Quantum Leap (2022)- 2x01 - This Took Too Long!

In an exciting and well-paced season premiere, the Quantum Leap legacyquel gives its case-of-the-week, and a ragtag team of guest stars, significantly more room to breath.

Welcome back, dear readers, to weekly coverage of NBC’s recent re-tread of classic 90s sci-fi drama, Quantum Leap! For anyone new to my blog, I typically divide these reviews into three sections: 1) Procedural Storytelling, on the case-of-the-week; 2) Serial Developments, on the series-long drama (usually focused on the team at QL HQ); and 3) Legacyquel Baggage, on the relationship between a 30-year-old series and its sequel. For some of my favourite S1 reviews, check out my co-written reflection on the pilot, a review of the original pilot script (later re-edited into S1E06), and, for S1E10, how QL 2022 often implies a utilitarian viewpoint. Thank you as always for your time; excited to be diving into a brand new season of Quantum Leap!

After stopping Leaper X aka Martinez, saving Addison from time travel assassination, and also maybe saving everyone else from nuclear annihilation, Ben should have made it home. Unfortunately, this being an ongoing broadcast TV show, Ben instead leaps into Perez, a military comms guy also [unrelatedly] just trying to get home. Without holograms or future tech, he helps some Fellow Travelers—military misfits and folks facing discrimination in 1978 unwittingly tasked with a decoy mission, one that could have been a one-way ticket—make it out alive, putting right what once went wrong!

Procedural Storytelling: For the first time in its entire run, Quantum Leap (2022) spent the full episode in the past. With Ben unable to connect with the team back at HQ, our only glimpses of the rest of the cast come courtesy of a clever flashback device, in which Ben slowly remembers thematically relevant moments from his life, pre-Leap. There’s a part of me that wishes we could stick with this storytelling device for a little longer, or even that S1 had been grounded more in this kind of an approach, though I know I would have eventually missed Ben having a consistent connection to someone else (as a hologram) from episode to episode. Still, shows like Dark Matter and, of course, the Original Quantum Leap have successfully told stories where amnesia enables the viewers to learn about a character’s past at the same time as that character.

Choosing to tell the story entirely from Ben’s POV does a lot to resolve one of QL’s biggest challenges to date: Balancing audience investment in the case-of-the-week against present-day developments for the rest of the ensemble (beyond Addison).¹ We still get to see glimpses of Addison, Ian, Jenn, and Magic, but it didn’t overwhelm the procedural action adventure. This also meant a significantly more fleshed out guest cast, all four of whom felt like interesting, complex, and well-rounded people. Truly, this may have been one of the new Quantum Leap’s best Leaps for that element alone, even if the general action adventure was still a bit silly/explosion-heavy for my taste. The funny, well-meaning, and kind of shady Abrams brothers were a highlight for me, but the more emotional focus on Lieutenant Grier (judged for being a woman) and Sergeant Bailey (judged for being queer) worked well too. I worried the episode might feel a bit like an after school special, but part of QL’s strength is its heart/earnestness.

At the same time, we learned basically nothing about the person Ben leaped into. His name is Perez, he wanted to go home, and he does comms stuff. That’s it, that’s all. But with such a strong guest cast, the mission (no matter how increasingly ridiculous) worked sufficiently well that I wasn’t so worried about what we were missing here.

Serial Developments: We don’t have much to talk about here, since the story was told entirely through Ben’s POV via the Leap and flashbacks; we only really get into long-term storytelling with the excellent twist at the end—Ian arrives as the hologram to inform Ben that that he’s been missing for three years! Queue a million questions, like, why was Ian chosen to deliver this information rather than Addison!?² Is she dead? Is she hiding from Ben, or hiding something from Ben? Maybe she also started leaping, and now we’re going to watch star-crossed lovers literally cross decades to be with each other? I suspect it’s probably just too hard, or she’s got something going on she can’t share with him just yet—three years is a long time to wait for someone MIA.

I also think this episode was cleverly structured because it serves as a bit of a reset or maybe even a repilot. Without the baggage of the first season (nuclear winter, leaper upon leaper, mysterious conspiracies and motivations for leaping), or the baggage of the original series, this was just a solid episode leading to a great twist, with flashback content that, I think, would enable a new viewer to easily grasp cast relationships.

Legacyquel Baggage: I don’t have questions about embodiment this episode, and I don’t have questions about the rules (although a lack of waiting room is part of what makes the time skip—and losing Ben at all—coherent and possible). I don’t think we’re going to get any answers about Sam anytime soon, if ever, especially since this new phase of storytelling seems like it will move from mystery conspiracy (i.e., why did Ben leave & who is trying to stop him) to a more traditional ‘how can we bring Ben home.’ Which means anything is possible, the show now has freedom to move in any direction. It can bring on the Evil Leapers, it can dive back into old Leaps (or not), it can try to explore the lives of the rest of the cast via Leaps that are relevant or tied to their lives, etc.

One area that has me a bit concerned is the S2 promo poster. We see alien abductions and Area 51, the pyramids, and what I think are Witch Trials. I complained last season that I wanted to see smaller stories rooted in character, connected to the social issues of our time through small-scale storytelling. I worry that a witch trial, or a dive into alien conspiracy, could do the opposite. On the other hand, I can’t imagine that those stories will have serious long-term consequences (i.e., saving thousands because something something aliens), which was always my other biggest concern—that new QL was more focused on utility/numbers over the lives of people and their stories.

For now, with the show hitting the reset button, I am cautiously optimistic about S2!

1. Although episodes at the end of S1 with Ian and Jenn as the hologram certainly helped.

2. Regardless of the reason, give us more Ian all of the time, please!