"Oh Boy": Quantum Leap Rewatch, Part One
Jun. 9th, 2022 07:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cjlasky7With Quantum Leap scheduled to return to the airwaves in Fall 2022 (starring Raymond Lee), this would be the perfect time to review the original. Fortunately, SyFy has been broadcasting 12 hour QL binges every Friday, and it's been a blast rewatching favorite episodes and catching ones I'd missed. So let's leap back to 1989 and see if it all holds up:
The Premise
"Theorizing that one could time travel in his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator... and vanished. He awoke in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al--an observer from his own time who appears in the form of a hologram that only Dr. Beckett can see or hear. And so, Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, hoping each time that his next leap... is the leap home."
Season 3 opening narration (Deborah Pratt, narrator)
Got all that? Good. Onwards!
The official story behind the origin of Quantum Leap is that Donald P. Bellisario--the creator (or co-creator) of Magnum P.I., JAG, Airwolf and NCIS--wanted to do a weekly version of Warren Beatty's 1978 Heaven Can Wait. The idea of someone jumping into another person's life opened up a near infinite range of possible stories: you could do a southern Gothic one week, a courtroom drama the next, an Animal House knockoff the week after that. (The only limit was the budget.)
But that might not be the full story. There's another person responsible for the "shape" of Quantum Leap and a huge part of its success: the woman I mentioned above, Deborah Pratt. Pratt and Bellisario were married at the time, and--if you take Pratt at her word--she came up with the basic premise of Quantum Leap, which Bellisario polished and sold to NBC head honcho Brandon Tartakoff.
(Pratt was co-executive producer and executive story editor for most of the series, but Bellisario got sole creator credit. This may be one reason why they got divorced.)
But--putting questions about credit aside--the team of Bellisario and Pratt created a fascinating dynamic within the series. With Bellisario, if you've watched any of his series at all, you knew what you were going to get: the rewards and costs of service, to your country or (in Sam's case) to a higher power. As an ex-Marine, Bellisario was keenly attuned to the minds of military men like Al, but also compassionate to the difficulties faced by the civilians in their orbit. His personal series peak was probably the three part story that ended season two and led into season three: "MIA/The Leap Home." Sam's agony--reuniting with his family but unable to change their destinies--and Al and Beth's torturous separation were emotional gut punches that deepened and enriched the characters.
For all that, though, Bellisario didn't question the validity of service. In his view, if the cause is just, sometimes sacrifices must be made. (Nobody said it would be easy.) Pratt, though, constantly questioned the status quo, especially when it came to questions of race. As an African American woman in a rare position of power on television at the time, Pratt called out the ignorance and bigotry of the American mindset (past and present)--never more dramatically than when Sam leaped into a black medical student on the eve of the Watts riots (season three's "Black On White On Fire"). If there's a more viscerally disturbing scene in the series than Sam getting the shit beaten out of him by a bunch of white cops, then I don't want to know about it.
Pratt and Bellisario's interests dovetailed most of the time (hey, they had a show to run), but as two intelligent, strong-willed personalities, their differing approaches to the material created an intriguing dialectical argument that lasted all the way to the final episode of the series. (But I'll get into that in Part Two.)
Ziggy Says There's a 68.4% Chance this Show is Formulaic
Quantum Leap, for the most part, didn't use its time-travel premise to mix it up with the big events of history. Sam would usually be a character on the periphery of the action. (The one big exception led off season five; but again...Part Two.) Leaping in, Sam would be there to solve the problems of a single individual, rescuing them from despair, heartbreak or imminent death. (More than once, Sam was called a guardian angel, and if you filter out all the pseudo-scientific gobbledygook, that's exactly what he was. It may sound very "Highway to Heaven," but the difference was that Sam had no idea who was directing his leaps, and both he and Al were flying by the seat of their pants.)
The decision to focus on intimate storytelling was both economically and philosophically sound. The focus on one person side stepped all the questions about whether or not Sam should change history, because saving a single life didn't affect events on a wider scope. At the same time, Al would usually pop in at the end of the episode to say that the rescuee would open a community center or become a cardiac surgeon or do something that helped people or saved lives. The implication was that Sam's efforts--even on a micro level--would somehow bring about a cumulative positive change. Exactly how was not for us to know; God works in mysterious ways.
I liked this approach because it showed viewers that you don't have to be a superhero to change the world. Show someone a little compassion and human kindness and you could work miracles. A little cheesy, a bit corny? Maybe. But in a cynical world, it's a message that needs repeating.
Unfortunately, this type of storytelling did establish a pattern; and if the twist on the genre of the week wasn't particularly fresh or the guest stars didn't sparkle, you could practically hear the gears of the formula locking into place:
Sam leaps into a dangerous, embarrassing or sex-ay situation ("oh boy"); Al tells Sam there's a blah diddy blah percent chance Sam is there to save the guest star of the week; if the sex-ay is ongoing, Al makes a charmingly horndog comment and Sam protests on behalf of modesty and propriety; there's an encounter with the villain(s) of the week; Sam tries to convince the guest star to change his or her destiny but fails miserably; Sam charges to the rescue as his Swiss cheese memory somehow retrieves exactly the information needed (medical knowledge, kung fu moves) to save the day; from his position as holographic observer, Al gives Sam a vital, timely heads up; we find out the rescuee's new future; leap out.
There were a lot of those.
The reliance on formula would have been infuriating if Sam and Al weren't played by top flight actors. But that was never a problem.
It's the Same Guy Who Played Captain Archer on Enterprise? (Really?)
It's generally agreed that Scott Bakula and the late (sob) Dean Stockwell were a phenomenal team as Sam and Al, maybe the best buddy act in TV science fiction since Kirk and Spock.
Bakula, in particular, was able to handle anything the writers could throw at him: he had gravitas in the dramatic episodes, a light touch in the comedy episodes (his leap as a beauty pageant contestant was comedy gold) and when they asked him to sing? Look out. After his performance in "Catch a Falling Star" (s2), how has there not been a revival of Man of LaMancha on Broadway with Bakula as Don Quixote?
Bakula was charming, humble, immediately likeable. It's all the more remarkable because Sam, as a character, really shouldn't work. He's both a visionary physicist and a medical doctor; he speaks a dozen languages and he's trained in a variety of martial arts. Can you say "Mary Sue"? But time travel "Swiss cheeses" Sam's memory and mostly what's left is his simple Midwestern decency--and that made him relatable to all the non-PhD viewers out there.
It didn't hurt that Bakula had a metric ton of sex appeal, which the producers exploited at every opportunity. I lost count of how many episodes had Sam shirtless and/or in the embrace of a delectable female co-star. (But he would almost always refuse to give into temptation--which probably endeared him to the fan base even more!)
As for Stockwell--what can you say? A Hollywood legend. A child star in the 1940s, hanging with Dennis Hopper in the sixties, Blue Velvet in the 1980s, and he brought all of that life experience to Al Calavicci. Al started out the series as the guy who spooled out the exposition, wore the ridiculously loud outfits and made the off-color sexist comments (to Sam's eternal discomfort). But as the series progressed, they peeled back the layers of Al's character, showed us the rich, full life he'd lived before Project Quantum Leap and the unimaginable pain he had to shoulder.
(And as for sex appeal, I've read a few female fans' appreciation of Mr. Stockwell in his navy dress whites.)
Sam and Al, Don Quixote and his Sancho Panza. Maybe they didn't save the universe like Kirk and Spock--but Kirk and Spock never danced together to a Carmen Miranda number.
Random Notes
● Mike Post composed dozens of TV themes in the 1970s and 80s, but his Quantum Leap main theme is probably my favorite. It starts off with a simple eight note phrase, builds to an Aaron Copland-like grandeur in the middle section, then doubles back to take you into the commercial. When the credits start, and the camera is sailing through the clouds, the music makes you feel you're capable of infinite flight.
● Sam was obviously named after playwright Samuel Beckett. (It's lampshaded in the s2 opener.) But while Sam's predicament does mirror the sense of dislocation you find in Beckett's plays, Beckett's characters operated in an absurd universe. Quantum Leap's universe has order and purpose... so the similarity ends there.
● As a fan of Deep Space Nine, I was amused to spot J.G. Hertzler (Martok) and Mark Alaimo (Gul Dukat) in roles completely different from their Star Trek characters. Hertzler played the blustering, Ivy league dad of a bride-to-be and Alaimo played a brutal, racist police captain who thought he was preserving the peace. (Well, maybe that second one wasn't so different.)
● Favorite QL brush with history Easter Egg: in "Thou Shalt Not" (s2), Rabbi Sam uses the Heimlich Maneuver to save a man from choking to death. He walks away, not thinking much about it, when he hears someone checking up on the choking victim: "Are you okay, Dr. Heimlich?"
● Quantum Leap was a family affair, both behind and in front of the camera. Pratt co-starred in "A Portrait for Troian" (s2); Bellisario was Sam's "reflection." They were both subsequently out-acted by their four year-old daughter, Troian(!), playing a little girl who could see Al and couldn't understand why a big hairy man was pretending to be her mother. Her scenes with Dean Stockwell were the definition of adorable. (Troian Bellisario went on to play Spencer in Pretty Little Liars.)
Recommended Episodes (up to mid-s3):
Season One: Genesis (1&2), The Color of Truth
Season Two: What Price Gloria, Thou Shalt Not, Jimmy, Good Morning Peoria, Another Mother, Catch a Falling Star, M.I.A.
Season Three: The Leap Home (1&2), The Boogeyman, Miss Deep South, Black on White on Fire
Coming soon: in Part Two, I'll discuss the latter part of the series, including Evil Leapers, Lee Harvey Oswald, the (still) controversial final episode and the alternate endings. I'll take a peek at the upcoming sequel (not reboot!) series, and how it relates to the original.
The Premise
"Theorizing that one could time travel in his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator... and vanished. He awoke in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al--an observer from his own time who appears in the form of a hologram that only Dr. Beckett can see or hear. And so, Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, hoping each time that his next leap... is the leap home."
Season 3 opening narration (Deborah Pratt, narrator)
Got all that? Good. Onwards!
The official story behind the origin of Quantum Leap is that Donald P. Bellisario--the creator (or co-creator) of Magnum P.I., JAG, Airwolf and NCIS--wanted to do a weekly version of Warren Beatty's 1978 Heaven Can Wait. The idea of someone jumping into another person's life opened up a near infinite range of possible stories: you could do a southern Gothic one week, a courtroom drama the next, an Animal House knockoff the week after that. (The only limit was the budget.)
But that might not be the full story. There's another person responsible for the "shape" of Quantum Leap and a huge part of its success: the woman I mentioned above, Deborah Pratt. Pratt and Bellisario were married at the time, and--if you take Pratt at her word--she came up with the basic premise of Quantum Leap, which Bellisario polished and sold to NBC head honcho Brandon Tartakoff.
(Pratt was co-executive producer and executive story editor for most of the series, but Bellisario got sole creator credit. This may be one reason why they got divorced.)
But--putting questions about credit aside--the team of Bellisario and Pratt created a fascinating dynamic within the series. With Bellisario, if you've watched any of his series at all, you knew what you were going to get: the rewards and costs of service, to your country or (in Sam's case) to a higher power. As an ex-Marine, Bellisario was keenly attuned to the minds of military men like Al, but also compassionate to the difficulties faced by the civilians in their orbit. His personal series peak was probably the three part story that ended season two and led into season three: "MIA/The Leap Home." Sam's agony--reuniting with his family but unable to change their destinies--and Al and Beth's torturous separation were emotional gut punches that deepened and enriched the characters.
For all that, though, Bellisario didn't question the validity of service. In his view, if the cause is just, sometimes sacrifices must be made. (Nobody said it would be easy.) Pratt, though, constantly questioned the status quo, especially when it came to questions of race. As an African American woman in a rare position of power on television at the time, Pratt called out the ignorance and bigotry of the American mindset (past and present)--never more dramatically than when Sam leaped into a black medical student on the eve of the Watts riots (season three's "Black On White On Fire"). If there's a more viscerally disturbing scene in the series than Sam getting the shit beaten out of him by a bunch of white cops, then I don't want to know about it.
Pratt and Bellisario's interests dovetailed most of the time (hey, they had a show to run), but as two intelligent, strong-willed personalities, their differing approaches to the material created an intriguing dialectical argument that lasted all the way to the final episode of the series. (But I'll get into that in Part Two.)
Ziggy Says There's a 68.4% Chance this Show is Formulaic
Quantum Leap, for the most part, didn't use its time-travel premise to mix it up with the big events of history. Sam would usually be a character on the periphery of the action. (The one big exception led off season five; but again...Part Two.) Leaping in, Sam would be there to solve the problems of a single individual, rescuing them from despair, heartbreak or imminent death. (More than once, Sam was called a guardian angel, and if you filter out all the pseudo-scientific gobbledygook, that's exactly what he was. It may sound very "Highway to Heaven," but the difference was that Sam had no idea who was directing his leaps, and both he and Al were flying by the seat of their pants.)
The decision to focus on intimate storytelling was both economically and philosophically sound. The focus on one person side stepped all the questions about whether or not Sam should change history, because saving a single life didn't affect events on a wider scope. At the same time, Al would usually pop in at the end of the episode to say that the rescuee would open a community center or become a cardiac surgeon or do something that helped people or saved lives. The implication was that Sam's efforts--even on a micro level--would somehow bring about a cumulative positive change. Exactly how was not for us to know; God works in mysterious ways.
I liked this approach because it showed viewers that you don't have to be a superhero to change the world. Show someone a little compassion and human kindness and you could work miracles. A little cheesy, a bit corny? Maybe. But in a cynical world, it's a message that needs repeating.
Unfortunately, this type of storytelling did establish a pattern; and if the twist on the genre of the week wasn't particularly fresh or the guest stars didn't sparkle, you could practically hear the gears of the formula locking into place:
Sam leaps into a dangerous, embarrassing or sex-ay situation ("oh boy"); Al tells Sam there's a blah diddy blah percent chance Sam is there to save the guest star of the week; if the sex-ay is ongoing, Al makes a charmingly horndog comment and Sam protests on behalf of modesty and propriety; there's an encounter with the villain(s) of the week; Sam tries to convince the guest star to change his or her destiny but fails miserably; Sam charges to the rescue as his Swiss cheese memory somehow retrieves exactly the information needed (medical knowledge, kung fu moves) to save the day; from his position as holographic observer, Al gives Sam a vital, timely heads up; we find out the rescuee's new future; leap out.
There were a lot of those.
The reliance on formula would have been infuriating if Sam and Al weren't played by top flight actors. But that was never a problem.
It's the Same Guy Who Played Captain Archer on Enterprise? (Really?)
It's generally agreed that Scott Bakula and the late (sob) Dean Stockwell were a phenomenal team as Sam and Al, maybe the best buddy act in TV science fiction since Kirk and Spock.
Bakula, in particular, was able to handle anything the writers could throw at him: he had gravitas in the dramatic episodes, a light touch in the comedy episodes (his leap as a beauty pageant contestant was comedy gold) and when they asked him to sing? Look out. After his performance in "Catch a Falling Star" (s2), how has there not been a revival of Man of LaMancha on Broadway with Bakula as Don Quixote?
Bakula was charming, humble, immediately likeable. It's all the more remarkable because Sam, as a character, really shouldn't work. He's both a visionary physicist and a medical doctor; he speaks a dozen languages and he's trained in a variety of martial arts. Can you say "Mary Sue"? But time travel "Swiss cheeses" Sam's memory and mostly what's left is his simple Midwestern decency--and that made him relatable to all the non-PhD viewers out there.
It didn't hurt that Bakula had a metric ton of sex appeal, which the producers exploited at every opportunity. I lost count of how many episodes had Sam shirtless and/or in the embrace of a delectable female co-star. (But he would almost always refuse to give into temptation--which probably endeared him to the fan base even more!)
As for Stockwell--what can you say? A Hollywood legend. A child star in the 1940s, hanging with Dennis Hopper in the sixties, Blue Velvet in the 1980s, and he brought all of that life experience to Al Calavicci. Al started out the series as the guy who spooled out the exposition, wore the ridiculously loud outfits and made the off-color sexist comments (to Sam's eternal discomfort). But as the series progressed, they peeled back the layers of Al's character, showed us the rich, full life he'd lived before Project Quantum Leap and the unimaginable pain he had to shoulder.
(And as for sex appeal, I've read a few female fans' appreciation of Mr. Stockwell in his navy dress whites.)
Sam and Al, Don Quixote and his Sancho Panza. Maybe they didn't save the universe like Kirk and Spock--but Kirk and Spock never danced together to a Carmen Miranda number.
Random Notes
● Mike Post composed dozens of TV themes in the 1970s and 80s, but his Quantum Leap main theme is probably my favorite. It starts off with a simple eight note phrase, builds to an Aaron Copland-like grandeur in the middle section, then doubles back to take you into the commercial. When the credits start, and the camera is sailing through the clouds, the music makes you feel you're capable of infinite flight.
● Sam was obviously named after playwright Samuel Beckett. (It's lampshaded in the s2 opener.) But while Sam's predicament does mirror the sense of dislocation you find in Beckett's plays, Beckett's characters operated in an absurd universe. Quantum Leap's universe has order and purpose... so the similarity ends there.
● As a fan of Deep Space Nine, I was amused to spot J.G. Hertzler (Martok) and Mark Alaimo (Gul Dukat) in roles completely different from their Star Trek characters. Hertzler played the blustering, Ivy league dad of a bride-to-be and Alaimo played a brutal, racist police captain who thought he was preserving the peace. (Well, maybe that second one wasn't so different.)
● Favorite QL brush with history Easter Egg: in "Thou Shalt Not" (s2), Rabbi Sam uses the Heimlich Maneuver to save a man from choking to death. He walks away, not thinking much about it, when he hears someone checking up on the choking victim: "Are you okay, Dr. Heimlich?"
● Quantum Leap was a family affair, both behind and in front of the camera. Pratt co-starred in "A Portrait for Troian" (s2); Bellisario was Sam's "reflection." They were both subsequently out-acted by their four year-old daughter, Troian(!), playing a little girl who could see Al and couldn't understand why a big hairy man was pretending to be her mother. Her scenes with Dean Stockwell were the definition of adorable. (Troian Bellisario went on to play Spencer in Pretty Little Liars.)
Recommended Episodes (up to mid-s3):
Season One: Genesis (1&2), The Color of Truth
Season Two: What Price Gloria, Thou Shalt Not, Jimmy, Good Morning Peoria, Another Mother, Catch a Falling Star, M.I.A.
Season Three: The Leap Home (1&2), The Boogeyman, Miss Deep South, Black on White on Fire
Coming soon: in Part Two, I'll discuss the latter part of the series, including Evil Leapers, Lee Harvey Oswald, the (still) controversial final episode and the alternate endings. I'll take a peek at the upcoming sequel (not reboot!) series, and how it relates to the original.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-10 04:06 am (UTC)Just sayin...
:-)
no subject
Date: 2022-06-10 11:23 am (UTC)Of course, I hope somebody reads it and we can have a nice discussion about the topic. But trying to get it streamed/published? Ugh. So much WORK.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-11 06:15 am (UTC)If you had a small city newspaper that you could simply e-mail them in to whenever-- once or twice a month, say-- more if you'd like, of course-- and they'd publish them on their entertainment section?
I have no idea if they'd be interested, but there is a daily newspaper in a city near me that is gradually becoming an arts-related destination for southeastern PA.
Hmmm?