Quantum Leap (1989) Series Review

Quantum Leap (1989-1993)

Season 1 - 9 episodes (1989)
Season 2 - 22 episodes (1989-90)
Season 3 - 22 episodes (1990-91)
Season 4 - 22 episodes (1991-92)
Season 5 - 22 episodes (1992-93)
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Created by: Donald P. Bellisario
Starring: Scott Bakula, Dean Stockwell, Deborah Pratt
Rated: TV-PG
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Plot
Dr. Sam Beckett finds himself trapped in time and travels through different periods of the past to help alter different people's futures for the better, never knowing who, where, or when he'll end up.

Verdict
Each episode is a new adventure as Sam leaps into a different person and time. He gets to experience various forms of discrimination firsthand. Sam happens to be a doctor, frequently placed in situations where science is primitive or no one will listen to him. This is an overwhelmingly uplifting series as Sam tries to save the world one person at a time. Through him, we see how unfair the world can be. His mission in part is to open people's eyes; both characters in the show and viewers. It's a wholesome show that has Sam literally walk a mile in another's shoes. While I enjoyed it, five seasons also felt sufficient. It's an easy watch, being a procedural.
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Review
This is literally experience the world from another's perspective. In each episode Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) leaps into different people and times to right wrongs and save lives. That's his main goal,  but the show wants us to think about society at large along the way as we see how people can be treated differently without cause. Each episode, he has to figure out who he is, what he needs to do to blend in, and most importantly what he must fix. Once that's done he's transported to a new body. He's frequently in tense situations that put him at the edge of serious trouble. I doubt he could blend in so well, though the excuse is that he's incredibly smart. Even then he'd lack a lot of context and all the mannerisms of his host.

The show's intent is to provide an alternative perspective, often engendering empathy for minority groups and people often considered other. Sam's a white man that's likely gotten a lot of breaks because of that. Experiencing what women and minorities endure is a shock for him. He's never had to pretend to get along, and his secondary goal is to force others to confront their poor behavior.

Season 1
The first episode introduces us to the future with hover cars, lights built into clothing, and a scientific experiment, the Quantum Leap Project led by Sam Beckett. He wakes up in bed with a woman with no memory of who he is or how he got there. It's 1956. He's not himself, inhabiting someone else's body. Sam has to fake being this person while figuring out what's going on. He doesn't remember his own past, but he knows the person in the mirror isn't him. It's easy to guess this is related to the experiment in the future that went awry.

Sam was working on time travel. His experiment worked, just not as he suspected. Through the episode he slowly remembers his past.

Al (Dean Stockwell), who worked on the project, can project himself as a hologram only to Sam. Together they try to figure out what's going on. They think Sam was sent here to right a wrong. The person Sam inhabits died. Sam has to prevent that. The only problem is that Sam has to pretend to be a test pilot, and he's not.

At the end of the episode Sam teleports to another body where he's in the middle of a baseball game. A cosmic force is putting him in different places. There's no guarantee he'll make it back to his own time and body.

S1E1: Scott Bakula plays Dr. Sam Beckett

The show could just as easily be the misadventures of Sam, unmoored in time and space. In the second episode he must stop a student from marrying an English professor, himself.

He's a rancher, a gangster, a boxer, a nerd, and even a black man in the 50s. In episode seven the show confronts racism head on. I was surprised at the bluntness.

Season 2
This season especially challenges prejudices, generating sympathy for groups that historically have been excluded.

In the first episode Sam and Al have to prove leaping is useful to secure funding. If funding is cut, Sam will be stranded. Sam's leap does just that, just not in the way the officials want. Sam's actions change the head of the committee who is more sympathetic to the program. The committee debated whether changing one life is enough.

The concept is fun enough, and this provides plenty of variation. I do wonder if the adventures will become routine or repetitive. How many times can you do this? While i typically prefer more intricate, serialized stories, the episodic nature of the series makes this easy to pick up and watch without having to keep track of many details.

In episode three, Sam deals with racists again. He's a World War II veteran returning to his rural home with a Japanese bride. In the next episode, Sam leaps into a woman for the first time and experiences more sexism than knew existed. The show seems progressive, even for today's standards. I wonder what it was like in the 90s.

In the fifth episode Sam plays a blind concert pianist. While the body is blind, Sam is not and can see. It's never clear how much of the hosts body constrains Sam's abilities. Usually it seems that Sam retains his faculties, even when he may not have the physicality of his host. In the next episode Sam has to save rock n' roll as a radio DJ.

S2E5: Scott Bakula, Dean Stockwell play Sam Beckett, Al

In the eighth episode Sam plays a character with Down Syndrome, though the show uses a more derogatory term. Everyone treats "Jimmy" like a monster. They call him names, pick on him, and treat him absolutely terribly. Seeing it happen to Sam certainly changes the effect and heightens the discrimination.

The eleventh episode features a ghost. It's quite the mystery as even Sam and Al can't figure it out.

In the thirteenth episode Sam is a single mother that has to save her son from disappearing. We learn children can see Al, and Sam is a trained martial artist that defeats his 'son's' kidnappers.

In episode eighteen, Sam is a famous pool player. He has to use Al since Sam can't play pool. In the next episode he's a trapeze artist. I wasn't sure how he could perform that job unless he can use the inherent physical prowess of the body he inhabits, but he wasn't blind when the body he inhabited was blind. How can he become a competent trapeze artist in a couple of days? It's a stretch, and I get the show would only get bogged down in some of these details.

Season 3
Each episode Sam has to convince a lot of people to do things they don't want to while covering up that he's only posing as that person and knows too much about the future.

In the first episode Sam makes it home, and he's inhabiting his younger self. Sam wants to fix everything, but past episodes prove that doesn't always work out. He tries to stop his older brother from going to Vietnam, but it only scares everyone that he claims he can predict the future. In the next episode, he's in Vietnam with his brother's platoon. He wants to save his brother, and that's precisely why he's there.

In episode five Sam leaps into the body of a horror writer. He inadvertently gives a number of ideas to the writer's young friend Stevie - Stephen King. In the next episode Sam's a woman in a predatory beauty pageant. He has to stop another woman from succumbing to the demands of a predatory photographer.

S3E5: Scott Bakula

Episode seven explores the Watts riots. He's a black man engaged to a white woman. He has to prevent her death while convincing their families they need to stay in Watts.

Sam and Al are in a Scrooge type tale as they try to stop an industrialist from tearing down a Salvation Army in episode ten. In the next episode he's a teenage boy on vacation with his family. His father wants him to be more of a man while his older sister torments him. In episode twelve Sam leaps into a pregnant woman. He has all the symptoms and feelings of being pregnant himself. How can he be in someone's physical body and not feel what they feel? Al is stunned that Sam can 'feel' the pregnancy. This episode seems to indicate he's not just a consciousness in a foreign body, but he does look like that body from the outside. Did this episode shortcut logic for a plot?

In episode seventeen, he's in a glam band and has to prevent his host from being murdered. In episode twenty-two, Sam leaps into a patient that gets shock therapy that scrambles Sam's personality. He can't separate who he is with all the people he's inhabited. Apparently the mentally ill can see Al too, in addition to children and people with a mental pattern close to Sam's. It's a nice way to end the season, raising the stakes.

Season 4 
It seems the first and last episodes in each season try to go bigger. To start this season Sam and Al swap places. Sam is the hologram and Al is the leaper trapped in someone else's body. An ill-timed lightning strikes causes them to switch places. That allows Sam to return to his his present and see the wife he had forgotten.

In the second episode Sam plays a baseball player that he thinks needs to get back to the big leagues. Sam diverts from the mission to help a teammate. It's an act that could prevent Sam from leaping, but he has to do the right thing.

In the fourth episode Sam teleports into a klan member. He doesn't like that one bit, nor does he like having to go along with it to survive. He nearly gets himself in trouble several times, but the episode ends with Sam taking a stand and forcing the klan to back down.

This show tackles heavy subjects. The sixth episode came out in 1991. I'd consider it progressive for 2021. Sam plays a rape victim. The difficult thing is that Sam doesn't know what happened, neither does the audience, but people don't sustain the injuries Katie has unless it's a violent altercation. Sam has to testify. Al manages to bring Katie in as a hologram. Initially Sam repeats Katie's words but soon it focuses on Katie as Sam drifts out of frame. It's troubling and powerful.

Sam is a chimpanzee test pilot in episode seven. 

There's a reason Al calls Sam a boy scout. He's always on the morally and ethically correct side of things. I appreciate the wholesome message of the show. Sam is a gay Naval Academy cadet. He believes sexual orientation should have no bearing on his opportunities while the school wants to kick him out. Al is against gays in the military, but by the end of the episode twelve Al has changed his mind.

In episode thirteen a psychic knows who Sam is and what he's doing. That doesn't happen often, but it doesn't make things much easier as they're chasing a killer. The sixteenth episode takes place in the Bermuda Triangle. It's a fun myth to tackle. In the final episode, Sam jumps into a younger Al. It's a dire situation as Al is on trial. Those results could erase their relationship altogether.

The show remains consistent. It's a procedural with a unique premise that makes it an easy watch, but I do wish there was a continuing sub plot to add some depth. It could be Sam trying to regain memories or meeting people from his time as they're holograms. Four seasons in, I doubt Sam will ever get back. The odds are against him. The underlying core is this desire to treat people justly as well as truly seeing the world from someone else's perspective. It's refreshing for a show to be so inclusive. 

Season 5 
The final season also remixed the show's theme song. It's jarring after getting used to the original version.

I'm pretty sure episode one is the first time Sam has jumped into a historical figure. It makes sense why that doesn't happen. It's difficult to create a plot twist when you can't change history. Sam jumps into Lee Harvey Oswald. He doesn't know if he's supposed to stop the assassination or find out the truth. Creator Bellisario actually met Oswald. This two part episode was a rebuttal to JFK (1991), asserting Oswald was capable of acting alone. It's ambitious. While I didn't like the episode, I liked the premise.

This season features historical figures more often than previous seasons. It's a neat one off, but I wonder if the show went this direction to chase ratings. We also see Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. 

I've wondered how Sam inhabits bodies. What's this mix of his body and his host's body? In episode four he 'walks' despite inhabiting a host without legs. It appears as him floating. The show explains it away as the host's aura conceals him, but it's still a stretch. Then in episode five someone brings a gun from the past to Al's present. That makes no sense whatsoever.

S5E21: Scott Bakula, Dean Stockwell play Sam Beckett as Elvis, Al

In episode seven, Sam returns to Jimmy from Season 2. It's the first time he's inhabited the same person twice. Sam also finds another quantum leaper. While he tries to make things right, she tries to make things wrong. I don't understand her origin or why she's evil other than a poor attempt to add drama.

Episodes eight, nine, and ten form a decades spanning trilogy where Sam inhabits different people to save Abigail several times. Sam jumps into a woman during the liberation movement in episode thirteen. Her husband is overbearing and deeply misogynistic. The husband states he's too old to change his ways, and Sam hits him with only if he believes it to be true. Only if he doesn't love his family enough would he not try to change.

Much to Sam's chagrin, he jumps into Dr. Ruth, a radio sexpert. He has to field uncomfortable questions, but part of the mission is Dr. Ruth helping Al. The fifteenth episode is contention for one of the worst. Sam leaps into a vampire.

This season has shown Al's lab much more often, though it's just a white, blank room. We also run into the evil leaper again. The problem is that it seems like a cheesy sci-fi plot. It's clearly a ratings grab. 

Episode twenty breaks the show's rules. I thought Sam could only enter bodies that existing during his lifetime, but he jumps into someone during the Civil War. He has to ensure what's already happened, still occurs. What's the danger? Every other episode he has to right a wrong. In this one, he just has to make sure things happen as they did.

The final episode is an odd way to end the season, though the crew didn't know it would be the last season. This was a setup for season six where Sam would realize he's in charge of where his leaps take him. In this episode, he leaps to a liminal space where he sees people he's leaped into before with a bartender that knows about Sam. Sam has the choice to return home, but he instead makes a leap that will help Al. The text at the end of the episode was added after the show was canceled, stating that Sam Beckett never made it home, though the text misspells his last name as "Becket."

I like the premise of the show. Sam wants to make the world a better place and open people's eyes to the way the world should be. Being a procedural makes it easy to follow. I'd rank the seasons as 3, 2, 4, 1, 5. Three over two as it's more consistent and has a great opener. Four also has great episodes, but it also has some that feel sensational just for the sake of it. One is just too short, more of an introduction. The fifth season was easily my least favorite. It seems the season was trying for ratings by delivering several historical figures and some sci-fi cheesiness.