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. When we last were together, I was debating the order in which to watch the next few episodes, as Sam ‘leaped’ into the fourth episode of the broadcast second season, despite being filmed at the end of season one. I decided to go with the televised order, because I wanted to honor the way that most folks watched these episodes.
This week: Sam is on a honeymoon on a train and a stuntman in the dog days of disco. Let’s fire up the accelerator and hope that this leap is the leap that brings us home.
1. Paradoxical thinking
What is interesting about “Honeymoon Express” is that, while it features an incredibly riveting A-story, it is more of an episode about Al and his fight to keep the funding for the Quantum Leap Project. We see Al before a senate committee headed by Dr. Will Hayward of Twin Peaks, Warren Frost. Interestingly, Twin Peaks took Quantum Leap‘s spot on UK TV when originally airing, so these shows have more in common than just being among my favorite television shows.
Anyway, Al wants to convince the committee that this project is worth its $2.4 billion budget. Because Sam is helping average folks an their problems – as seen by this episode’s early scene with Sam climbing a tree to save a cat – it doesn’t appear that the project is worth the cost for the government. And so Al comes up with a plan: Sam will convince his ‘wife’ from the main story to call her father, a senator, and have him call President Eisenhower and…well, it gets complicated. But his plan is to change history to prove Sam’s impact.
The issue with that, of course, is that if history is changed, there will be no memory of it changing; things will just be different. We see this at the end of the episode, when the senator gets swapped, that no one aside from Al is even aware of what has happened. And, to be fair, why does Al know? Shouldn’t Al have the same reaction? Paradoxes are annoying, but ignoring them is even more so.
2. The man upstairs – and I don’t mean Mr. Roper! (Apologies to Jimmy Pardo for stealing his joke)
One of the aspects of the show that got mentioned in season 1, but becomes far more in focus in this episode is the idea that God is the one directing Sam through his leaps. Al declares that ‘all other scientific explanations’ have been suggested and rejected, which puts the show in an interesting light. Depending on how you’re defining God, the idea of God ‘wronging rights’ either sounds very possible or incredibly silly. Would God really want to ensure that “Peggy Sue” gets written? Would God really need to send a time traveler to get a cat out of a tree?
But if the old axion ‘the Lord works in mysterious ways’ is to be believed, then sure, I can buy God wanting Sam to save people’s lives in ways that mean the world to a small enclave of people. Regardless of if you believe or not, the show lays out an interesting question of what is important and what is merely trivial.
3. Fanning the flames of love
For a guy who is uncomfortable boning down with a near stranger in this episode, Sam sure seems to make out with a lot of people. And most of those people, by the end of the episode, we have an affinity for and, more importantly, Sam has an affinity for. Now, excerpting his ex-fiance, most of the people that Sam smooches with are people who the ‘real’ Sam wouldn’t likely want to date. But Diane, the woman in “Honeymoon Express” that he is on the titular honeymoon with, is both gorgeous and smart, and there is instant chemistry with her. You get the feeling that Sam, given the chance, would settle down with Diane, and they’d be a good pair. With Sam’s Swiss cheese brain, it is easy for him to fall in love with a stranger, but here it feels as close to genuine as we can get in a 44 minute episode.
Continued belowSide note on Diane: the episode ends with us seeing her as a senator in the ‘modern’ day. The actress who plays Diane, Alice Adair, does a wonderful job all episode. However, when she is playing old Diane, she’s suddenly a middle schooler playing an old person, replete with bad fake wrinkles. What happened?
4. Fire up Roku!
In the ever-confusing ranks of trying to watch this series in order, the second episode of this season, “Disco Inferno,” is not on NBC.com. This is likely due to rights issues with either the music (“Kung Fu Fighting,” “That’s The Way I Like It”) or clips from early Saturday Night Live. But, if you want to watch this one, it’s on Roku for free (the website/streaming service, not the device itself).
5. Sam’s memory returns
“Disco Inferno” is a fun episode where Sam is a stuntman, and there’s a nice misdirect in the beginning where it looks like Sam gets shot in the chest but, obviously, it was just a stunt. But the most important things, for the second episode in a row, happens between Sam and Al and doesn’t really involve the leap itself. Here, Sam remembers his older brother Tommy. And, eventually, he remembers that Tommy died in Vietnam. Because of Sam’s memory loss, the show can throw things like this at the viewer without much consequence, and without it feeling too contrived. This was an emotional episode for that reason, even if the plight of Sam’s leapt-into stuntman/cocksman was not the most interesting character to follow around for an episode.
The Oh Boy Teaser
Sam says “I’m Popeye” when he finds himself in a sailor’s suit. We’ll see how much spinach he eats next week!
