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 trapeze artist with a treacherous past and kidnapping strip-club bouncer. Let’s fire up the accelerator and hope that this leap is the leap that brings us home.
1. Well, that’s actually quite impressive
For a science fiction show dealing with time travel, aside from the twice-weekly Sam fade in/fade out and Al’s walking through objects, the show is actually pretty light on special effects. This week, when Sam finds himself as a trapeze artist, we get a lot of ‘levitating Al’ bits, where Al is standing, seemingly on nothing, at Sam’s eye line as he’s learning the skills that are needed to not a) die or b) kill his partner. The show doesn’t overdo these moments, and uses clever blocking to allow the action to look more impressive than it actually is. It’s good, old fashioned practical effects, and I will never not mark out for stuff like this.
2. Sam’s most challenging leap?
Sam has had to do a lot of tough stuff in his leaps thus far, but this one might be the one that requires the most precision and finesse yet, and he’s totally unprepared to do so. His fear of heights is only part of the issue here, but that certainly complicates matters. The move that Sam and his ‘sister’ are to perform is so dangerous that their mother died doing the same trick, and so this isn’t just Sam learning the basics of a skill, he has to learn to be better than people who spent their entire lives doing this, and do so while his ‘dad’ is chewing his ass out, and his ‘sister’ doesn’t understand his reluctance to do this move.
The show does a good job of setting up this task that is undoubtedly hard, but incredible easy to explain the mechanics of, even to an audience of total n00bs. Al explains to Sam that he’s ‘reaching,’ where he just needs to let her come to him which, while not exactly revelatory, is enough to let the audience in on what Sam really has to do, which is relax. Yes, he has to grab someone who just did three flips without a safety net, but all he has to do is let her come to him and grab her wrists. Even if we can’t imagine ever having to do this, with Al’s explanation, it seems almost simple.
3. Well, maybe Sam’s second most challenging leap
Due to the season order, it’s funny how Sam needs to catch a triple on the trapeze and it’s presented as an incredibly difficult task, only to have Sam have to [checks notes] hold a baby, and Sam is somehow even less comfortable with the child than he was on the high wires. What’s so surprising about this is that we’ve seen Sam interact with kids, albeit older, before, and he seems like a natural, and also since Sam went to med school, he must’ve done a pediatrics rotation. I mean, he knows drug dosages for a baby, so wouldn’t it make sense that things like changing and rocking a baby would’ve been something he had to have some experience with before?
It’s one of the few times that this show shoehorns Sam into a role that is, in a negative way, a traditionally masculine role. A woman in her 30s would, of course, be expected to have some experience with kids, but it’s ok for Sam to have never held a baby before. It feels out of line with who the character is in so many ways, but thankfully, it’s just a minor part of the episode.
4. Boy, you got a panty on your head
There are a few instances of Quantum Leap taking a film that was zeitgeist-y in the moment and centering an episode around it. While “Maybe Baby” never goes as broad as the film does, there is a definite Raising Arizona vibe to this episode. Of course, the show imbues a whole lot of sadness into the episode, and there’s no John Goodman or Nicholas Cage, which is definitely a detriment. Also, less crawling through shit/mud.
Continued below5. An added wrinkle
One of the most interesting aspects of “Maybe Baby” is that it is the first time that Sam has really had to deal with an unreliable partner in his mission. Bunny O’Hare lies to Sam every five or ten minutes it seems, sometimes about insignificant stuff (her age), other times about really important intel (that the baby maybe, sort of, isn’t hers). This is why Al has a hard time figuring out Sam’s exact mission here, because his information is jumbled due to Bunny’s less than honest nature.
Sam often times talks about having to trust his gut when leaping, but this time may be the most extreme case of that yet. Sam, on his own accord, commits or is an accomplice to multiple felonies, and yet he more or less jumps in feet fist and without too much worry. It’s a testament to both Sam’s guts and Al’s trust in Sam that he doesn’t flip out even more when Sam does shit like, oh, handcuffs a sheriff and takes his gun.
The Oh, Boy Teaser
The teaser sends us back to Season One, when Sam leaps into a professor schtupping his student, but we’ll actually be out to sea in next week’s installment which, just so happens, to be the final of 2021. I’ll miss Sam and Al until next summer. Will you?
