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 Texas veterinarian and an Italian-American stereotype. Let’s fire up the accelerator and hope that this leap is the leap that brings us home.
1. It’s a little wild and a little strange to make your home out on the range
For folks of a certain age, the easiest way to describe “How the Tess Was Won” is that it is basically a Hey Dude episode, with Sam in the role of Ted and Tess in the role of Brad. It is unclear who Al is in this analogy – maybe Mr. Ernst? But regardless, Sam is put through a battery of cowboy tests in order to win the hand of Tess, the ranch owner’s daughter who doesn’t want to marry. She devises this plan to get her dad off her back, knowing that she can out cowboy anyone on the ranch.
One of the things that Quantum Leap is excellent at is making you care about characters quickly and deeply. Tess is a a relatively basic tomboy archetype, but the writing and acting (by Kari Lizer, who would go onto great success as a TV producer) usually does a lot of the heavy lifting to get us aligned with Sam and his feelings for the people in his life. Lizer doesn’t bluster so much that she’s nasty or intimidating to the men on the ranch, but she also isn’t so well coiffed and demure that she isn’t buyable as a ranch hand. Good media allows you to empathize with the characters, and this episode does a fine job of illustrating why Doc/Sam is falling for Tess.
And so, when Doc doesn’t get the girl, the show makes you feel it. It’s a legitimately sad moment, even though you know that there’s no future for Sam and Tess. This episode did a nice job of putting even the least likable person into a sympathetic position, something that future episodes, even the next one, would fail doing.
What it doesn’t do too well is get us to believe that Doc’s assistant with the guitar is a young Buddy Holly. This is one of the sillier historical moments in the show’s whole run.
2. Surprisingly well shot
This isn’t to hate on the usual camerawork on the show, which is perfectly cromulent for its era and budget, but this episode, directed by Ivan Dixon (aka Kinchloe on Hogan’s Heroes and director of many, many episodes of television), uses some interesting shot composition throughout. The first time that Sam rides the wild horse, Widowmaker, when he’s thrown from its saddle, the camera is on the ground, allowing Sam’s fall to be extra dramatic. The shot also allows Tess to stride in front of the son, bathing her dark silhouette in bright light. These are small touches, but help to establish the series as something more nuanced and clever than your garden variety drama series.
3.
“Double Identity” is about as lazy of a The Godfather pastiche as possible and, despite being an infinitely more fun concept than “How the Tess Was Won,” falls short in just about every way. Sure, there are some fun moments, and this is, thus far, the most intense ‘awakens in someone else’s body’ moments yet (he just finished getting his swerve on with someone Sam doesn’t recognize). But overall, this is the first real clunker of the series thus far, and if you know me at all, you know how much I want to love a 1960s mafia episode.
Part of the issue is that this episode basically gives us no one to root for, or even like, among the natives of the era. Only Teresa, the shtupped wedding guest, is even the slightest bit likable, and Sam’s primary role in this episode is making decisions that put her in trouble.
4. Wait…I know that guy
Almost every actor in this episode is someone you recognize from something or other. A woman who was a customer in The Terminator. One of the Brooklyn mafiosos from The Sopranos. A dude from Bull Durham. Nick Cassavetes. Hector Salamanca from Breaking Bad. This show usually has at least one cast member per episode that is recognizable, but it seems like the casting director was working overtime in this episode to get folks who, in 30 years, would be familiar.
Continued below5. The leap home
This episode partly lacks in the character department because the episode is not about righting any sort of wrong, but rather trying to send Sam home. They, of course, cause the East Coast blackout of 1965 in the process, but Sam and Al never try to set anything right in the episode until the very end, with the lowest of stakes attached to it. I mean, yes, Teresa and Frankie get to find love and not get killed, but that’s all incidental because Ziggy’s plan doesn’t work out. But, while we care about Sam, the show is structured in such a way that Sam’s plight is always secondary to the immediate danger of the weekly scenario. But here, without that tie to the current story, the episode falls flat.
The Oh Boy Teaser
A classic leap! Sam winds up at a lunch counter in the 1960s American South, and he’s black. Oh boy indeed!
