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"GTFW": Quantum Leap Rewatch, Part Two
Jul. 18th, 2022 06:06 pmWelcome back!
When we last left Quantum Leap, I'd taken us to the middle of Season Three, when the show was in its prime. Quantum Leap had forged an unlikely success story out of a combination of high concept science-fiction, pointed social commentary, and romance. It would be nice to say that the series maintained this delicate balance of ingredients until the end of its run....
But it didn't. Each element of this formerly winning formula would be thoroughly degraded by the end of Season Five. And though it saddens me to do an autopsy on what is still one of my sentimental favorites, maybe we can learn something about how TV drama works. (Or doesn't work.)
Sam Beckett's Silver Tongue and Other Problems
The first big sign of trouble came at the start of Season Four and "The Leap Back." Sam and Al had switched places because of....reasons, with Al leaping to 1947 and Sam coming home to Project Quantum Leap in 1999. This was a terrific episode, a fresh look at the relationship between Sam and Al and the bond between them. But the episode also contained a bombshell: Sam was married. It turns out Sam had successfully changed the personal history of his old girlfriend, Donna (in "Star Crossed," episode 1.2)--and Mrs. Beckett was working at Project Quantum Leap!
This all worked beautifully within the episode; it set up Donna as a parallel to Al's first wife, Beth (who waited years for Al to come home from Vietnam). But as the season wore on, the brief reintroduction of Donna had an unintended consequence: it ruined the romance aspect of the series. How could we enjoy Sam canoodling with this week's Beautiful Guest Star when we know Donna is waiting for him in 1999, nobly suffering while Sam carries on in blissful ignorance? For the sake of one high impact reveal, Bellisario and Co. destroyed a crucial element of their formula.
But even more discouraging for me was the downhill slide of QL's social commentary episodes. Now, these were always tricky to pull off, even in the best of times: Sam had to be able to shift people's attitudes, but he couldn't do TOO much, otherwise it wouldn't be historically accurate; also, you couldn't have the White Guy deliver the heroics about bigotry and hatred ('cause that's a whole other set of problems). The writers somehow threaded the needle in episodes like "The Color of Truth," "Black and White and on Fire," and "Last Dance Before An Execution" and watching QL pull off that kind of tightrope act only added punch to those stories.
Which made the conclusion of "Justice" (episode 4.4) all the more mind boggling. It's 1965 in rural Mississippi, and the KKK is about to hang a local black civil rights activist. Sam, who'd leaped into one of the Klan members, faces down the assembled horde and defiantly tells them: if you hang him, you'll have to hang me, too!
It works. No lynching. Everybody goes home.
The HELL? In what universe does this happen?!
Not only was this conclusion a literal case of White Savior syndrome, it blatantly ignored everything we know about human nature and the way racists think and act, especially in that time and place. It was a sign that the finely calibrated balance of QL's social commentary episodes had come undone. They never really regained that balance.
*******************
As for the "high concept science-fiction" part of the formula? Read on.
No, Really, One Episode is Plenty
Quantum Leap was almost canceled after Season Four. NBC agreed to a fifth season, but only under certain conditions--a little less personal growth with the common folk and more big name historical figures and events. So in Season Five, QL visited with Marilyn Monroe and Elvis, Brooke Shields in the Blue Lagoon and Dr. Ruth Westheimer on the radio, with varying degrees of success. But the big swing here was the fifth season opener: Sam leaping into Lee Harvey Oswald.
The two-part Oswald episode is a fascinating mess, a deep dive into Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy theorizing with the express purpose of debunking all the conspiracies. Bellisario thought Oliver Stone's JFK was total bullshit; this was going to be his rebuttal.
I know, I know: the grassy knoll and the book depository? Again? But Donald Bellisario may be the only screenwriter in TV history who actually met Oswald (they were stationed together in California)--so it's interesting to watch as Bellisario sorts out his feelings about a fellow Marine who committed this historically monstrous act.
The episodes encompass multiple leaps into Oswald's life in the five years leading up to the assassination and are overstuffed with Oswald biographical trivia. Sam is barely a character here, as Oswald seems to be in control of Sam's mind for much of the leap. Unfortunately, that eliminates most of the drama, as Sam cannot avoid Dallas or even question whether he SHOULD stop the assassination. The result is a dry recitation of historical facts that never quite measures up to its ambition.
In fact, you could say that about a lot of Season Five: big ambitions, lackluster results.
"Trilogy" (5.8-5.10) was supposed to be Deborah Pratt's magnum opus for this series, with Sam's destiny intertwining with three generations of a Southern family and the mysterious deaths that plagued their small town. But the script highlights all of Pratt's weaknesses; it's overblown Southern Gothic, and in the end, the mystery isn't all that mysterious, the characters aren't distinctive, and the love story is...questionable. Sam protects a 10 year-old girl in Part One, and right after leaping into Part Two, he falls madly in love with her as an adult. (That.... juxtaposition would have put the brakes on for most people....)
One episode would have been fine, thank you.
The other big time waster was the Evil Leaper: three episodes pitting Sam against foes determined to "put wrong what once went right." You can tell just from the term "evil leaper" that there wasn't much dramatic heft to the concept. It's not like the new leapers had an interesting motivation--like, say, preserving the timeline from Sam's interference. No, they were cardboard bad guys to be stopped-- or in the case of Alia, to be rescued from demonic servitude. The third installment was SO bad--with three leapers and three holograms (including Sweet himself, Hinton Battle!) bopping around a women's prison--that it resembled a French farce more than a network drama. (Were Pratt and Bellisario trolling NBC with this one? I believe it!)
Beyond the End of Quantum Leap
And so, after all the botched format experiments and breathless starfucking, we came down to the series finale ("Mirror Image"); and, of course, it was the best episode of the year--an enigma of an episode that answered long-standing questions while raising a hundred more.
One of the unshakable tenets of this series was that Sam was unwillingly propelled from leap to leap by an unknown force--be it God, Time, Fate or Whatever (in QL fandom shorthand, "GTFW"). But the finale turns that on its head, proposing that Sam has always been in control of his leaps, or at least is doing what he always wanted to do.
The mysterious owner/barkeep of the mining town waystation for lost souls (played by Bruce McGill, coming full circle from the pilot) asks Sam why he created Project Quantum Leap; Sam says he wanted to make people's lives better. So this other "Al" offers Sam a simple choice: go home...or keep helping people. Sam chooses to heal his best friend; he leaps to 1970 and tells Beth Calavicci (the wonderful Susan Diol) to wait for Al, because he's alive and coming home.
The photo of Al on Beth's mantelpiece flashes QL blue, and we cut to text on the screen: Al and Beth stayed married, and they're about to celebrate their 40th anniversary. They have four daughters. And finally:
"Dr. Sam Becket (sic) never returned home."
The open ended conclusion (and the misspelling) sparked an outcry in some fan circles, and even now, still upsets some die hard fans. Poor Sam, lost in time forever, cut off from his family and his best friend, doomed to a solitary life of endless leaping.
But that was never the intent.
"Mirror Image" was supposed to be a set up for a much different Season Six, a season liberated from the "leaping within his own lifetime" rule. Sam was going to take on assignments in the more distant past and (if rumors are true) the far future. What's more, Al was going to be right there with him--not as a holographic Observer, but a fellow leaper, determined to find Sam and bring him home. In fact, recent raw footage found in the Universal vaults shows a conversation between Beth and Al in 1999, presumably right after the last scene of the episode. Beth talks about the bond between Sam and Al, unbroken by GTFW, and she seems to give her tacit approval for Al to go for it. And Al, god bless him, looks ready to take the leap.
But it was not to be. A few weeks before the finale, NBC dropped the hammer, and Bellisario and Pratt were forced to adapt. Pratt says she insisted on the open ending, because it was truer to Sam's character.
And that's how things stood. Until now.
Quantum Leap 2022
In September (after years of false starts), NBC will finally re-launch Quantum Leap. Raymond Lee plays Doctor Ben Seong, a Beckett acolyte who takes his own unauthorized trip through the accelerator. There's supposedly a greater emphasis on Ben's support team in 2022: Caitlin Bassett as Ben's holographic observer, Mason Alexander Park as the resident A.I. wizard and--here's the big one--Ernie Hudson as project head Herbert "Magic" Williams! (Chants of "Ghostbusters! Ghostbusters! Ghostbusters!" fill the internet....)
QL diehards will recognize Williams as the soldier Sam leaped into in Part Two of "The Leap Home" (3.2). I've always wondered how someone like Williams dealt with the experience of a Leap. Would he remember the sense of dislocation, meeting Al in the Waiting Room--then returning to his normal time and place, with no one else the wiser? Would it feel like a UFO encounter, the truth behind it whispered by conspiracy theorists and crackpots? Apparently, the leap affected Mr. Williams profoundly. Can't wait to see Ernie dig into this character.
And--you know this was coming--what about Sam?
He's still out there. Is it possible that Ben will meet his hero somewhere down the line? Reporters have been swarming around Bakula since the new series was announced, but Scott isn't talking. Will we finally get a resolution to Sam Beckett's journey, thirty years later? If we do....
Oh boy.
Random Notes:
● Season Five debuted a revised version of Mike Post's theme music, which I (sarcastically) call the Supa Action Remix. It sounds like it was programmed on a late '80s Casio (like the one Gene Belcher uses on Bob's Burgers). Truly hideous.
● Sam fathered a daughter during "Trilogy" and Al said she was working at Project Quantum Leap (presumably next to Sam's sad, forgotten wife). No mention of either one in the new series, though; seems like a missed opportunity.
● What if Sam HAD prevented the Kennedy assassination? Would that have necessarily been a good thing? In the Twilight Zone's "Portrait in Silver," a future historian impulsively saves Kennedy, but the subsequent warp in space-time triggers the apocalypse; in the "11.22.63" miniseries, George Wallace follows JFK as president, plunging America into chaos. (But I doubt Sam would agree to leave "bad enough" alone.)
● "A Leap for Lisa" (4.22) featured one of the best plot twists in QL history: Sam accidentally deleting Al from the timeline, resulting in the veddy British Edward St. John V suddenly appearing as Sam's Observer. Bonus: St. John was played by Roddy MacDowall, Stockwell's co-star in the award winning stage production of Compulsion and his friend of nearly 40 years.
Recommended episodes:
Season Three (back half): 8-1/2 Months, Future Boy, Last Dance Before An Execution, Nuclear Family, Shock Theater
Season Four: The Leap Back, The Wrong Stuff, Raped, Stand Up, A Leap for Lisa
Season Five: Lee Harvey Oswald (1&2), Nowhere to Run, Killin' Time, Dr. Ruth, Memphis Melody, Mirror Image
Okay, that's more than enough for now. I'll check back in with the new Quantum Leap this fall....
When we last left Quantum Leap, I'd taken us to the middle of Season Three, when the show was in its prime. Quantum Leap had forged an unlikely success story out of a combination of high concept science-fiction, pointed social commentary, and romance. It would be nice to say that the series maintained this delicate balance of ingredients until the end of its run....
But it didn't. Each element of this formerly winning formula would be thoroughly degraded by the end of Season Five. And though it saddens me to do an autopsy on what is still one of my sentimental favorites, maybe we can learn something about how TV drama works. (Or doesn't work.)
Sam Beckett's Silver Tongue and Other Problems
The first big sign of trouble came at the start of Season Four and "The Leap Back." Sam and Al had switched places because of....reasons, with Al leaping to 1947 and Sam coming home to Project Quantum Leap in 1999. This was a terrific episode, a fresh look at the relationship between Sam and Al and the bond between them. But the episode also contained a bombshell: Sam was married. It turns out Sam had successfully changed the personal history of his old girlfriend, Donna (in "Star Crossed," episode 1.2)--and Mrs. Beckett was working at Project Quantum Leap!
This all worked beautifully within the episode; it set up Donna as a parallel to Al's first wife, Beth (who waited years for Al to come home from Vietnam). But as the season wore on, the brief reintroduction of Donna had an unintended consequence: it ruined the romance aspect of the series. How could we enjoy Sam canoodling with this week's Beautiful Guest Star when we know Donna is waiting for him in 1999, nobly suffering while Sam carries on in blissful ignorance? For the sake of one high impact reveal, Bellisario and Co. destroyed a crucial element of their formula.
But even more discouraging for me was the downhill slide of QL's social commentary episodes. Now, these were always tricky to pull off, even in the best of times: Sam had to be able to shift people's attitudes, but he couldn't do TOO much, otherwise it wouldn't be historically accurate; also, you couldn't have the White Guy deliver the heroics about bigotry and hatred ('cause that's a whole other set of problems). The writers somehow threaded the needle in episodes like "The Color of Truth," "Black and White and on Fire," and "Last Dance Before An Execution" and watching QL pull off that kind of tightrope act only added punch to those stories.
Which made the conclusion of "Justice" (episode 4.4) all the more mind boggling. It's 1965 in rural Mississippi, and the KKK is about to hang a local black civil rights activist. Sam, who'd leaped into one of the Klan members, faces down the assembled horde and defiantly tells them: if you hang him, you'll have to hang me, too!
It works. No lynching. Everybody goes home.
The HELL? In what universe does this happen?!
Not only was this conclusion a literal case of White Savior syndrome, it blatantly ignored everything we know about human nature and the way racists think and act, especially in that time and place. It was a sign that the finely calibrated balance of QL's social commentary episodes had come undone. They never really regained that balance.
*******************
As for the "high concept science-fiction" part of the formula? Read on.
No, Really, One Episode is Plenty
Quantum Leap was almost canceled after Season Four. NBC agreed to a fifth season, but only under certain conditions--a little less personal growth with the common folk and more big name historical figures and events. So in Season Five, QL visited with Marilyn Monroe and Elvis, Brooke Shields in the Blue Lagoon and Dr. Ruth Westheimer on the radio, with varying degrees of success. But the big swing here was the fifth season opener: Sam leaping into Lee Harvey Oswald.
The two-part Oswald episode is a fascinating mess, a deep dive into Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy theorizing with the express purpose of debunking all the conspiracies. Bellisario thought Oliver Stone's JFK was total bullshit; this was going to be his rebuttal.
I know, I know: the grassy knoll and the book depository? Again? But Donald Bellisario may be the only screenwriter in TV history who actually met Oswald (they were stationed together in California)--so it's interesting to watch as Bellisario sorts out his feelings about a fellow Marine who committed this historically monstrous act.
The episodes encompass multiple leaps into Oswald's life in the five years leading up to the assassination and are overstuffed with Oswald biographical trivia. Sam is barely a character here, as Oswald seems to be in control of Sam's mind for much of the leap. Unfortunately, that eliminates most of the drama, as Sam cannot avoid Dallas or even question whether he SHOULD stop the assassination. The result is a dry recitation of historical facts that never quite measures up to its ambition.
In fact, you could say that about a lot of Season Five: big ambitions, lackluster results.
"Trilogy" (5.8-5.10) was supposed to be Deborah Pratt's magnum opus for this series, with Sam's destiny intertwining with three generations of a Southern family and the mysterious deaths that plagued their small town. But the script highlights all of Pratt's weaknesses; it's overblown Southern Gothic, and in the end, the mystery isn't all that mysterious, the characters aren't distinctive, and the love story is...questionable. Sam protects a 10 year-old girl in Part One, and right after leaping into Part Two, he falls madly in love with her as an adult. (That.... juxtaposition would have put the brakes on for most people....)
One episode would have been fine, thank you.
The other big time waster was the Evil Leaper: three episodes pitting Sam against foes determined to "put wrong what once went right." You can tell just from the term "evil leaper" that there wasn't much dramatic heft to the concept. It's not like the new leapers had an interesting motivation--like, say, preserving the timeline from Sam's interference. No, they were cardboard bad guys to be stopped-- or in the case of Alia, to be rescued from demonic servitude. The third installment was SO bad--with three leapers and three holograms (including Sweet himself, Hinton Battle!) bopping around a women's prison--that it resembled a French farce more than a network drama. (Were Pratt and Bellisario trolling NBC with this one? I believe it!)
Beyond the End of Quantum Leap
And so, after all the botched format experiments and breathless starfucking, we came down to the series finale ("Mirror Image"); and, of course, it was the best episode of the year--an enigma of an episode that answered long-standing questions while raising a hundred more.
One of the unshakable tenets of this series was that Sam was unwillingly propelled from leap to leap by an unknown force--be it God, Time, Fate or Whatever (in QL fandom shorthand, "GTFW"). But the finale turns that on its head, proposing that Sam has always been in control of his leaps, or at least is doing what he always wanted to do.
The mysterious owner/barkeep of the mining town waystation for lost souls (played by Bruce McGill, coming full circle from the pilot) asks Sam why he created Project Quantum Leap; Sam says he wanted to make people's lives better. So this other "Al" offers Sam a simple choice: go home...or keep helping people. Sam chooses to heal his best friend; he leaps to 1970 and tells Beth Calavicci (the wonderful Susan Diol) to wait for Al, because he's alive and coming home.
The photo of Al on Beth's mantelpiece flashes QL blue, and we cut to text on the screen: Al and Beth stayed married, and they're about to celebrate their 40th anniversary. They have four daughters. And finally:
"Dr. Sam Becket (sic) never returned home."
The open ended conclusion (and the misspelling) sparked an outcry in some fan circles, and even now, still upsets some die hard fans. Poor Sam, lost in time forever, cut off from his family and his best friend, doomed to a solitary life of endless leaping.
But that was never the intent.
"Mirror Image" was supposed to be a set up for a much different Season Six, a season liberated from the "leaping within his own lifetime" rule. Sam was going to take on assignments in the more distant past and (if rumors are true) the far future. What's more, Al was going to be right there with him--not as a holographic Observer, but a fellow leaper, determined to find Sam and bring him home. In fact, recent raw footage found in the Universal vaults shows a conversation between Beth and Al in 1999, presumably right after the last scene of the episode. Beth talks about the bond between Sam and Al, unbroken by GTFW, and she seems to give her tacit approval for Al to go for it. And Al, god bless him, looks ready to take the leap.
But it was not to be. A few weeks before the finale, NBC dropped the hammer, and Bellisario and Pratt were forced to adapt. Pratt says she insisted on the open ending, because it was truer to Sam's character.
And that's how things stood. Until now.
Quantum Leap 2022
In September (after years of false starts), NBC will finally re-launch Quantum Leap. Raymond Lee plays Doctor Ben Seong, a Beckett acolyte who takes his own unauthorized trip through the accelerator. There's supposedly a greater emphasis on Ben's support team in 2022: Caitlin Bassett as Ben's holographic observer, Mason Alexander Park as the resident A.I. wizard and--here's the big one--Ernie Hudson as project head Herbert "Magic" Williams! (Chants of "Ghostbusters! Ghostbusters! Ghostbusters!" fill the internet....)
QL diehards will recognize Williams as the soldier Sam leaped into in Part Two of "The Leap Home" (3.2). I've always wondered how someone like Williams dealt with the experience of a Leap. Would he remember the sense of dislocation, meeting Al in the Waiting Room--then returning to his normal time and place, with no one else the wiser? Would it feel like a UFO encounter, the truth behind it whispered by conspiracy theorists and crackpots? Apparently, the leap affected Mr. Williams profoundly. Can't wait to see Ernie dig into this character.
And--you know this was coming--what about Sam?
He's still out there. Is it possible that Ben will meet his hero somewhere down the line? Reporters have been swarming around Bakula since the new series was announced, but Scott isn't talking. Will we finally get a resolution to Sam Beckett's journey, thirty years later? If we do....
Oh boy.
Random Notes:
● Season Five debuted a revised version of Mike Post's theme music, which I (sarcastically) call the Supa Action Remix. It sounds like it was programmed on a late '80s Casio (like the one Gene Belcher uses on Bob's Burgers). Truly hideous.
● Sam fathered a daughter during "Trilogy" and Al said she was working at Project Quantum Leap (presumably next to Sam's sad, forgotten wife). No mention of either one in the new series, though; seems like a missed opportunity.
● What if Sam HAD prevented the Kennedy assassination? Would that have necessarily been a good thing? In the Twilight Zone's "Portrait in Silver," a future historian impulsively saves Kennedy, but the subsequent warp in space-time triggers the apocalypse; in the "11.22.63" miniseries, George Wallace follows JFK as president, plunging America into chaos. (But I doubt Sam would agree to leave "bad enough" alone.)
● "A Leap for Lisa" (4.22) featured one of the best plot twists in QL history: Sam accidentally deleting Al from the timeline, resulting in the veddy British Edward St. John V suddenly appearing as Sam's Observer. Bonus: St. John was played by Roddy MacDowall, Stockwell's co-star in the award winning stage production of Compulsion and his friend of nearly 40 years.
Recommended episodes:
Season Three (back half): 8-1/2 Months, Future Boy, Last Dance Before An Execution, Nuclear Family, Shock Theater
Season Four: The Leap Back, The Wrong Stuff, Raped, Stand Up, A Leap for Lisa
Season Five: Lee Harvey Oswald (1&2), Nowhere to Run, Killin' Time, Dr. Ruth, Memphis Melody, Mirror Image
Okay, that's more than enough for now. I'll check back in with the new Quantum Leap this fall....
