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 lecherous English professor and a crooked boxer. Let’s fire up the accelerator and hope that this leap is the leap that brings us home.
1. The opening is still not great
Quantum Leap, eventually, has one of the best opening credits sequences of all time. The voiceover perfectly sets the stage for a first time viewer, while featuring the iconic theme song, and a lot of great visuals from the various leaps. Only some of that is present here, with a longer voiceover from Sam that involves the phrase “a little caca” to describe the problems of his initial leap. That phrase bugs the crap out of me, pardon the crap/caca pun, and it doesn’t do as a good of a job as the eventual VO does. There are also just the season 1 episodes to draw visuals from, so we don’t get the full cornucopia of experiences yet.
That said, both of these episodes do as good of a job as the pilot, if not better, of setting up the basic premise and conflicts, so even without a streamlined opening, viewers still can know what is going on. And that is incredibly important for this show in particular, as there are so many quirks to the basic premise that, especially for a late 80s audience without DVRs, shows like this would often pick up viewers along the way.
2. Hey, that’s Teri Hatcher!
We get our first surprising guest star of the series in “Star-Crossed,” as Teri Hatcher, long before her turn as Lois Lane, appears as the younger version of Sam’s ex-fiancé Donna. Sam’s memory is still borked, and so while he remembers some bits of their relationship and its aftermath, a lot of it still fuzzy. But he knows that their marriage never happened, and he’s determined to win her back. Or, pre-win her? I don’t know man, time travel is confusing.
The only problem is that he leaps into a dirty old man professor who bangs his students for A’s and is fond of a neckerchief. He’s currently balling Jamie Lee, who if Sam doesn’t stop things, he will marry, ruining both of their lives. So, Sam sets out to get Jamie back with her boyfriend Oscar, who despite being a college student looks older than half of the professors I had in college. At the same time, he tries to connect Donna with her estranged father, whose abandonment, Sam believes, leads to Donna standing up both Sam and breaking off her first engagement as well.
While Sam realizes that by ‘fixing’ Donna, he may be destroying his own chance with her, but recognizes the greater good, and does the right thing, despite setting out, initially, to use his leap for personal gain.
3. A few other firsts
This episode establishes two more classic Quantum Leap tropes, the first of which is Sam and Al having to communicate when someone else is watching, either of Sam’s end or Al’s. Here, we see Al use hieroglyphics to send Sam a message when the directors of the project are observing their conversation. It’s a clever touch, and I’m sure the fact that Sam has a PhD in ancient languages will come into play again down the road.
This episode also introduces the idea of Sam being a bit of a Zelig, in terms of being present for major historical events. Here, Sam manages to get Donna to see her father the night before he ships out to Vietnam because a door was taped open in his hotel. What hotel, you ask? Why, the Watergate of course! So yes, Sam was present at one of the defining political moments of the 20th century, simply because the writers are having some fun. Is it sort of lame? Yes. Is it one of my favorite parts of the series? Also yes.
4. Fun hologram gags
Both of these episodes, but especially “The Right Hand of God,” do fun stuff with Al’s hologram. In “Star-Crossed,” there were some fun special effects of him being dragged around in the future, but “The Right Hand of God” lets him literally train Sam on the job for boxing, placing his hand on the face of his opponent and phasing through him to allow Sam to know exactly where to punch. This isn’t done with groundbreaking special effects, but it works for the time, and is a lot of fun.
Continued below5. [Insert boxing cliché here]
“The Right Hand of God” checks off almost every boxing trope you can imagine: crooked boxer decides to go straight in order to save an institution that helps people, needs to get in shape for ‘real’ fights, nuns who love boxing, etc. That said, this episode is the first time that we see Sam do two things that would become the hallmarks of this series. First of all, this is the first time Sam commits to the plan that he knows is likely a bad idea. He knows he’s likely to be knocked out, but he doesn’t see a way around it, so he works within that plan.
The other benchmark here is Sam using his knowledge of the future in benign and helpful ways. Here, by betting on Muhammad Ali’s ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ fight against George Foreman, Sam is able to win the money that will both buy his fighter out of the debt of fight-fixing goons, let he and his girlfriend settle down, and let the nuns build their chapel. Is it the most ethical thing to do? No, it isn’t, or else Back to the Future Part II wouldn’t be built around the evils of time-traveling sports gambling, but it allows Sam to give everyone (except those that bet on Foreman, I suppose) a happier ending than they would’ve received without him there.
The Oh Boy Teaser
Sam winds up in a pig-pen, holding a piglet, on a ranch, seemingly in Texas.
