to get a simple and decisive answer for the ethos of the show. In the same way, let's get a simple question to cut to the heart of the matter. Frezno Inferno, blogger friend of yours and mine, why did you decide to watch this old time travel show from the 90's in the first place? I wrote it all down at the start of this, but let's get back to it in short. I had grown tired of the long-running sci-fi stuff I was into becoming utterly macrocosmic and going up their own asses, forgetting the human for the sake of their own references. I let all that venom out all at once, showing the psychic wounds of my internal self before retreating into a quantum leap accelerator of my own for this. This show, a show I hoped would have no big continuity, no needless references, just a series of period pieces about helping ordinary people with real-world concerns.
Oh, I got that alright. I got that in spades. In a way, I wasn't ready for just how real Quantum Leap could get. That mission statement of real-world concerns mixed with the less politically correct era of the 1990s to make a show that you could not get away with today. I know there's a new Quantum Leap out now, but I cannot imagine it doing some of the shit this old show did. Racists, rapists, reprehensible people... it showed them all and did not flinch from putting their evil on display. Sam and his mission were to shine a spotlight on the best of humanity, and to do that he had to battle the worst of humanity. The people who say slurs maliciously, who commit injustice against minorities, who flaunt getting away with sexual assault... we battled them all, and got to show them a thing or two. Quantum Leap was unflinching in what it could do, and the new show can only be defanged in comparison because that's just how time works. There's no way in hell it would have people openly say the slur words, like N's or F's or R's. That's just how material social progress works, but at the end of it all I have to admire that unflinching realism just a bit, even if I don't like hearing those words.
Point is, Quantum Leap in its realism was miles away from what the other sci-fi shows had to do with just allegory, given changing times. When I talked about "The Color Of Truth" I compared it to Doctor Who's "Rosa", and how the former did shit the latter could never dream of doing because it was Doctor Who and not that kind of show. If ever you need a case for throwing the sci-fi/fantasy blinders off your eyes and looking at the real world, this is it. Quantum Leap was my gateway drug, and though I still enjoy those sci-fi shows I did get what I wanted out of this. I got those real stories about the real world in a way that mattered, uncomfortable as they might have been. For that I can't thank Quantum Leap enough. Some of those stories were rocky and shook my faith, but we ended out well when all was said and done. Better than that, in fact. I mentioned above how Al would have grown and changed from all of this. Now let me tell you how I have changed, even just a bit, from this journey.
To put it simply, breaking out of that sci-fi framework and expanding my horizons has helped me mellow out. Look back at the intro to this project and you can see the malfeasance lurking within myself that I was trying to exorcise. A screaming shouty demon with opinions on sci-fi and a deep hurting sense of betrayal. Going through Quantum Leap has helped me quell that demon, just a little. You can see the difference if you go even further back. Let's compare the final seasons of two shows I've covered here, both with Scott Bakula: Enterprise, and Quantum Leap. Both of these last go-arounds alter things substantially, building their own frameworks and foundations and feeling like new iterations of their shows altogether. When it came to the former, I was enraged by what I was seeing. Betrayed, even. The show I loved went away and in its place a bunch of Star Trek nerds were gleefully setting up their status quo. As TOS nerds often are, they fumbled about under the misguided belief that the continuity was the most important thing, and the even more misguided belief that the way to "solve" it was to throw more random Captain Kirk-era references at it. I hated it, and in 2019 I let that venom be known. Enterprise BETRAAAAYED US.
By any measure, the me of 2019 would have went off at Quantum Leap's latter half. I'm sorry to single out "Running For Honor" again, but it's only to show what my past self would have done to it. They'd have eviscerated it, and it would fuel that malfeasance within me further. It would be a betrayal, a black mark on the show that mortally wounded it. If that wasn't bad enough, what would Season 5 have done to me? The celebrity leaps, the gimmick stuff... hell, the goddamn evil leaper story arc! By the end of that shit it's so not about what's going on in the microcosmic world that the story has to deus ex machina a resolution for that in a minute because it spent all its time pissing about with its own lore! The me of 2019 would have lost their goddamn mind, bamboozled again just like with Doctor Who under Chris Chibnall. Faith was had in Quantum Leap, and Quantum Leap blew it for the sake of cheap drama and lore, betraying me yet again and giving me no solace or respite from the hate in my heart.
Good thing I'm not the me of 2019 anymore, huh? I've regenerated. As recent as a year ago, when Doctor Who was airing Flux, I was on this mean streak. Somehow or another, Quantum Leap gave me perspective and got me to relax. I hadn't even realized I'd changed like that until a friend of mine pointed out that I had a tendency of throwing babies out with bathwater when these shows did bullshit I didn't like, and urging that I not do that with Quantum Leap over "Running For Honor". I had no intention of binning all of Quantum Leap because of that episode, and it was realizing that which made me realize "oh shit, I've changed for the better!". You can see it in my approach with Season 5, too; rather than treat its macrocosmic creepings as something going against the spirit of the show, I rolled with it as a bit of experimentation, a new iteration of the show building its own foundation. I knew it was the last season anyway so I rode it out. I won't lie, by about Marilyn Monroe I was getting fatigued with this iteration of the show. I might have gotten madder if there was a Season 6 in this style, but there wasn't.
That's what this show gave me, and what I gave myself. Its metaphorical Sam Beckett leaped into my internal landscape, as its Al calculated the odds that he was here to quell the venom and betrayal in there and teach me how to mellow out and enjoy things again. It's fine to be critical, and it's fine to call shit out. I have done that here, I feel, and I made no concessions over calling out stuff I did not like when I saw it. Crucially, it's what you do after that matters. What do I do after Quantum Leap? I use what I learned, and move on to other things. I leap on, like Sam did. Before I do, a final fond farewell to this time travel show which kept my summer interesting. I'll say it like this, so you know the impact you've made to me. Quantum Leap... you did not betray me. We did not always see eye to eye, but you did not betray me and I hold no grudge to you in my internal landscape. You showed me there's a better way, and for that I thank you.
And now I move onward. I know what the next show I'd like to cover will be, but we're in the midst of fall and fall is a busy time for me. Don't expect a big big thing on the blog until 2023. In the meantime... Well, it's odd. You are reading this in the midst of my Halloween marathon, due to how the timing worked. As I write this, though, it's not even October. It is Sept. 30th, 2022. Today I have to watch the first piece of media for the Halloween marathon, and it is Ghostbusters Afterlife. You already know what I thought, as those words will have come out first. If I may send a hope to my future self, it will be that you took what you learned from Quantum Leap and used it in analyzing that movie. It is a movie which acts against everything you believe in, taking a concept with infinite possibility and constraining it to be about itself with the same four signifiers to remind people of the original movie. Tackle that darkness with the same dignity, grace, and unflinching mellow that Sam and Al bestowed upon you. (INTRUSION FROM THE FUTURE: The real test is going to be a week from now, when I have to write about the final Chibnall/Whittaker era Doctor Who story. I am going into it with complete apathy rather than dread, so we'll see how that factors in.)
Good luck, my friend. Best of love to all of you at home. And to Sam and Al, the time travellers making the world a better place... Whenever I think of you, in this wild internal landscape they call Frezno Inferno, a smile will cross my face. With warm serenity, I will be excited to recall your travels, and a simple little phrase of jubilance will pass through my thoughts, in honor of you... and it's the only way I know how to end this journey fittingly. It is, simply...
Oh boy.
May 24th - October 17th, 2022
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