A Quantum Microcosm, Shared In The Entanglement Of Synchronicity (New Quantum Leap Season 1) [Part 1]

Somehow, in some way, there's a certain connecting tissue between me, the summer season, and this show. Two summers ago I famously went on a great big rant about how all the tentpole franchises I love had let me down by going up their own asses, and ended by flinging myself into the world of Quantum Leap. Since then, at least one of those ships (the blue box one) appears to have righted itself, mostly. Quantum Leap, as I chronicled two years ago, became a love for me. It was rough around the edges and had its missteps, but I never felt truly betrayed by it. I loved it and what it stood for, but there was always something looming overhead as I got into it. Even back then, as I first became acquainted with Dr. Sam Beckett, the Quantum Leap revival was waiting in the wings. I was somewhere in the weeds of Dr. Beckett's final season of adventures when the new show dropped at long last, and so I had the unique experience of jumping right into the new from freshly finishing the old.

It would be a summer later, last year in 2023, when I would make headway towards writing about this new show. On a rewatch, it was doing things that I was interested in talking about with you all. I rewatched the thing, got so far in tinkering with it, but there was something about my approach then that didn't feel quite right. I'm sure I would have cracked it sooner or later, but time ended up making those words irrelevant. The 2023 writer's strike was in full swing, and soon it became apparent that other creators and media analysts were standing in solidarity and refusing to cover media from struck studios. I decided to stand with the striking writers as well, and did not cover anything from a struck studio for months. The new Quantum Leap, being an NBC joint, fell under that umbrella and so the words had to be held off. It's just as well that I did anyway, as it gives me a chance to refine my thoughts for not just a new rewatch, but an entirely new situation.

It is the summer of 2024 now, and this project that has been a year lurking became a postmortem some time ago. The new Quantum Leap series finished its second season a few months ago, and then news came from the pipeline that it had been cancelled. For the first time since I had gotten into this show, I was living in a world where there was no new Quantum Leap on the horizon for me to experience. It's a shame, really, as the show was hitting an interesting stride in that second season. We will discuss that next time, once I get a chance to re-evaluate Season 2. For now, here we are at last. New Quantum Leap Season 1. The revival after 30 years of nothing, save some scant wilderness years material from a series of interesting novelists and an aborted pilot from 2003 that would have featured Sam Beckett's daughter, Sammy Jo Fuller. (The latter was table read by The Quantum Leap Podcast, featuring them alongside actors from the new Quantum Leap, and it's worth a listen as an alternative look into what could have been for a reboot.) What does Quantum Leap look like, after all this time? Well, my dear friend in the metaphorical coffee shop... take a bite of your croissant, a sip of your coffee, and let me take a sip of my own before I tell you all about it.

Right off the bat, let's start with a question: What do we want from a Quantum Leap revival? What do we gain from bringing this specific flavor of time travel anthology back from retirement after three decades? For many, it was a desire ironically born of the very guiding ethos of the show: to put right a past wrong. Namely, the fact that Dr. Sam Beckett never made it home. By now we all know the legacy sequel playbook, but it is worth noting that we never were going to get the long-wished for reunion between Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell. The latter passed away the year before this show even aired, and was in poor health even before that. As for Scott Bakula? Well, he never did it. I'm sure the man has his reasons, but he never did it. This is something to be squared away immediately: Does this fundamentally doom New Quantum Leap? Absolutely not. Maybe it would have been nice if he agreed to return, and maybe it would even have been a good story. It didn't happen, however, and I'm not that torn up about it. It's not as if New Quantum Leap has no connection to the old show, as we'll soon see, but this decision lets the show step forward on its own two feet.

For me, it never was about getting Sam back from the brink of a quantum microcosm after 30 years. Indeed, if you want my personal headcanon, I think that Sam Beckett no longer exists as a physical entity after all of that. I think that, like Madoka Kaname, he eventually ascended into something conceptual. God, Time, Fate, Whatever... but something else alongside that. The very nature of Quantum Leap itself as I see it, and also the answer to the question of what I wanted from Quantum Leap: the concept of doing good in the world, putting right what once went wrong, of facing down the dark heart of America with optimism and altruism. That's what I think Sam Beckett became. The little conscience in all of us that sees injustice, prejudice, and just plain bad things happening in the world and says "No. I'm going to change this for the better". It's what I think, anyway, and I think it's a lovely little headcanon to have. Keep in mind, Sam's original reason for leaping was "Oh shit, they're going to shut this thing down, I have to prove it works". It's 30 years later, and we have a new genius ready to fling himself through time and space. Dr. Ben Song's impetus for leaping is kept from us for the first half of the season (indeed, I remember the reveal being the midseason break point when this aired), but nevertheless we are introduced to him in a domestic setting before he suddenly and without warning does the thing.

That gets us into the show proper, and unfortunately the new Quantum Leap has a bit of a bumpy beginning. Strictly speaking, the first four episodes are just okay. They are not bad television, but neither do they particularly rock the boat or come off that strong. They are very standard sort of leaps, but on some level this can be forgiven. Certainly I remember the old series opening quite strongly with Genesis, an ethereal and strange vibe present throughout that 90 minutes as we're thrust into the mystery of quantum leaping along with Sam Beckett and feel his confusion. Beyond that, though... the first few episodes are honestly just okay. If you find a Quantum Leap superfan who proclaims an early Season 1 like The Right Hand Of God or How The Tess Was Won among their favorites, you have found a rare specimen indeed. Season 1 also contains the likes of The Color Of Truth, an episode which does stand out among the pack and slams full force into your internal landscape with the power of what Quantum Leap can do. (I can attest to this: we got our pal Rain to watch a small handful of episodes, and this was my choice for the reasons I just described; it floored him, as it did me.) There are strong episodes ahead for Quantum Leap, and waiting until episode 5 for one isn't the end of the world.

Until that we're stuck with the likes of the pilot episode, July 13th, 1985, an average little romp about saving a guy from a heist gone wrong. A curious synchronicity: the cancelled Quantum Leap reboot pitch from 2003 also has a lengthy section occur on the same date and in the same place, in Philadelphia on the day that Live Aid happened. Whereas the pitch had its leaper get involved at the concert directly, New Quantum Leap just uses it on a portable TV as aesthetic setting for the fact that Ben is now in the past. If nothing else, the leaper/hologram dynamic has had an interesting update. Ben's hologram, Addison Augustine, brings two new concepts to the table. For one, it was her that was supposed to leap instead of Ben before Ben did an impromptu leap for reasons he cannot recall because yadda yadda yadda Swiss cheese. For another, Ben and Addison are engaged. Indeed, we are introduced to the pair at their engagement party before a mysterious text makes Ben sneak out to fling himself through time. Ben eventually remembers this much at least by episode 4, an episode that mirrors such thoughts of engagement and love by having Ben's leapee be a girl bounty hunter also having to work out her relationship with her fellow bounty hunter partner while doing a bounty hunt. 

For all that I say these episodes are just okay, there is a basic competence of mirroring at play and concepts which will come up later. At the engagement party, for instance, Ben tries to prove that physics can be romantic by bringing up the law of quantum entanglement. According to him, "Once two particles experience a shared state, they're no longer separate entities. They exist as one, even when separated by great distances." That's a perfect use of (what I assume is) actual physics to give meaning to the idea of Ben and Addison as leaper and hologram in love. They exist as one, even when separated by the macrocosmic quantum gulf of American history itself. This concept is a key to cracking the symbolism and resonance of much of New Quantum Leap, especially Season 2... but we're not there yet. There are other concepts that come into play, and one of them is on the board as early as episode 2.

Atlantis focuses on Ben leaping into an astronaut on the space shuttle of the same name in 1996, and aboard it there is a bit of a conflict between one astronaut aboard and the man who trained her. Through dealing with a crisis on the shuttle and working to make a risky decision that could either save or doom them, the senior astronaut has to learn to trust his young protege's judgement and see her as an equal instead of just a rookie under his wing. This theme of trust is not just present in the B plot of the episode, with Addison worried about Ben's motivations for leaping and whether or not she can trust him, but in this entire season. If I could boil down the theme of New Quantum Leap Season 1 into one word, it would be trust. The reasons for that will become clear soon enough, but I have been dancing around something quite big. New Quantum Leap, being 30 years removed from the original series, is structured differently than the old show was. In discussing the nature of that structure and what it means for the unfolding narrative of the series and its leads, we can hopefully gain some insights into the unique strengths that the new show has over the old.

(Continued in Part 2)