Welcome back leapers! This week, Sam deals with the nuclear hysteria and electroconvulsive therapy. Let’s get to it!
1. I get it
I remember being in middle school and reading about the Cuban Missile Crisis and the hysteria that was happening all over the country over it, and thinking that it sounded like sensationalism for effect in a text book. However, having now lived through both 9/11 and the first 2.5 years of a pandemic, I absolutely better understand the panic that was setting in all over the country.
“Nuclear Family” sees Sam leap into the brother of a fallout shelter salesman who is to prevent a murder from occurring outside their own shelter. The episode features the great Kurt Fuller (Wayne’s World, Ghostbusters II) as the neighbor who gets killed and Robert Hy Gordon (Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, Leprechaun) as the kid who, brainwashed by his father’s Russian invasion fantasies, was to kill his neighbor. All of the actors here are slightly over the top in their response to things, but again, that tends to match the era.
This is a quality episode that has a lot of tension and nice moments, and I would normally have done at least 2-3 points on this. But the next episode is so packed full that it is only getting a scant one thought. Sorry, “Nuclear Family.”
2. A very dated opinion
For a big chunk of my life, mainly through shows like Quantum Leap, I had this opinion that electroconvulsive therapy, then known as electroshock therapy, that it was this cruel, barbaric pseudo-science. However, as I’ve learned more, spoken to people who have had it, and heard people like Gary Gulman speak about how much it actually helps them, my opinion on the therapy has evolved a lot.
That said, on Quantum Leap, it is presented as essentially a faux-Frankenstein creating the monster through lightning moment, and that is underscored by the orderly who gives him therapy both as a punishment and also super charges it as to scramble Sam’s thoughts so thoroughly that he begins thinking he is back in old leaps. If this and One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest were your only exposure to ECT, I’m not surprised it would scare the shit out of you.
3. For Your Consideration
Scott Bakula is always very good on Quantum Leap, but with very few exceptions, he is playing Sam in the same way across various leaps. Sure, some stick with him more or bring up stronger emotions, but Sam is Sam. Here, Bakula never really plays Sam Beckett, but instead goes through four or five past leapees and, for the first time, is tasked with trying to sound like them. I feel it is important to remind everyone that this show was a) always trying its best to be empathetic to the leapee’s life and b) shot over 30 years ago, and so standards and norms have changed considerably since then. And so, the various portrayals that Sam adopts may be problematic in different ways, whether trying to mimic the speech patterns of someone with Down’s Syndrome or speak like a Southern Black Septuagenarian, a lot of this looks a little rough.
That said, this was probably conceived as a vehicle for Bakula to garner extra Emmy votes, or at least to show off his range. But I’m not sure having Bakula just go apeshit and do voices for an hour was necessarily the best way to do that.
4. David Proval!
You know how people have a hard time buying Tom Hanks as a bad guy because of his 50 years of playing just the nicest dudes? The converse of that is David Proval, who has played either pricks or guys who definitely act like pricks often. His most likable role is that of a career criminal in The Shawshank Redemption, but he’ll always be Richie Aprile from The Sopranos or the lead thug in UHF. Here, he plays a doctor that is not quite a monster, but is certainly in it for him and him alone and doesn’t really care if he destroys a life to get that good research.
Continued belowAlso in this episode is Scott Lawrence. Y’all won’t know who he is, but if you ever played a Star Wars video game that had Darth Vader in it, he was doing that voice.
5. Holy shit
OK, so see if you can follow me. The character that Lawrence is playing is the reason Sam leaped in; he’s to teach him to read. But, because Sam is going through his crisis, Al takes it upon himself to teach him. The other inmates at this asylum can see Al because, as we discussed last week, whenever the show needs someone to see him, they do. I guess they feel like they’re not experiencing life in the same way as “normal” people, which is insulting as fuck. But regardless, Tippy can see Al. And so Al learns that Tippy likes to sing, and decides that music is the way to teach him to read. Specifically, Tippy says he never learned “his ABCs.” Thankfully, there’s already a song that can teach him that specific skill.
Wait, NOPE, instead Al pulls up an instrumental rap song that is, for reasons, uploaded into Ziggy, and on the spot freestyles an alphabet rap. Yep, you heard me.
Now, there are only three plausible explanations for this, and none of them are great.
Explanation #1: Dean Stockwell wanted to rap and asked it to be written into the episode.
Explanation #2: Tippy is Black, so I hope that this isn’t because Al/the writers think that the “ABC” song, set to a melody by Mozart, is just for white people.
Explanation #3: Someone felt that this was good or funny, of which it is neither.
This easily becomes the worst scene in Quantum Leap history, and I can’t imagine anything supplanting it.
The Oh Boy Teaser:
This is a season finale, and so the cliffhanger has to be dope, and dope it is. Sam and Al have somehow switched places, and Al is now the one leaping.
Sadly, we’ll have to wait until next summer to see how that shakes out. However, that isn’t the end of our Quantum Leap coverage for 2022, as next week, we will begin covering the rebooted Quantum Leap as part of our ‘Boomb Tube’ weekly TV coverage. See ya then!
