Welcome back to to Multiversity’s coverage of Quantum Leap! When we last left our intrepid crew, Al was trying to get Sam to save his marriage, with all parties eventually realizing that the mission was what it was, and there was no way to both save the life of Sam’s partner and save Al’s marriage. It was a message that was, seemingly, received loud and clear by all parties.
Or so it seemed at the time. Oh boy…
1. A variation on the opening every week
Every week, the voice-over at the start of the episode mentions how every leap Sam takes he hopes is the leap home. Well, in this episode he doesn’t go home, as in the moment he was put into the Quantum Leap accelerator, but rather home, as in Indiana in 1969, when Sam is 16 years old. Sam leaps into his own teenage self, to win a basketball game that will send his team to the state finals but, more importantly, will send a few of his teammates to college on scholarships. But Sam sees this as something closer to kismet than just another assignment. This is his chance to save his dad from heart disease, save his sister from eloping with a drunk and, perhaps most importantly, saving his brother from being killed in Vietnam.
Sam can’t handle what he was begging Al to handle in the season 2 finale, and threatens to not complete his task so he can’t leap, so that he can stay and ‘fix’ his family. It’s a tempting move for any of us; who wouldn’t love the chance to tell our loved ones about the pitfalls that await them? But Al keeps telling him that his mission is why he’s here, and he can’t change things that aren’t meant to be changed.
This isn’t the first time that Sam has tried to take a selfish approach to his mission, but this is the one that he is most passionate about, and for good reason. Sure, his dad’s heart disease seems tragic, and who wants their sister to marry a fool? But his brother is killed in a war that is remembered for being unwinnable and especially deadly for young American men. Sam watching his brother, retroactively, go off to war has got to seem like a truly cruel trick.
2. Al Calavicci, Untamable Horndog
Both episodes this week show Al being horny, because they take place on a day that ends in ‘y,’ but “The Leap Home Part 1” features an especially troublesome bit of dialogue where Al talks about how Sam is in the catbird seat because he has the knowledge and experience of a mature man, but is at his ‘sexual peak’ at 16, and think of all he can do with that combination. Yes, Al is basically advocating for grown ass Sam to bone a bunch a teenagers.
The episode also has a cool little nod to real life, where Al is yelling on the sidelines to Sam during the basketball game, and says “I feel like Dennis Hopper in Hoosiers.” Hopper and Dean Stockwell were collaborators on a number of films over the course of their careers, perhaps most famously sharing the unforgettable “In Dreams” scene from Blue Velvet that I wrote about when Stockwell passed last year. It’s a nice little tip of the hat to an old friend.
3. Second chance Sam
When Sam hits the game-winning goal, but finds out that the deal he made his brother (I win the game, you hide out on April 8) doesn’t go through, Sam is instantly transported to Vietnam on April 7, the day before his brother Tom is set to be killed. There’s a fair amount of Vietnam clichés in play here, but thankfully, they couldn’t afford the rights to “Fortunate Son.” This leap is, again, not to save Tom, but Sam is determined to do both. He leaps into a Navy Seal nicknamed ‘Magic’ for his good luck/sixth sense, which plays out as a convenient way to relay future information, unlike in “Part 1,” where Sam just tries to straight up convince his family that he’s a time traveler.
There’s a female photo journalist who is embedded with his battalion who basically begs to get ‘Magic’ to make them take her along, saying that she’d sell her soul for a Pulitzer Prize, and their mission – the rescuing of two POWs – would likely provide the opportunity for a picture that could win that.
Continued below4. Telegraphed tragedy and betrayal
While we aren’t sure until late in the episode that Tom is going to survive, it is very clear early on, both from the performance and from something Al says, that the Viet Cong defector, played by a just pre-Wayne’s World Tia Carrere, is going to be the cause of an ambush of some sort. Most the blame falls squarely on the teleplay by creator/producer Donald P. Bellisario, which too easily paints Carrere’s character in a ‘shifty Asian’ stereotype that is so common in Vietnam media of this era.
It is also painfully clear from the moment she starts talking about her Pulitzer ambitions that Maggie isn’t going to make it, either. She steps on a landmine, surviving just long enough to remind Magic that he needs to publish her final photos, before succumbing to her injuries. The death would’ve meant more if it wasn’t so easy to see what was happening, but it is still an emotionally resonant moment.
5. You can’t spell pal without Al
The kicker at the end of the episode, which isn’t explained all that well due to the chaos of the final scene, is that the mission to rescue POWs fails, but the POWs survive, and Sam limits the folks who are killed to just Maggie, and so is able to leap out. But the surprise is that the photo that Maggie takes of the POWs before all hell breaks loose reveals who one of the captured Americans was: Al Calavicci. Al essentially trades five years of his freedom, as well as his marriage, which we saw in “M.I.A.” was ended because his wife thought he was dead and moved on, so that Sam could save his brother’s life.
It’s a gesture that is all the more moving because of what we saw Al go through last season, and should humble Sam enough that he won’t think of himself next time, given all that Al did for him. It’s a wonderful gesture of friendship, and a heartbreaking coda to Al’s one true love story.
The Oh Boy Teaser
Sam leaps into a priest, mid-marriage ceremony. Let’s see Sam try to wriggle out of this one!
