Quantum Leap (2022) - Episode 1x04 - A Decent Proposal - Review
Quantum Leap struggles to find its emotional core, but some surprisingly moving legacyquel baggage helps to flesh out the ensemble cast.
In 1981, Ben leaps into Eva Sandoval, Bounty Hunter—a woman who doesn’t want to give up her Bounty Hunting ways to settle down with her Bounty Hunter partner, Jake (Justin Hartley, fresh off six years of Big Romantic Speeches on This is Us). Ben, as a woman, experiences harassment, and, Spoiler Alert, puts right what once went wrong—he saves Jake and Eva’s relationship. Also, they catch a major girlboss crime boss. So.
Quantum Leap (2022) is still juggling too many balls at once. It wants to connect a weekly case to the challenges faced by Ben, Addison, and an extended ensemble cast, and it wants to tell longer-term stories about those characters, their motivations, and their connection to the original series. It’s too much too fast—and the odd balance of high-impact Leaps to smaller emotional beats isn’t working as well as I would like.
Procedural Storytelling: One Way or Another1
The case of the week was fine, but, again, felt a bit too big for a show that is otherwise focused on the ordinary lives of everyday people in trouble. Having Ben stop a major drug syndicate from trafficking cocaine is just way too much.2 If we take Addison’s expositional wrap-up at face value, that could mean hundreds of additional (offscreen) lives saved, which feels like weirdly high stakes for an episode about a relationship Ben is trying to fix rooted in his amnesiac feelings about a phantom girlfriend.
It was also another missed opportunity to explore identity (and embodiment) meaningfully. When Ben leaped into Darryl in Episode 3, he was totally fine kissing Darryl’s secret girlfriend. In this episode, with a proposal and relationship at stake, the emotional resolution involves Jake chastely kissing Ben as Eva on the forehead. It’s 2022. Real Big No Homo Vibes, here. At least there was one interesting moment for embodiment—Ben retained his muscle memory of boxing even in a new body, which is consistent with how embodiment was presented last episode.
Serial Developments: Don’t You Want Me, Baby
This week’s Leap was largely in service of Ben desperately trying to remember the woman he loves, which finally happens! But there was just too much going on for a moment as important as this to feel earned here. It was too soon. I would have been completely fine with saving this moment for a midseason finale, to continue to draw out the tension between Ben and Addison. I loved the scene where Ben asked if his partner was mad at him; I was really into the idea of seeing more of that dynamic.
I can also appreciate Addison’s panic that if Ben doesn’t fix something, he won’t leap home; however, it feels like this incarnation of Quantum Leap has instrumentalized the leaping process instead of focusing on the good Ben can do—he’s even leaping himself to a specific destination for a Purpose beyond helping others. While I really hope it’s to save Sam (more on that below), it means that each Leap feels like just another stop along the way rather than something important by itself. This is where the heavier serial developments of this legacyquel clash with its more episodic parts.
Legacyquel Baggage: Pure Magic
Despite everything else going on, a single scene between ensemble cast members (Ian is the best) revealed the show’s beating heart and left me feeling surprisingly moved. In my review of Episode 2, I explored how Magic was an odd choice of character to connect the two shows. Why choose someone who never knew Sam, or whose POV we never see: “[We] never actually get the chance to know him, as he was someone Sam leaped into. We only knew him through Sam and through how others reacted to him.”3
And yet, I loved everything about this scene, which included a beautiful analogy to help a show about taking over someone’s body tackle the topic of consent—i.e., a person has to be open to the Leap, in a spiritual sense, to let someone take over.4 We learn that Magic has dreamt about Sam for years, and that when he finally rose to the rank of Admiral, he discovered the truth about his strange and singular experience.
Magic’s motivation for taking charge of the mothballed Quantum Leap project was all so that he could help Sam get home, to thank him for all the good he did for so many people. I loved this revelation (it makes Magic way more compelling), but it also had the unfortunate side effect of making Janis and Ben’s motivations much murkier. Janis’ are hard to gauge, since it seems like she might now be working against Ben (maybe?). But we don’t know what either she or Ben actually want, with the vague promise of rescuing Sam hanging over the series. So, having Magic be motivated by a need to save Sam further confuses what the motivations of others might be.
Overall, while this was not my favourite episode, I remain optimistic!
As a final note, it turns out that I haven’t been super engaged with The Discourse around Quantum Leap; I probably should have known that the pilot we got was not the originally filmed pilot, which (with some reshoots) has been moved to Episode 6. This raises all kinds of fascinating questions about the kinds of stories this show wants to tell versus the impact of Network Notes. Did they start smaller but have to go big? We’ll find out more in a few weeks!
Okay, so, I would normally try to find some pithy pun to subhead each section, but I thought it might be fun to try linking to era-appropriate songs featured in each episode.
Let’s be real though, the fall of a single crime boss shouldn’t be enough to stop “thousands of tons of cocaine” from “end[ing] up on our streets.” That feels a bit ridiculous. Not quite “drop the C4 in the sewer it go boom” ridiculous, but still, it’s not great!
I also opined on the loss of the fantastic Waiting Room plot device, which Magic fully retcons away; he has zero memory of the time Sam spent in his body. If I needed an in-universe answer for why (I don’t, I just think it’s a big missed opportunity), it’s probably: ‘something-something Sam changed the timeline so No Waiting Room,’ or whatever.
This raises other questions about Evil Leapers, but I’d be super into them being retconned.