Quantum Leap S4 E19 & 20
4–19 Moments To Live
Sam is a doctor, something he can legit help with! But the patient is in full arrest and oh boy, she dead! Now the husband is throttling Sam!
Sam frees himself and realizes that the patient is still alive. Not only that she rises and starts kissing Sam! Wait a minute! She’s not dead, she’s an extra! Sam is an actor and this is a TV show! Which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense being that from our POV, sure it looks like a hospital, but from his POV he could look where the camera could not and see the set and the cameras and all that jazz.
Anyway, he’s off, being talked at by his agent and his agent has a smooth American accent which means when this actor was Babu in Seinfeld he had to put on that Pakistani accent! Outrageous! Here’s Al to explain. Sam is in LA, in 1985 and he’s a daytime soap hunk. Sam is mad because he really fucking hates soaps! Alas, Ziggy is broken, so Al has no info to speed this leap along.
Sam has to go to lunch with a contest winner, played by Kathleen Wihoite who’s been in a bunch of stuff, I seem to remember her in ER. She’s a super-fan as you might expect, and just thrilled to be out in the big city away from her dumbass country hick husband. A lady comes over as they eat and is hilariously rude saying she can’t believe Sam isn’t with a supermodel and Kathleen must be his cousin or something. Wow, harsh lady! What if that was his cousin? Insulting all around. Mean Lady asks Kathleen to take a picture of her with Sam and fair enough, Kathleen dumps her camera in a bucket of ice water. Ha! Take that!
Kathleen seems nice enough, if a bit mental and uh, totally unable to separate Sam’s character on the show from reality. In fact, Al realizes too late Sam the actor disappeared this weekend! Just as Al is saying that, a van pulls up and Kathleen has a gun on Sam and he’s in the van and kidnapped!
Her weird husband is driving the van and they don’t want Sam’s money. Which, not a good sign when it’s not just a straight robbery. Hey, the husband is Mose from Deadwood! They stop for lunch at a diner which seems a bit intense and ill planned. Why not get the food to go maybe, since otherwise they have to keep a gun on Sam the whole meal. And also Sam is a famous actor.
Kathleen is going on about scenes from the show which she seems unclear is not real life. Not a good sign! Sam tries to explain to her that the show is not real life and his name is not Dr.Hunk or whatever. I mean, there’s an added layer here, being that Sam is neither the TV character she thinks nor the actor everyone else thinks. The crazy couple finally explain they’re taking Sam to wife’s momma’s house for reasons unknown. At least Al has located them and is able to offer his usual half thought through ideas and patchy, useless historical notes.
At big momma’s house the couple leave Sam with Happy Gilmore’s grandma, her bony arms, weakly pointing the gun at Sam, which it seems he could knock away in about two seconds. Momma reveals this whole kidnap plan is because Kathleen’s husband is shooting blanks and they need Sam to impregnate her! What the fuck? This is the most bonkers idea, possibly in the whole run of the show. Before Sam can process this insanity, Kathleen clonks Sam over the head with a frying pan like he’s Wile E.Coyote and he wakes up chained to a bed!
Sam remarks this is crazy, and boy she don’t like that! She’s yelling and banging pots and this whole thing feels weirdly low jeopardy like they’d never actually hurt Sam, they love him. But still. Very weird. Al helpfully (?) reveals Kathleen is officially bonkers, been in and out of institutions and that the momma of this house isn’t even her real momma, it’s her old roommate from the loony bin! I mean, even if Sam stays and agreed to go ahead with this plan, it’s sort of hard to MAKE him have sex with her. There are certain elements that might not cooperate.
Kathleen has a cooked a big old dinner and set up a table in the bedroom and again, it seems Sam could escape at any time if he really wanted to, just knock her out and surprise the big fella in the corner. Sam has knocked out bigger guys before with his kung-fu skills. Seems like Mose is going to watch the whole thing, from the eating food to having a little dance to, I guess, his wife getting impregnated. Mose does have some rules which he has written down. No eye contact, no moaning, no enjoyment. This does not exactly put Kathleen in the mood and she storms off. Sam is alone in the bedroom!
Al has a great suggestion for escape. Sam should think of something! Wow, very helpful, thanks my guy. For some reason genius Sam comes up with the super awesome plan to jump HEAD FIRST through a plate glass window which would for sure kill him. But he’s fine and now runs a half marathon to the bridge where Al says there’s a pay phone.
Before Sam can get anyone on the phone, Mose appears and blows up the phone with his 12 gauge. Not great!
Before long Sam is back chained up on the bed listening to Al give him useless advice about how he should try and escape by looking for a weakness. Sam immediately puts this half baked nonsense into practice, getting inside Mose’s head about what he really wants from this marriage and kidnapping. Mose is actually just a big sweet lunk. He wants a kid and he wants his wife to be happy but he can’t help with this first one which is going to prevent the second thing ever happening.
They come up with a plan to get Kathleen onside. Mose fakes a stroke or something and Kathleen frees Sam to do his fake but real but fake doctoring on Mose. He grabs a blade and says he has to operate and he knows how to do it because of all the times he’s done operations right? And finally when he’s about to fully cut Mose open, Kathleen jerks back to reality and says Noooooo! You’re not a doctor! Finally.
Mose gets up and him and Sam confront her, but instead of being like OK yes I’ll get mental help, she runs to the bridge to drown herself. Mose isn’t being much help so Sam throws a jab and knocks him out. Sam gets to the river and talks her down. I sort of like how they made this episode sort of overly melodramatic, like a daytime soap almost — hey even the episode title is pretty clever for once. It’s a great advantage of the show’s setup that they have the flexibility to alter the tone each week.
Mose is going to prison along with Kathleen but Al reassures us that they get out after not too long, setup a little business and stay together.
Here’s Babu to tell Sam, great news, they’re going to take what happened here and incorporate it into the show and eventually you’re going to forget all of this, which ha, yes, because uh, the guy is going to leap in and be like, what the fuck happened??
Al makes a winking quip about how television is just not ethical and Sam’s off.
4–20 The Curse Of Ptah-Hotep
Sam is into some Indian Jones shit, reading about the tomb of King Tut in a spooky crypt! Oh Boy! I can’t remember a sort of adventure themed episode, although I guess that’s sort of the running theme of the show. It’s 1957 and the lady he’s with is convinced this is the actual tomb of Ptah-Hotep. This is a more classic, Saturday afternoon adventure in a crypt type TV serial.
Sam seems genuinely excited and says he’s dreamed of this his whole life? Wait, can Sam leap anywhere on the planet? Because this must be Egypt right? The tomb isn’t in Missouri or something. They can’t find the sarcophagus but Sam can apparently feel the spirit. This one is off to a weird start.
Al has disappointingly not dressed in any Egyptian garb, rather an all red suit. He’s straight to work ogling the lady professor because she’s wearing shorts. They are indeed in actual Egypt, making this a pretty fun leap. Sam knows a shitload about this, he wrote a thesis on the guy he’s leaped into, and he knows all about the lady professor, from Brown. Weird. What he doesn’t remember is that the lady professor, and Sam’s guy, disappear in a sandstorm on this very dig. Sam says this discovery is bigger than King Tut, and that they need to disregard the warning in the tomb about getting swallowed up, and stay through the storm to work on the discovery.
There’s snakes and other dangers in their tents and the helpers are leaving because the place is evil and Al is freaking out about the curse like a big baby. He won’t even go in the tomb despite the fact that to him, it’s basically like watching a 3D movie. Here’s a guy in a big white suit and hat, playing a role halfway between the guy who helps Indiana Jones (accent) and the Nazi who double crosses him (demeanor) and it’s not clear what side he’s really on. While the three of them poke around the crypt, a bunch of gross insects overrun the camp and kill one of the helpers. The curse!
White suit guy thinks the spirit is walking around protecting the body, which Sam realizes means that although grave robbers have stolen the sarcophagus, the body is probably actually still nearby. Legend has it, he was buried with some sort of giant diamond, which pretty sure this sketchy white suited guy (WSG) would like to lay his hands on. WSG can’t leave the camp because his ancient car is broken, so he’s stuck there with them. Al is breaking out his comedy routine about some Egyptian girl he dated with a great asp. Good one Al!
Too bad Al can’t help with anything useful, because this week Ziggy is missing a memory card or something. Ziggy could have 3D modeled the room and seen any secret passages, alas, Sam is on his own. At least he has a vast knowledge of Egyptology. I guess it was one of his PhD’s? Finally Ziggy digs up something, there’s a giant sandstorm coming that’s going to bury them and everything under fifty feet of sand! Sam won’t leave though, he knows this site was never found and not only that, once it’s buried here, there’s going to be a huge dam built over the top of it, which will destroy the site for good!
He has to find the secret compartment tonight!
Grabbing a spear, Sam starts bashing at the wall and makes what looks like just a regular hole. No dice! But wait a minute, he bashes some more and there’s light! A secret room! Well that was easy.
Without calling for help or checking if there’s another way in, or a way out, he plunges headfirst through the tiny hole and well hot damn, it’s a secret burial chamber! No problem though, Sam can get in and out of the hole he made to explore.
Another helper dude drops dead and Al now thinks the lady professor is responsible for these deaths. Or it’s definitely WSG. Or it’s the curse. Unclear. Sam must look pretty cold to these two, since he doesn’t give a shit about these random dudes dying and just wants to explore the tomb. He takes those two down there to start cracking open coffins. WSG is like hey we need to you know, document this whole thing exactly, take records, do it right. Sam is like, nah fuck that, let’s just get these remains disturbed, and dig through their old ass bones! Finders keepers!
WSG and Sam lift the lid on the Pharaoh’s coffin and yup there’s his body all mummified. I guess, nice one that you desecrated this ancient burial site without making any effort to preserve it?
Up at the dig site, the whole place is on fire, a spark from the fire caught the kerosene and the whole thing caught on fire, or so Sam says. The rest of them are pretty sure, nope it’s the curse. Maybe we should cease our grave digging? But they can’t because the sandstorm is due in less than 12 hours! For some reason Sam decides that the only way to prove there’s no curse is to really fuck with the remains, so he goes back down and pulls out ‘the heart’ of Ptah-Hotep, aka the giant diamond the corpse is clutching. That’ll show ‘em! But alas, as soon as he does this, walls come down and Sam and the lady professor are trapped in the tomb. Wah-Wah.
WSG, abandoned on the other side, heads off to town to get help while Sam and LP hangout in the tomb looking for a back door way out before the sandstorm hits. Al makes a bunch of gags about how he hopes the walls don’t start closing in and suffocate and or crush them before saying sucks for you guys, he’s off home. Pretty heartless Al!
But wait! There’s a problem with Ziggy and Al can’t get home, he’s stuck in there with them. Ha. Sam and LP talk through what P-H was planning when he had the place made. He must have made a back door so that when he came back to life he could get out. So therefore, he must have a key. Most likely, in his pocket or whatever? I mean, of course! Sam and LP get on with their very final, most disrespectful act, slicing open the bandages around the dead body and literally digging through his old bones. Nice!
Pulling a few bones apart, they crack something and it opens a back door, only to be met by WSG with a gun! He was behind it all! Although no, he claims he didn’t actually do any of the killings, it must have been the curse. But that aside, he’d very much like the diamond please. Sam and LP trick WSG into going back down for the diamond and trap him in the tomb. LP feels bad about leaving WSG in there to die so they give him the instructions to get out.
Before he can escape, we see a dark hand fall on his shoulder and much screaming. Al heads through the wall to see what’s going on and comes back looking forever scarred, muttering, P-H, is killing him. The mummy is killing him!??! Not much time to figure out what in the hell that’s about because the sandstorm is almost there and Sam is leaping off!
Turns out, although they survived the sandstorm, Sam and LP will never discover the tomb again, despite spending the rest of their lives searching, which is a touch depressing. Fun episode but it felt like they had too much to cram into too little time.
