A Quantum Microcosm, Shared In The Entanglement Of Synchronicity (New Quantum Leap Season 1) [Part 3]

(Continued from Part 2)

Following a slow start, new Quantum Leap really got the ball rolling before its midseason break. The back half of the season is even stronger, featuring not just more great episodes but some truly transcendental ones. Part of what helps them is the fact that more of the mysteries of the season are being uncovered, and we get to see how the characters react to them. Even episodes that I did consider "just okay" on initial watch have some strong heft to them when reconsidered for this. The first episode back from the break, Fellow Travellers, is one such show. I remembered it being a fine episode about Ben being a bodyguard for a famous singer in the 70's trying to prevent her death, but there are some neat things under the hood. For one, now that I'm sitting here thinking about it there's the haunting reminder of Caitlin Davies from Miami Vice. For another, and more pertinent to what's actually in the show as opposed to just the landmarks of my internal landscape, is that mirroring again. The singer's anger over not being told how her life was in danger is mirrored by Addison's fury over Ben's leaping through time and space to "protect her" from a nebulous something instead of talking to her like a normal adult. Both women want the agency, power, and knowledge needed to protect themselves instead of having Ben do it for them. 

As for the other "just okay" episodes, Paging Dr. Song is a medical drama which takes great focus in how the for-profit nature of the American healthcare system will prioritize said profit over saving lives. Two episodes later has Family Style, a leap about helping an Indian family successfully keep their restaurant afloat. It has some poignancy to it, with Ben seeing his own late mother in the matriarch of the leapee's family, and he gets a nice heartfelt conversation with her at the end where he tells her everything he wishes he could say to his dear departed mother. It also has a shitty landlord getting her comeuppance, so it's based. As I said, these leaps are just fine. They do have added gravitas and drama, as did even the opening leaps of the series. There hasn't been a truly bad leap yet, and there are some vile ones I can think of in the history of the old show which I will likely never watch again. The new Quantum Leap is hitting a good baseline of quality, but is that enough? Is it better to be baseline consistent, or fluctuate wildly between crap and peak television drama? It's really more of a rhetorical question, but let's focus on some peak episodes of the show for me. Let's talk about some of the highest highs that new Quantum Leap will ever reach.

Leap, Die, Repeat is a high concept episode that really plays with the formula of Quantum Leap. It sees Ben caught in an honest-to-God time loop thanks to a nuclear reactor going haywire, and from there it basically plays out like Rashomon. Ben leaps between bodies present at the reactor, learning a little more about the situation each time from a different perspective. In the end, the resolution is reached when Ben leaps into the body of the janitor, the lowest ranking person in the entire situation. Very microcosmic, I love it. The initial cold open is also quite strong, as the reactor doesn't just go haywire; it explodes and Ben dies, leaving everyone back home stunned or shocked or, in Addison's case, wailing in anguish. Then he comes back to life in a different body as the loop resets. This is also the episode where Janis is finally given a level of trust by Project Quantum Leap, assisting with the time loop shenanigans as she's an expert on such theoretical physics and giving a key clue to the team: the name of the person who told Ben to do a leap in the first place. 

This leads us into the next episode, a show called Let Them Play. I am going to sit and pause for a bit to properly build this up. Without hyperbole, Let Them Play is the single best episode that New Quantum Leap ever did. It is a high water mark for the show, a story worth being told, and almost justification in and of itself for why bringing back an old time travel show from the 90's about standing up for the right thing is good and just. To build it up properly, I have to go back to a mention of the old Quantum Leap for a bit, specifically my coverage of it. A little under two years ago, while I was writing about the show, I came upon an episode called Running For Honor. This episode was rather controversial at the time it aired, a discussion of the right for gay men to serve in the US military. To make a long story short, the episode ended up with its heart in the right place, but made some critical missteps in the journey. Namely that it made Al the hologram agree with the reprehensible bigots that gay men had no right serving, and an added dose of gay panic in him worrying that Sam's leapee was gay and that Sam was psychosynergizing with him, literally catching the gay. Bad. Very bad. I mention all this because, in September of 2022, I wrote these words in closing my discussion of the episode:

"The battlegrounds of social progress march on and on. The general culture today can see that the homophobic oppression of gay people are wrong... and now we have a battleground fighting for the social progress of transgender rights. One wonders if that new Quantum Leap will have an episode on trans rights. If this episode's any indication, their heart will be in the right place but they'll be too close to the fight to really definitively plant their flag. It will be a controversial and progressive step forward for this day and age... and in 2052, some blogger will look at it and find it a muddled mess that didn't know, couldn't know, that trans people fought for their rights to exist and get married and be recognized as equals and won them, and the people of the future now see that transphobic systems of oppression against them were wrong. It would be a lovely future that I hope comes about."

Not six months later the new Quantum Leap aired Let Them Play, and it was that episode. I am happy to say that, as far as the perspective of the present goes, I was wrong. This episode is not one too close to the fight to definitively plant its flag. It plants its flag proudly, with conviction, and comes out in loud support of trans rights. Its boldness and willingness to stand up for what is right absolutely blows Running For Honor out of the water. Whereas that episode was set back in the 60's and had the plausibility to excuse its prejudice as "from a different time", Let Them Play is set in 2012. Only a decade back from when the show aired. This is not the ancient past, but just barely history. What does Let Them Play focus on, then? At its core, it is an episode about trans rights in relation to playing sports, in this case high school basketball. Ben's leapee is the coach, and without any context or clue of his situation he puts a girl on the bench into the game after another player hurts her leg. Said girl, Gia, is not only a trans girl but also the leapee's daughter. Putting her in unwittingly sets off a firestorm of controversy because oh my god you let the trans girl actually play the game!!!

The justification for this outrage actually infuriates me. Gia was only let onto the team with the express instruction that she remain a permanent benchwarmer, never allowed to actually play the fucking game of basketball because oh no think of the controversy! Horseshit token inclusion. Oh, she can be on the team but don't even think of letting her play! It should infuriate you, and it infuriates Gia when she learns her parents were in on it during the bleak second act. They were supposed to have her back, be there for her, and they betrayed and sidelined here so that Karens wouldn't whine too loudly. She's right to be hurt, and she should be allowed to play. Her parents accept her, and even her team accepts her and doesn't think anything of it. There's one reluctant exception, a Karen's daughter, but even she comes around at the end. Said Karen bitches a lot about "protecting girl's basketball" in that second act, and from what exactly? From a girl who just wants to play a goddamned game of ball? Even the administration is on the Karen's side, not wanting to rock the boat and make the bigots mad, but at the very least the union rep has Ben's side in all of this.

There are so many beautiful and moving scenes in this 45 minutes of television. Addison gets to talk about how she laments not sticking up for her fellow soldiers when the military enacted a trans ban, and how novel is that? Having your hologram character be an ally on the right side of history wishing they could have done more, and not making them bigoted just to teach them a lesson about tolerance at the end? What a concept! Alright, that's my last bit of shade towards Running For Honor, I swear. There's a bit with a trans support group where the parents get to talk with one another while the kids laugh and joke about Hunger Games ships (did I mention this was set in 2012?) and it's filled with this heartfelt regret from the parents as they wish that the world wasn't so cruel and could just see their kids as kids, bright beacons lighting up the world. In that regard, the title of the episode takes on double meaning. When we say Let Them Play, we don't just mean let the trans girl play in the basketball game. Let these kids just be kids, carefree and having fun and living in a world that doesn't see them as an aberration to be corrected. Let them play. 

Even the "back at the project" plotline gets in on this representation, taking time to focus on Ian, the non-binary programmer. They get to talk about Gia playing in the opening game as this inspirational rally point for LGBT kids all over California, being butterfly effected by Ben putting her into the game after the fact. There's a really tragic scene in the middle where, when the threat of Gia running away from home and never being seen again looms large, Ian shares with Addison the grim statistics of what happens to trans kids who run away as well as the story of how they almost ended it all when they were younger. At the end, when Gia is playing in the big game, the stands filled with equal parts cheering allies and booing bigots, Addison invites Ian along into the hologram chamber to watch history unfold, and to be a part of the moment. This is an absolutely wonderful episode, taking a stance and fighting for the right thing and letting the voices of the LGBT and others be heard. I wanted to make all of that clear before we go on to the mystery box stuff revealed in this episode. It's fantastic. This is why Quantum Leap should have come back. For stuff like this.

With all that said, even the mystery box tease is inclusive, having Magic and Jenn follow up the lead from Janis by visiting a beat poet named Dottie (played by the episode's writer, Shakina Nayfack, also trans and non-binary) who reveals that she was leapt into by none other than Ian... or, at least, a version of Ian from the future judging by the sketch Dottie gives them. It's quite the shock, and Ian spends the B plot of the next episode grappling with it and taking a day off to talk with their ex-partner about their anxieties over the revelation. It all ends with Ian needing to learn to trust both ways: both in themselves and their future self, and with the people they care about by opening up and sharing their feelings and fears. Again, it's that wonderful theme of trust, but let's really jam with it. We have all the pieces assembled and ready to roll here.

Let's dive into the revelations of this mystery box. Let's talk about the foe from the future.

(Continued in Part 4)