Welcome back leapers! This week, Sam learns to ride a motorcycle and laments having some extra weight. Let’s dig in!
1. A cast of minor stars!
Quantum Leap is always full of fun minor tv and film stars from the 80s and 90s, as I’m sure folks will be saying about [insert TV show from 2022 here] in 30 years. But these two episodes, more than almost any other in the show’s history, are full of guest stars that are all ‘oh shit, it’s that guy!’ moments. “Rebel Without a Clue” features a young Diedrich Bader (Office Space, The Drew Carey Show), Melrose Place‘s Josie Bissett, The Mandalorian‘s Mark Boone Jr., and an actor we saw in last season’s pool shark episode “Pool Hall Blues,” Teddy Wilson. “A Little Miracle” has a post-Saturday Night Live, pre-Dumb and Dumber Charles Rocket and the future Bobbie Barrett from Mad Men, Melinda McGraw. These actors all get a fair amount to do in the episodes, with only Boone really playing a one-note thug. These actors all did good work, which was usually the case with Quantum Leap, but it is still nice to see.
Of particular note is Diedrich Bader’s Dillon who manages to come off a sympathetic, understanding, violent, and unhinged depending on the scene. While this is not exactly the greatest bit of writing that can lead to him being so volatile from moment to moment, Bader acts it with aplomb, especially as someone who is best known for his comedy work. He even manages to give off some Brando vibes, as Al agreed with my assessment that the gang liked The Wild Ones.
2. More unbelievable than time traveling through one’s own lifetime
“Rebel Without a Clue” hinges on the idea that Becky, the motorcycle moll, is going to be murdered, potentially by Bader’s Dillon. Sam tries to get her to not go back on the road with them, but stay in the coffee shop/bar/diner owned by Ernie. She quotes Jack Kerouac and says she cannot abandon her principles and stay in one place. Now, while this is a fundamental misreading of On the Road, it can’t be overstated how dumb most young adults are in their readings of that novel, and most literature in general. But that’s not the worst of it; the worst of it is that Sam is able to find Kerouac, and convince him to talk Becky into staying put.
Now, I could understand it is Sam went to him and said “listen Jack, this girl is going to get herself raped and killed by her boyfriend because he came home from Korea a damaged person and got no help from the government, so can you talk her out of being with someone who will hurt her?” That I could maybe see as a believable gambit for both parties. However, Sam basically asks Kerouac to renounce the idea of the road for this young woman which, of course, works. But again, she lives her life by Kerouac’s words. Wouldn’t him just speaking with her get the desired result? He doesn’t need to trick her; if he said “jump,” she’d ask how high.
3. With Becky’s help, Ernie becomes the world’s oldest barista!
The story of Ernie is an incredibly sad one. His son is MIA in Korea after the war, and he has kept his motorcycle tuned up and ready for his arrival. The arrival will never come, however, as Al learns that he was killed in action and will have his remains returned to the US in a couple of years. Most of Ernie’s actions in this episode can be described as kind to others and darkened by the shadow of his son’s disappearance. Ernie’s a broken man who, in the original timeline, died two years later of a broken heart when his son is officially pronounced dead.
But, when Becky decides to stay there as a waitress, we find out that Ernie is still alive in 1990! Now, a few notes here: every biker in the episode calls him “old man,” and the show clearly implies that he’s no spring chicken. The real life Teddy Wilson died just a year later at the age of 47, but for the sake or argument, let’s say that Teddy is at least 15 years older than that in 1958. So if he’s 62 in 1958, which still seems younger than what the show portrays him to be, he would’ve been 94 years old in 1990, which seems like a miracle for someone who was two years away from his heart giving out 32 years earlier.
Continued below4. A very special holiday edition
Due to the nature of Quantum Leap, the show rarely did episodes that tied into holidays or events. While some shows may have an Olympics-themed episode if their network was carrying the Winter Games, or others do a Valentine’s Day special where two characters temporarily find love, Sam and Al only interact through holograms, and no other characters, to this point, are recurring. And so, to see the show do a very on the nose Christmas episode was surprising and a little jarring.
Added to that weirdness is the fact that it is the most thinly veiled commercial for the Salvation Army I’ve ever seen. And while the Army’s reputation has taken a hit with their many, many anti-LGBTQIA+ statements and practices, I get why, then and now, it’s an easy charity to use in this episode.
The whole episode is featured around a grinch like character played by Rocket who is goin to tear down the Salvation Army Mission to build a plaza which will act as a monument for his greatness. And so, Sam gets the idea to “Scrooge” him, and essentially let A Christmas Carol play out in real time. This is a crazy idea that Al, and everyone else he interacts with, instantly adopts and sees no problem with. “Sure, we’re messing with a human being’s emotions with the explicit purpose of getting what we want, but it will make him less greedy, so it can’t all be bad, right?”
Look, I’m not lobbying for the guy to build Trump Tower on the bones of orphaned kids, but this plan seems morally ambiguous at best, terribly manipulative at worst.
5. A very sad ending in hindsight
Right before the come to Jesus moment where Rocket’s character decides to spare the Mission, and because he’s the only person who has ever been able to see Al (with some very lazy mumbo jumbo explanation), he is told that he will die by suicide ten years later after jumping from the roof of the plaza. That would be a dark element of the show regardless, but when it is taken into account that Rocket, himself, died by suicide, the episode is unable to be thought of in any way other than terribly sad.
The Oh, Boy Teaser
Last week, I mentioned the jarring transition between “Black on White on Fire” to “The Great Spontini.” Well, this week, both episodes ended with leaps into reruns, one of the genius bits of this show’s assembly, which could get viewers to feel like, even with reruns, they were getting the ‘proper’ followup episode. So, that explains why there was seemingly no trace of Sam’s emotion from the end of one episode to another.
