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 hops into a private eye and gets to live out his Humphrey Bogart fantasies, quite literally. It’s the season finale, so instead of awkwardly bridging two seasons, “Play it Again, Seymour” gets its own write up.
1. Premonitions
This episode teases something utterly fascinating that turns out to be, while not a cop out, a disappointment. Early on, Sam seems to know what is about to happen next; it is almost like he’s both in the story and above it all. While there could be a fun story in there, it would’ve fundamentally changed the series, and it seems like a bad idea to do that just as the first season is wrapping up.
Instead, it appears that Sam read a book based on this story as a kid. It’s pretty far fetched that a guy who can’t remember any details of his life can remember when a bald detective enters a room from a book he read as a kid, but this is television, let’s just roll with it.
2. An actual good mystery
The best part of this episode was the mystery itself. We know that Nick, aka Sam, was hovering above his partner Phil’s dead body, but who killed him, and how/when will they try to kill Nick? The show introduces a number of suspects, from Phil’s wife Allison, who was two-timing him with Nick, to Seymour, the newsboy downstairs who is a constant source of gumshoe slang. It turns out that the actual murderer is a minor character we met before, but wasn’t as telegraphed as it would’ve been had it been Seymour or Allison. The mystery is well developed and keeps the viewer’s attention in a different way than most of the Quantum Leap episodes, which often have things that need solving, but rarely such a straightforward mystery.
3. Ok, cool it on the Bogie stuff
So Nick looks in the mirror and thinks that he’s actually Humphrey Bogart, but it turns out, he’s just a dude who looks a lot like Bogie. As seen below, he bares a passing resemblance, but isn’t exactly the spitting image, either.
People walk up to this dude all the time thinking he’s a movie star. I think the 1950s, collectively, needs their vision checked.
4. Why bring Woody into this?
As we’ve established firmly in the first season, Quantum Leap loves nothing more than a historical visit. Here, we get a young Woody Allen, approximately 17 years old, meeting Nick and mistaking him for Bogart. That is fine, I guess, but he basically launches into a stand up routine about his therapist, and it gets absurd. It may be the worst brush with history yet, and that’s saying something for a series that had Buddy Holly singing “Piggy Sooie” a few episodes ago.
Oh, Sam also introduces the phrase ‘main squeeze’ into the lexicon in this episode. That’s somehow less silly.
5. Future TV stars
This episode had two guest stars who would wind up making their mark on different shows a few years later. Allison is played by Claudia Christian, who is a big part of our Monday TV Binge Babylon 5, and Seymour is played by Willie Garson, who would gain most prominence for his role on Sex and the City. Shows like this are often chock full of bit players who, eventually, become big deals on other series, but this is the first time that I recall two recognizable guest stars before their big break.
The Oh Boy Teaser
OK, so here is where things get a little tricky. In this teaser, we see Sam leap into a woman for the first time. An episode was shot at the tail end of this season, but was always intended to be the season two premiere. And so, if we follow that logic, “What Price, Gloria?” should be the next one we watch, which is how this is presented on NBC.com.
But the plot thickens!
That episode was actually aired fourth in season two, and so we have to make a decision. Do we go with broadcast order or the intended sequence? To find out how I go, tune in next week!
