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<\/p>\n\u201cHow The Tess Was Won\u201d<\/p>\n
Originally aired 4\/14\/1989
In which Sam makes a pretty good cowboy\u2026<\/p>\n
All right, we\u2019ve settled in now, and this week we\u2019ve got a couple of good examples of Quantum Leap doing the sorts of things that QL does: namely, stumbling through, fixing whatever looks like a problem, and delivering the late \u201980s version of women\u2019s lib and empowerment to earlier, arguably less \u201cenlightened\u201d decades. It can be a little eye-rolling to watch, and \u201cHow The Tess Was Won\u201d has some clunkers, but as I\u2019ve been arguing, the show\u2019s essential good-nature\u2014the sense that everyone involved is trying to do what\u2019s best even if they aren\u2019t sure what that is\u2014helps soften the blow.<\/p>\n
After an overlong introduction (the show is still working overtime to explain itself to new viewers, with Sam\u2019s belabored introduction and a quick reminder of what happened last week even if it has no real bearing on this week\u2019s events), Sam finds himself in the shoes of a mild-mannered country veterinarian in Texas, circa 1956. He leaps just as \u201cDoc\u201d Young is checking on the pigs for local ranch owner Tess McGill, and while he\u2019s trying to get his bearings, he overhears Tess and her father having one of the most load-bearing conversations in history; Tess\u2019s dad wants her to get married and have a kid, Tess resists, and they come up with a bet to see if she\u2019ll seal the deal.<\/p>\n
It is extremely hokey, and while I was kind of charmed by the artifice, it\u2019s hard not to wince at the sexual politics. It\u2019s not just that Tess is doing what\u2019s normally considered a \u201cman\u2019s\u201d job that stings, obviously; it\u2019s that everyone around her, including herself, seem to think that doing so requires her to, uh, ignore her softer side and be more of a dude that any other fella on the ranch. This isn\u2019t a story about Sam helping a woman prove herself to a group of well-meaning sexist dopes. This is a story about Sam helping Tess show her vulnerable side and be more feminine, with all the complications that entails.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m being a little harsh here, but if you grew up in this era like I did, this idea\u2014that a woman loses some essential part of herself if she tries to get involved in a man\u2019s world\u2014was a tediously pervasive one. It\u2019s been explored more interestingly elsewhere; like much of Leap\u2019s surface level politics, we\u2019re embracing what\u2019s assumed to be the \u201cnorm\u201d with Sam\u2019s perspective. He pushes back against Tess\u2019s dismissive father, but we also get a scene where he reminds the overdriven Tess that there are some things men can do better than women. This is just before she collapses from heat stroke and he has to take her back home and undress her, in case the point was unclear.<\/p>\n
There could be an interesting story here, one that\u2019s less about tired concepts of gender norms and more about the simple challenges facing Tess, running a ranch where even the men who love her all seem to want to step in and take charge. And we get a version of that. After Sam \u201cwins\u201d the contest, it looks like Doc and Tess are going to get married; but then another, more traditionally handsome ranch-hand appears to say he loved Tess all along. It\u2019s a good joke on Sam (who\u2019d gotten overly emotionally invested in the whole thing), and also a happy ending for Tess, who gets a hunk who doesn\u2019t seem to want much more than to support and follow her orders. It\u2019s just a shame that Sam, our moral center throughout the series, doesn\u2019t quite get the dynamics right.<\/p>\n
Kari Lizer does a good job of making Tess more complicated than the script might have envisioned her, and there\u2019s solid chemistry between her and Sam (honestly, I don\u2019t think there are any actors who don\u2019t have chemistry with Bakula; on this show at least, he clicks cheerfully with everyone he meets), enough to make the reveal of another lover sting a little. You get some jokes about Texas being Texas, none of which rise above the level of \u201coh yes, that is what they say, isn\u2019t it,\u201d and there are no villains here, even if maybe there should\u2019ve been.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d be remiss if I didn\u2019t mention the kicker ending. Sam lingers in Doc\u2019s shoes for longer than he was expecting, with Al theorizing that he\u2019ll jump as soon as Tess says \u201cI do.\u201d (Gotta say, that seems pretty arbitrary to me.) The teen boy who\u2019s been hanging out on Doc\u2019s property playing his guitar for most of the episode turns out to be a young Buddy Holly, and when Sam suggests replacing \u201cPiggy\u201d with \u201cPeggy\u201d (as in \u201cPeggy Sue\u201d) in the song he keeps singing, he immediately leaps. It\u2019s a Forrest Gump kind of joke before Forrest Gump, and it\u2019s mostly carried by Al and Sam\u2019s bemused enthusiasm.<\/p>\n
Stray observations<\/p>\n
\u2022 I really need Sam to start saying \u201cOh boy\u201d every time he leaps.\u00a0
\n\u2022 Sam somehow avoids looking at himself in the mirror until near the very end of the episode, when Al points out what an \u201cuphill\u201d battle he had winning Tess (if only temporarily). It feels a little mean-spirited, especially considering the real Doc had kept his feelings for Tess private, and Sam has now broadcast them to the world.
\n\u2022 I\u2019d forgotten how long opening credit sequences used to be. This once has Sam\u2019s narration over clips from earlier episodes, and then the title montage with the show\u2019s theme music. The music is great, but the montage is a bit goofy, especially how it feels the need to repeat a date range.\u00a0
\n\u2022 Al\u2019s worries this week: Tina, his girlfriend (the lady we saw in the pilot cold open), runs off to Vegas with Gooshie. It\u2019s all extremely silly, and while I appreciate learning more about the future, and Stockwell keeps it light, it still feels like he and everyone else should be taking Sam\u2019s journeys a little more seriously. Al\u2019s distracted support plays like they\u2019ve been doing this shtick for years, and while that makes for a comfortable, TV-friendly dynamic, it robs us of some of the drama that made the pilot so effective.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(Screenshot: Quantum Leap)<\/p>\n
\u201cDouble Identity\u201d<\/p>\n
Originally aired 4\/21\/1989
In which Sam gets two leaps for the price of one, capiche?<\/p>\n
At its goofiest, Quantum Leap sometimes feels like visiting different countries in Epcot; or, more appropriately, visiting different planets in the original Star Trek. We\u2019ve been to scrappy boxer land; last episode, we were in Texas-ville; and now it\u2019s time for mafia world, a place that operates on the same level of grit and violence as the classic TOS entry \u201cA Piece Of The Action.\u201d Clearly someone on staff watched The Godfather, took careful notes on the costuming, wrote down as many Italian words as they could remember, and decided that was enough for the day.<\/p>\n
And you know what? It almost is. \u201cDouble Identity\u201d borders on self-parody if you view it as an authentic commentary on the mob, but as a light-hearted romp, it works fine. Bakula gets a couple of comic setpieces to double-down on the absurdity, first with an impromptu wedding performance of \u201cVolare,\u201d a song which he does not know; and later, trying to speak Italian (which he also does not know) to a jealous mob boss holding a straight razor to his neck. In both cases, Al feeds him information in an almost but not quite helpful way, and in both, Sam gets out unscathed.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s cute, really, which is the best thing you could say for any of this. And to be honest, I\u2019m not sure a more authentic, accurate depiction of mafia life would really fit the show as it currently is. We have characters referencing past violence, we have one character threatening violence on a couple of different occasions, but there are no deaths on screen, and no one suffers for very long.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t even have a particularly compelling crisis. Sam leaps into a handsome hitman named Frankie just as he\u2019s finishing up some afternoon delight with Teresa in the middle of a wedding (again, The Godfather references are not subtle); we soon learn that Teresa is the former mistress of Don Geno, and Geno is not thrilled to learn she\u2019s found a new romance. There\u2019s no obvious problem to be solved, apart from keeping Frankie from getting killed, and instead of trying to work out what Sam needs to do to leap, Al arrives with a crazy plan to bring Sam home.<\/p>\n
If the mafia stuff is goofy, the plan to retrieve Sam is goofy-plus, involving a hair dryer getting plugged in at an apartment across town while Sam re-enacts what (and, uh, who) he was doing at the moment he leaped in. I appreciate the effort to liven things up, and to acknowledge that Sam\u2019s co-workers are still trying to save him, but I could\u2019ve used a little more internal logic. Quantum Leap is really more a fantasy show than a science fiction one, but even by those standards, this is arbitrary, existing largely for a joke about the team inadvertently causing the Northeast Blackout of 1965. (Thanks, Wikipedia!)<\/p>\n
Still, it does give us an unexpected twist: While Sam doesn\u2019t get a ride back to his present, he does a rare leap into someone else in the same time and area\u2014Don Geno, who was planning to murder him and Teresa in the middle of their scientifically engineered tryst. We\u2019ve had a two-leap episode before, but this is the first time it\u2019s happened where it lets Sam resolve a story that he might not have otherwise been able to fix. As Sam says himself, it\u2019s almost like someone won\u2019t let him leap away until he\u2019s finished what he was brought there to do.<\/p>\n
We could\u2019ve used a little less cuteness here, though. As the Don, Sam lets Frankie and Teresa get married, assuming that matrimony will prevent the real Don from killing them the moment he returns to his body. This seems optimistic to me, as does the assumption that having hot sex with a hitman makes said hitman marriage material; I appreciate that Sam-as-Don orders Frankie out of the mafia for good, but years of The Sopranos have basically ruined the idea for me that anyone gets out of that business alive. As if this all wasn\u2019t adorable enough, Sam finally leaps when he arranges for an old woman to finally win at the bingo table.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Next time, we\u2019ll find Sam in the body of an elderly Black man in Alabama in 1955, so I guess we can all look forward to an extremely careful review on my part. (Given that the episode is a very clear riff on Driving Miss Daisy, I think it\u2019s safe to bet that the show\u2019s take on racial politics will look every bit as awkward to modern eyes as its views on gender politics.) Still, at least that\u2019s going to be an episode that\u2019s trying to say something, no matter how clumsy and antiquated that \u201csomething\u201d turns out to be. \u201cDouble Identity\u201d doesn\u2019t even have the bittersweet romanticism of \u201cTess\u201d going for it. It\u2019s just the Mafia Planet, with all the camp that implies.<\/p>\n
Stray observations<\/p>\n
\u2022 The great Mark Margolis has a guest turn here, playing the sort of heavy he played through most of the \u201980s.\u00a0
\n\u2022 Sam\u2019s big idea to get a haircut from Teresa, back before men got haircuts from women, is fun; and it\u2019s sweet how he compliments her talents as a hairdresser later. Their second scene in the attack, where he does some classic Sam wooing (sincerity mixed with info-dumps), is as close as any of this gets to having an actual heart, and Terri Garber\u2019s performance goes a long way towards selling it.\u00a0
\n\u2022 We get a quick sense of what it looks like when someone returns to their body after Sam leaps out, and it\u2019s strange; Frankie, who\u2019s forgotten all about being in the future, doesn\u2019t remember anything before Sam leaped in the first time. Which makes you wonder if this happens every time, and if Sam hasn\u2019t left history littered with strange cases of temporary memory loss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHow The Tess Was Won\u201d Originally aired 4\/14\/1989In which Sam makes a pretty good cowboy\u2026 All right, we\u2019ve…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":["post-346205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}