Welcome back to my episode-by-episode recap of and reaction to Quantum Leap. The spoilers ahead are only through this episode. I provide a short summary at the top, a long and much more thorough recap below that, and a reaction section at the bottom.
My previous episode recaps can be found HERE.
THE QUICK AND CLEAN SUMMARY:
THE EXTRA DUSTY RECAP:
via https://quantumleap.fandom.com/wiki/The_Leap_Back
June 15, 1945: In this episode, Sam and Al switched places, thanks to a lightning strike in the end of the previous episode, "Shock Theater", at the end of Season Three (episode #24). Al's stuck back in 1945, as U.S. Army Captain Tom Jarrett (the leapee Tom is played by Dean Denton in a mirror image cameo). Sam realizes that he is in the Imaging Chamber, so has therefore returned home to 1999. However the two friends have a problem... the now powerless Handlink is in the year 1945 with Al, and Sam needs it to open the Imaging Chamber door.
Meanwhile, Sam is starting to regain his memories, and remembers an override code that can be used to unlock the Imaging Chamber door from the outside. Sam remembers that in the event of a catastrophic collapse of the radium accelorator ring surrounding the imaging chamber, that Ziggy would have automatically sealed the chamber to protect from a possible radiation leak, and that once the imaging chamber door is sealed, it can't be opened, not even by Ziggy, for another 1,600 years, until the radiation half-life of the radium ring had expired, which prompted Al to ask Sam, frustrated and angrily, "How could you design a system without a fail-safe?".
Sam remembers that he did create a fail-safe to be used if the chamber door is sealed in error, it can be reopened from the inside, problem being that Al, who's stuck in 1945 as the leaper with the handlink, which can't be used for another 54 years, but, Sam, in his genius mind, devised a plan: If the others in the imaging room realize that the ring didn't collapse, that someone would have to be there to open the chamber door, by getting the backdoor code, which Sam remembered that he designed in the event of a catastrophic failure such as what caused he and Al to switch places. He arranges for a letter containing the code to be delivered to Gooshie through a letter in the U.S. Mail System, addressed to Irving Gushman (Gooshie's real name), mailed to a Doc Crosnoff, Sam's dad's lawyer, with about $100 in 1945 money, for his trouble, with implicit instructions to be delivered to Gooshie on September 15, 1999, the date which Al switched places with Sam. Suddenly, more of Sam's memories start to emerge and Sam remembers something important. He demands to know why Al didn't tell him, and Al tells him simply that he couldn't. As soon as Sam has Al put the letter into the mailbox, the Imaging Chamber door opens up. Sam runs through into the main hub of Project Quantum Leap and is reunited with Donna, his wife that his Swiss-cheesed brain had forgotten about. After a loving embrace between the two, Sam reacquaints himself with Gooshie (who confirms the letter was just delivered, nearly fifty-five years after it was posted), Dr. Beeks and Tina. He then activates Ziggy, whose ego and stubborness are as large as ever. Sam demands she try and find a way to help Al.
Meanwhile, Al is trying to stumble through a leap without Ziggy to give him information. He is Tom, a former WWII Army POW who was presumed dead who has just returned home from Germany to his hometown Crown Point, Indiana. His former girlfriend is going to marry another guy in two days and Al and Sam guess that he is there to get her to marry Tom instead.
Ziggy finally reaches a probability hypothesis, inconveniently while Sam and Donna (Mimi Kuzyk) are having some personal time, and informs Sam that Al is in 1945 to prevent Tom and his girlfriend before he went off to fight in the war, Suzanne Elsinger (Amanda Wyss) from committing suicide (or at least how it looked to the police when they discovered their bodies) in what seemed like a Romeo and Juliet-inspired lover's pact.
Sam and Al soon discover, unfortunately, almost dangerously too late, that it was not suicide at all, but a carefully planned murder by the scorned ex-boyfriend. Sam fails to prevent Al getting knocked out, and realizes the only way to save him is to go back into the Accelerator Chamber and leap back to 1945 to accomplish the mission. After saying farewell to Donna promising he'll be back, Sam leaps and switches places, with Al returning to 1999 into Tina's grateful arms. Sam quickly knocks out the loser who was trying to kill them, however Ziggy fails to retrieve him yet again, leaving Sam with nothing but the useless handlink. Afterwards Sam leaps, with no memory of ever returning home or of Donna.
REACTION:
Oh boy! We're back for Season 4! As per usual, I announced my goings on to the neighborhood by standing like this from the front window for around 20 minutes until showtime. It's not magic. You just need a big window, a blue light, a box fan, and a sheer-ish pair of curtains.
As season premiere's go, this one was good. For the first time, we got to see the "present" and we find out that Sam is married to Donna Eleese (who was played by Teri Hatcher when we met her during a Season 1, Ep 3 leap called "Star-Crossed.") In the present, she is portrayed by Mimi Kuzyk. Did Sam do her any favors when he changed her destiny back in Season 1?
Actually, that's a mind pretzel. If they are married, then *for her* she interacted with Sam, via a Leap, before she decides that she wants to marry him. We don't know whether either of them knew that this had happened, before they married in the current timeline. Whether she knew before, or not, she had to have figured it out during that Leap in her current timeline. That must have been a weird day at work. She simultaneously becomes aware of the fact that in another timeline, she never married Sam and that he still ended up inventing the QL machine, alters her fate, anyway, without her participation. In the current timeline, the same thing happens, this time with her watching on. This feels like some robbery of free will, to me.
That's pretty messed up. The guy she broke things off with, when in full control of her decisions, subsequently invented a time machine that nudged her into a relationship with him, one wherein she has to voluntarily hear about him have relationships with hundreds of other women "to complete the Leap." That's like some Greek tragedy level stuff for her.
Speaking of mind pretzels, we never actually see Sam's reflection when he is in the present. We even hear a comment that he sounds just like Al. Was he in Al's body? That's, uh, relevant considering the use Sam and Donna put it to during his time at home. That had to be weird for Tina (Al's significant other), too, right?
Alternatively though, Sam re-enters his own body which has been doing what for the last 4 years? Just lying somewhere?
I didn't really like the sassy personality that Sam apparently programmed into Ziggy (Deborah Pratt.) I understand it was intended as comedy, but 1) it's hard to imagine him doing that, and 2) it's unclear why giving her a personality made all the difference in getting the machine to work - which this episode sort of implies. Maybe there needed to be an AI who could bridge the gap between Sam and Al's brains? I just needed some more explanation here.
The actual "leap" story was pretty flat and uninteresting - except to the extent that it reminds us of Al's backstory. It was a pretty straight-forward jealous murderer plot. The solution was pretty simple, even though it was also painfully sacrificial for Sam. HOWEVER... don't they now know a way for Sam and/or his team to replicate this phenomenon?
All in all, this is a pretty good season premiere. With the expansion of the in-universe lore, I'm looking forward to seeing where Season 4 takes us.
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