Quantum Leap S3 E01–03
3–1 / 3–2 The Leap Home, Parts 1 & 2
Season three baby! And the regular voice over is back. I wonder if they changed it to reflect where he goes in this first episode of the season — hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home. Because it is! Sam is sitting in a cornfield in Elk Ridge, Indiana in 1969 (so just over 20 years before this episode aired, making it more recent to viewers than it feels like from a further thirty years forward, when ’69 is the distance past) and Sam is…Sam! As a 16 year old! Weird! He can smell it, breathing deep he knows it’s November and he’s sitting in seed corn. He comes out of the corn and Lisa the cheerleader wants to know if he’s taking anyone to the big dance? Never mind that now, springing out of the cornfield he sees his home! The farmhouse! His mom! OH fucking BOY is right!
His mother is calling his dad in for dinner and Sam is just stood there with a big ole grin on his face. In fact, I think he’s about to bust out sobbing, which, fair enough. He heads off to get his dad from the shed and aha, Scott Bakula is pulling double duty in old man makeup as old man man Beckett. His little sister is there and hey, this is a heart warming episode eh? What would you do if you could go home and be a kid again? Especially if your parents/siblings were dead in the present day (and if you were trapped by a demented God into perpetually leaping through time) and this was your only chance.
They’re having a family dinner. Peach cobbler for dessert! But Sam has to head out and speak with Al who’s showed up. In the barn Sam talks about how badly they lost the big basketball game vs some goons lead by a kid called ‘No Nose’ and Sam sure wishes he could replay it. And now he can! If they win the game, they’ll go on to be state champs, the coach will end up in the NBA and a bunch of good stuff will happen to players on the team. Sam has been leaped back home to help with Indiana high school basketball? OK, sure.
Sam though, thinks he’s there to save his family — to stop his brother shipping out to ‘Nam and to stop his (currently 12 year old) sister from eventually marrying an abusive alcoholic. Now the boot is on the other foot about family life, as Al says hey no fair, we couldn’t get Beth back for me. Al is very not down with Sam doing this, but Sam thinks this is a reward from the God leaping him around.
Sam starts by hiding his dad’s cigarettes and switching his coffee to decaf. Baby steps. Low cholesterol! Exercise! They have a big argument about how his dad thinks he’s fine and Sam is like, uh, no dickhead, smoking and saturated fats and a bunch of non aerobic exercise means you’re going to die way sooner than you think! His dad is not into this anti-American sentiment.
Mom is prepping for Thanksgiving. I mean, home for Thanksgiving, can’t ask for much more than that. At basketball practice again it’s unclear if Sam is in his own man body or the young kid body. Does he have his full man height or strength? The coach does some weird shit, having a kid show up to intimidate them in a gorilla mask. Maybe they is where Teen Wolf came from? Al is standing around practice, leering at the cheerleaders, who let’s not forget, are 15–16, tops. Sam feels like he knows the guy in the mask — and he does! It’s his big brother Tom! Hot damn!
Back in the cornfields Tom runs Sam through what he’s been up to in the Navy Seals. Not great stuff! Working hard and running around and doing hard shit. Sam really had a pretty tough life, brother dead in ‘Nam, dad dead from heart attack, sister married to an abusive husband. It’s a good idea to show more of where he came from, that he wasn’t just some sort of hotshot upper middle class MIT legacy genius. Sam tries to talk Tom into not going to war, using his future knowledge to try and convince him. But his brother is for the flag, apple pie and the fourth of July! Damn Tom, chill out man!
Sam says he can see the future, and tries to prove it by saying he’ll shoot a couple of birds in a minute. His brother does just as he says and seems to want to believe him. Sam tells Tom he can travel in time. His brother tells the family and some doctor that Sam needs to go to MIT, that he has a brain that comes around once in a generation. The dad though, thinks this future talk shit just shows Sam is off his nut. The doc (who is this guy?) says oh it’s just a wishful dream Sam has, just go along with it and don’t worry about it too much. Solid doctoring.
It gets a little heavy when Sam tells his little sister not to marry Chuck when she meets him in many years. The little sister is more preoccupied with is Paul MCcartney really dead? Sam is like no Paul’s not dead, but uh, your favourite Beatle, John, uh... Al tells Sam not to ruin her childhood by telling her John Lennon gets killed. Sam is like John Lennon, uh, he wrote my favourite song. He then pulls out the acoustic and plays Imagine. I mean, damn Sam, this is going to really fuck with your little sister’s mind when she hears this song in a few years. But still, it’s a beautiful little moment and his sister cries. The rest of the family is not happy that Sam has convinced the little sister that the brother is going to die. Despite all this, Al says Sam hasn’t changed a goddamn thing. There’s got to be a better way!
Sam is mad, he’s always saving strangers but can’t save the people he loves. He runs into the cornfield and yells at the sky that he’s not doing it anymore. He quits! Al understands, but there’s nothing that can be done. Sam just has to live for these few moments. Thanksgiving family dinner. Basketball in the yard vs his brother. His brother teaches him the hook shot in order to beat No Nose. Sam says OK, if we win the game, that means that on April 8th (the day Tom get killed) Tom has to shelter in place, not go out for 24 hours. Tom agrees. At the big game, No Nose (awesome name) is dominating, I mean, he’s 6’4" and he’s slamming Sam all over the court and generally being a total jabroni.
But it all comes down to the last shot, and there’s the sky hook! All good! Elk Ridge wins! Rush the court! Big night for the high school coach who will now end up in the NBA! Sam is lifted up on to the shoulders of his team mates and I mean, this is probably worth all of his leaping around. But then Sam stares at Tom and Al gives him the bad news — Tom still dies. Bu that’s it, Sam leaps!
Part 2
Leaps into an intense jungle fire fight, blasting a machine gun at unknown enemies, next to his brother Tom! I think this might be the only time Sam leaps out of America, which, some questions. Can he leap anywhere in the world? Can he only leap here because of the connection to his brother? If he leaped somewhere foreign would he be able to speak and understand the language because of the body he’s in? Anyway, Vietnam.
Sam is another SEAL in his brother Tom’s team, and it’s April 7th, 1970. We know from the last episode that this is the day before Tom is going to die. There’s hot blonde Laura Dern-esque war photographer following them around. Sam is some guy called ‘Magic’, who apparently is the greatest SEAL ever and has saved their butts many many times so far. Everyone is pretty stoked to see a lady in camp and in high spirits. ‘Wild Thing’ blasts, and maybe they still had the rights from that Animal House rip off episode. That was also something to do with Vietnam, protesting on campus.
Hey one of the SEAL’s is Puddy from Seinfeld, ha! Al, in excellent full admiralty regalia is giving Sam instructions on how to put together and take apart various weapons. And on how to not wear underwear or do up the top button of the shorts, because that’s how SEAL’s do (no tips on why). They honestly do a great job on this show of setting the scene each week, making the world believable.
Sam finds out the date and why he’s called Magic. As soon as Magic showed up, everything changed, nobody got a scratch from a bunch of mortars that dropped on their heads and a bunch of other stuff. Al says Sam is not there to stop his brother being killed tomorrow. He’s just there to make the mission a success. Seems like maybe Ziggy could come up with some way of combining those two things if she’s such a super computer.
The SEAL’s have an off night and Sam seems a little shocked that they get drunk and party with strippers and hit on the photographer and do man things. Hey, their guide is Tia Carrere! She’s doing a strong Asian accent, which I guess makes sense given her role here, but still sounds weird to hear. Al tells Sam that they’re about to be attacked and Sam tells everyone else, who believe him, since hey, he’s Magic!
The sexy photographer lady wants to come on the mission tomorrow because she thinks it will win her a Pulitzer and she’s willing to sleep with Sam in order to get his trust and have him vouch for her. Al is like HA Mr Good Boy would never make that deal, right before Sam starts making out with her and says, sure, deal. But of course, doesn’t go through with it.
Sam falls into conversation with Tom about how last Thanksgiving, Tom’s crazy little brother made him promise he wouldn’t go out today, but Tom has to because he’s leading the mission. He has no choice! Sam has to try and save him! Al says, there’s nothing he can do to stop the mission because Tom would just sedate him and do the mission and die anyway. All they can do is do the mission and hopefully with Al as the secret weapon, save Tom somehow.
Tia Carrere sneaks around helping them look for the enemies. It’s a bit of a risk doing a SEAL mission with a non-SEAL guy like Sam, since he could very easily screw it all up for them (what if he was the one who got Tom killed because of that very reason! Time is a flat circle man!) Al directs Sam to the hidden POW’s. Sam realizes that the radio is on the Vietcong frequency and Tia Carrere is a double agent leading his brother and the other SEAL’s into a deadly ambush!
Meanwhile the lady photographer leaves the chopper like she was told specifically not to do and takes pictures from the bushes. She’s going to cause trouble! She takes pictures of a bunch of POW’s being led into captivity. Sam and the guy he’s with could save the POW’s as they’re only being guarded right now by two dudes. Instead, Al says, forget the POW’s, go back and save your brother.
Sam and the one other dude sneak up on the guys who are sneaking up on the rest of the SEAL’s and holy shit Sam just fully opens up on them and kills like 10 guys in cold blood from maybe 6 feet away. Eat shit Vietcong! They call in a full strike and helicopters blow the village to kingdom come! But oh no, Tia has Tom and is about to kill him when Sam appears and goddamn, shoots her dead too! Jesus Christ Sam is a killing machine. The lady photographer, of course, runs headlong into a booby trap and blows herself up and hey, maybe stay in the fucking helicopter when they tell you to stay in the helicopter? The rest of them make it out.
Back at base, Sam and the rest of the dudes get drunk and Al tells Sam, the lady photographer didn’t die the first time around, Sam effectively traded her life for his brothers. It’s sad, but it’s a trade anyone would make. At least she gets a posthumous Pulitzer for her work, in particular, her last photograph. Sam snatches it up from the table and sees a young Al looking back at the camera. In the picture, the very young Al was being led away to five years of captivity, a hell that Sam could have saved him from. But Al made the ultimate sacrifice and instead helped Sam save his brother. It’s a pretty touching moment to end on, even more than the brother being saved, it shows Sam has another brother. That rascal Admiral Al Calavicci!
3–3 Leap Of Faith
Sam is officiating a big ole church wedding! Seems like it’s this priest’s first go at a wedding so people can forgive his missteps. The older Irish priest is there to help him out, and is sad about some kid who died. Much weeping at the funeral. Some cool guy teenager in sunglasses is all like ‘hey man, it’s whatever, shit happens’ and acting tough and being kinda a jerk about how the other kid died. Al appears, standing over the road smoking a cigar (again, the delicate imaging chamber, that can’t be good for the machinery) and he tells Sam, hey it’s 1963 and you’re a young guy and we’re not too sure what the hell you’re doing here, but maybe to prevent a murder?
It’s that tough guy kid who is going to murder the Irish priest to stop him testifying about something. The Irish priest is drinking a lot, the Italian teenager is smoking and acting tough and there’s so many stereotypes it’s hard to get to any real people. The priest knows he’s in trouble and feels bad about the kid dying and the whole episode is a bit of a bummer and sort of drifting along nowhere fast. The priest is a war hero from Guadalcanal, and now he’s a sad drunk and there’s a lot of thunder and lightning which is doing a lot of the heavy lifting for the atmosphere here. The priest wasn’t a priest in the war, he killed maybe 50 guys and feels bad about it and so he became a priest after the war. But now he feels like he’s not doing any good and maybe he’ll just kill himself. Sam can sure empathize about if small acts, make a big difference in life, but he tells the priest, welp, you just gotta keep going.
Al is not too stoked about this leap too because it’s bringing back memories of his dad dying and him and his sister ending up at the orphanage. His dad told him, don’t worry, I won’t die, just pray for me. And little Al prayed his little heart out every day until the day the old man died. Thanks a lot God! Al hasn’t totally lost his faith but pretty much. At least he goes along with helping Sam as Sam performs various priest jobs, like confession. But before Sam can even hear a single confession the young hoodlum is there blasting away from the booth and oh no, Sam is dead! Al gets there just in time to see Sam laying dead on the floor with blood around his temple. Al prays over Sam’s body and Sam wakes up! He gets it together and goes after the kid with the gun, who wants to blow away the Irish priest.
The Irish priest has a gun on the hoodlum and is making him kneel and admit his role in the little boy’s death. Priest tells him, talk or he’ll blow him away and this guy playing the priest has a tiny little bit of Paul Newman about him, but with none of the charm. Priest prepares to shoot the kid just as Sam shows up and tells him, no! Wait! You don’t need to do this! Priest doesn’t kill hoodlum and not only that, decides to give up the booze and hit the gym the very next day.
Sam saved the day, which I guess could be viewed as God moving in mysterious ways? Half decent episode but bit of a come down after the big bang of the back home family feast opening two episodes.
