Quantum Leap (2022) - Episode 1x10 - Paging Dr. Song
A mediocre episode highlights Quantum Leap's unfortunate implicit utilitarian ethos and the challenges of shifting genres week-to-week.
In 1994, Ben leaps into the life of medical resident Alexandra Tomkinson. To put right what once went wrong, he must save THREE patients affected by a train crash, whose fates are connected in mysterious ways: Kimberly Cole, fated to die when given an experimental drug, Louis Tann, fated to die when a doctor nicks an artery, and Eli Jackson, fated to die when he refuses treatment for a newly discovered brain tumour—who also just happens to be the estranged father of one of Alexandra’s colleague. With a bit of pluck, luck, and wisdom, Ben saves them all (and more besides). Yay! I think?
The fun of a show like Quantum Leap, with such a unique and productive procedural engine, is that we get to visit wildly different genres at the drop of a hat. Sometimes that means a heist, sometimes we get a western, and sometimes even horror. And yet, this was somehow the first time our intrepid (legacy)sequel had given us a taste of another genre of procedural entirely: the medical drama. And I’m not sure that was such a good thing. I do love the idea of a show that can shift like this at the drop of a hat, from medical to legal drama to murder mystery, but what Quantum Leap can gain in storytelling breadth, it can also lose in narrative depth. While I think this was an okay episode of Quantum Leap, it was a fairly weak episode of a generic medical drama. I get that it can be difficult to be the best version of every kind of show every time, needing different knowledge and expertise, but I’d hoped for more nuance here.1
Episodic Storytelling: This episode’s structure also highlighted for me an issue that has dogged the sequel since it began—specifically, that for a show that could be so good at connecting small-scale, intimate storytelling to the bigger picture, it sure does feel sometimes like the bigger picture ultimately drives the small-scale storytelling. What could have been the moving stories of three (technically four, more on that in a bit) patients’ lives turned into a largescale corporate conspiracy. And that can be fine—I do love opportunities to critique bad practices in the pharmaceutical industry2—but it wound up totally instrumentalizing the lives of the people Ben was trying to save.
The setup was otherwise great: Ben must put right what once went wrong by saving three lives as part of a medical drama. Okay! BUT! We never learn anything about Kimberly Cole as a person. We do know she originally died due to (medical) conflicts of interest, but she’s unconscious for 99% of the episode; her story isn’t really about her at all, it’s about stopping a drug that was going to kill hundreds from going to market.
What this episode really clarified for me is how an implicit utilitarian ethics has undergirded much of the action this season.3 I worry that if the writers keep placing Ben in bigger and broader tragedies (like the earthquake, or like this train crash), the story will inevitably continue to beg the question: why this particular life. Why couldn’t Ben save others during the earthquake, or other patients (like Louis’ wife, Jeanne,4 who dies offscreen)?5 This becomes especially important if Ben’s Good Works are a product of Divine Intervention (i.e., are The Powers That Be consequentialists, like The Good Place, at least initially, seemed to argue)? In response, the show often gives Addison an infodump on how saving one life saved hundreds or thousands of others, later (e.g., keeping drugs off the street in 1x04, developing better bridges in 1x06). I do like the idea of one small story feeding into bigger social narratives, and it has worked (including in the earthquake episode), but I still have some concerns about new QL.
Addison explicitly tells Ben: “OK, I know you can’t see this right now, but there is a reason you were sent here to save these three people! There is a bigger connection that binds them, all right?” And as the connections across the three stories wrap up, she mentions it again: “You know, for a guy who just saved hundreds of lives over the next few years, you don’t seem very happy about it.” And I guess that’s the question at the heart of my concerns here. Why does there need to be a bigger picture? Why can’t three lives just matter because they matter? In this story, it feels like Louis’ life only needed to be saved so he could consent to Jeanne’s heart donation; he wasn’t a person for Ben to save, but an instrument to contribute to saving (many) others. I was still moved by Louis’ story (easily the most of any of the three patients), so the show did take some pains to make his life and story interesting on its own. But, otherwise, beyond personally believing that utilitarianism is a bad system of ethics (happy to chat about why if anyone is curious), it just doesn’t work for me in terms of the narrative.
Serial Developments & Legacyquel Baggage:6 I’m not sure if Quantum Leap has decided to handhold its audience (or new viewers) a little more, but I was surprised when we jumped from 1994 to 2023 with a big onscreen present-day text notification. I guess we’ll find out next week if this is a permanent change, or just a midseason reminder.
Otherwise, with Janis being held by Team QL, we return to a number of serialized story threads, including Mystery Leaper X. We’re no closer to learning anything new, though I do like how Janis explains how no information stated out loud or written down is safe in a world with a quantum leap accelerator. That really adds some tension; evil leapers are one thing, but a world where anyone can learn anything if at any point they control this technology is scary and fascinating. Lots of opportunities to explore Big Ideas and 21st century technological problems like Mass Surveillance.
Identity and Embodiment Corner: Okay, so, Ben has become a Black woman in the 90s. The show at least superficially nods at concerns about sexism, by having Ben explicitly shout down Alexandra’s very problematic supervisor (Dr. Harper, an extremely buff Dr. Edison from Bones), but I think I may need to give up the hope that the new Quantum Leap has anything meaningful to say about ‘walking a mile in someone else’s shoes.’ I don’t feel that the show has really tried to build that kind of empathy (even clunkily like the OG series), so, while it could happen, it’s not here now.
That’s it for this week - the promo trailer for the next episode seems really fun, so see you then!
Lots of suspension of disbelief needed. Like, I get the need for speed, but it’s kind of ridiculous to have them run into a clean OR without any masks or gowns while shouting.
I teach a course on Research Ethics for undergraduate science students, so this is the kind of failure and scandal I love exploring in depth.
Utilitarianism is a kind of consequentialism—i.e., what matters are the outcomes of a given situation—which focuses on the greatest good, often boiled down to ‘lives saved’. In general, it is usually interpreted as ‘the greatest happiness for the greatest number.’
It’s probably worth stopping to think about how Louis’ wife is fridged so that Kimberly Cole, the unconscious girl, can live. Louis and Eli get plenty of development and screen time (not that I’m complaining, I always love to see Francois Chau), but the two women involved in these cases remain under-developed and literally just lie there the whole time.
I think there was an easy narrative logic save here, tied to that big picture little picture distinction. Maybe Ben can’t stop major tragedies, like the train crash itself, or historical events, like the earthquake. So, if someone like Jeanne simply could not be saved—as in, maybe she was killed in the crash and the hospital could never have revived her—I could understand a focus on changing something more in Ben (or Alexandra)’s control. Of course, that leads to other questions, like why couldn’t Ben leap to an earlier point in time, to stop Jeanne from getting on that train? I just can’t shake the idea that Jeanne had to die for this plot to work. The story wasn’t strong enough to support that inevitability; for example, they could have stopped the experimental drug use on Kimberly in the first place. And if she had to be exposed to eventually save more lives… then Kimberly was also instrumentalized here for the greater good; receiving a heart transplant and lifelong anti-rejection meds are no minor side effect. That’s where a medical drama, one used to telling these kinds of stories more long-term, might have taken a more nuanced approach here. Or not! Who knows.
Combined this week because they are essentially the same.