Welcome back to our journey through the lifetime of one Sam Beckett, as we follow him through lifetime after lifetime of righting the mistakes of the past. This week: Sam leaps into a G-man and a Native American grandson. Let’s fire up the accelerator and hope that this leap is the leap that brings us home.
1. Maybe the series’ best misdirect so far
While I adore Quantum Leap, one of the problems with the show is that you can usually pinpoint the type of person that Sam is leaping into, and extrapolate the plot from there. When we see that Sam is leaping into a hapless FBI Agent in “Her Charm,” it’s not hard to connect the dots to Sam needing to save his charge’s life. Sam is to take Dana, who has been found in Witness Protection twice already, to a safe house in Baltimore, but Sam smells a rat. The only person in the Bureau that could be a suspect is Agent Richardson, who is Sam’s boss, and so Sam works to circumvent his plans and get Dana to safety.
It takes us well into the third act to realize that Sam’s leapee, Peter, is actually the rat, and has inadvertently been leading Nick, the gangster, to Dana the whole time. The twist is handled with more patience and subtlety than you’d think, and it comes as a legitimate surprise. It’s a really well executed twist.
2. Someone needs to explain crime to the FBI
In the fiction of the show, Dana’s car/house was shot up by a mobster with a literal uzi in broad daylight, and no one calls the cops or can ID the car. Multiple times, it is stated that Nick got off already after bribing jurors, so he can’t be tried for his crimes again, so Dana can’t escape his reign of terror.
That makes sense, except that shooting up a suburban neighborhood is still a crime, FBI. Al Capone went away for tax evasion! I’m sure Nick doesn’t have a license for an automatic weapon, so get him on that. Or, you know shooting up a neighborhood. Arresting would solve literally all your problems in the short term. C’mon!
3. The strangest last 5 minutes of any episode thus far
So Dana is a pill all episode, with good reason, but she and Sam still manage to make out a bunch because Sam could romance a Beefeater palace guard. But at the end of the episode, when she’s on to Pete/Sam being the rat, Sam tries to basically explain, in the heat of the moment, that he is not Pete, and so she shouldn’t shoot him. That’s an unexpected piece, but a welcome one. We also then see Sam shoot Nick dead, and afterwards, Nick’s chauffeur picks him up and carries him off like an animated Pieta, lamenting his dead mafioso boss like it was his long lost son. There’s also a weird plot point where the driver thinks that God is telling them not to kill Dana, which is sort of correct, as God puts Sam into his leaps. So that, too, is a weird touch.
But the weirdest part of all is the last minute or so. Sam takes proper precautions to ensure that Dana is protected when he leaps out which is smart, and explains to her the situation with Quantum Leaping and whatnot. She’s unsure of it, which she should be, but seems to believe him. Now, this entire time, they were at a cabin that one of Sam’s professors owned, and which Sam used to vacation to with said professor. Sam knows this is a safe spot, and takes Dana there. Well, right before he leaps, the professor shows up, confused as to why two strangers are in his cabin.
Then, two crazy things happen. Al tells Sam that Dana will eventually marry this professor, and Sam, looking like Pete says, “it worked!” and reveals his true identity to the prof, who has to be confused out of his gourd at this point.
But here’s the rub: it seems like Sam would have to then travel back in time to avoid leaking that information, or he would create a paradox. Or, if the prof has seen Back to the Future enough times (I know, I know, this episode takes place 10 years before Marty McFly traveled back in time), maybe he just keeps his mouth shut to young Sam. Either way, it was a rollercoaster of a final act.
Continued below4. They’re trying their best folks
“Freedom” is an episode about an older Native American, Joseph, whose grandson broke him out of a nursing home so that he can die on his native soil on a reservation in Nevada. The episode has a lot of folks questioning his decision, both in condescending and compassionate ways, but it also has a fair amount of language that, while not blatantly offensive, seems very out of place in 2021, and likely not great in 1990. Whether it is Joseph embracing the term that the Washington Football Team used to go by, or the fact that the old man basically just speaks in clichés, the part is not exactly a nuanced look at the Native experience.
Joseph using the word ‘Indian’ over ‘Native American’ was jarring for me, but I there are people/groups who still use the former term, and that was certainly more the case thirty years ago. Episodes like this one are trying really hard to represent a culture with class, but this looks and feels extremely like white folks trying to tell a Native story which, of course, is exactly what this is.
At least Frank Salsedo, who played Joseph, was actually a Native American and not an Italian, as was the case for many actors playing similar roles over time.
5. Sam is a raw nerve this week
This episode had Sam being as impulse and emotional as we’ve ever seen him. He has no problem beating up a couple of sheriffs (multiple times), stealing a car, stealing some horses, and conning a store clerk into giving him some free stuff. Sam also openly weeps as he carries Joseph’s bullet-riden body across the river to his homeland. Sam usually gets invested in his leaps, but this one seems especially emotional/personal for him, for reasons the show never really goes into.
The Oh Boy Teaser
On the broadcast version, we get a leap into season one’s “Double Identity” mafia episode. But in reality, we will see Sam try his hand at being a mortician. Join me back here next week!
