Quantum Leap (2022) - Season 1 Reflections

Overall, a fun TV season, but one that maybe lost the plot as it reached its conclusion.

At some point in its first year of publication, Serially Engaged became a Quantum Leap (2022) legacyquel fan blog. My best performing article—the review of the original pilot script—focused on my favourite (potential) episode of the show, despite it not having aired. At another point this year, I abandoned TV writing to focus on wedding prep. Consequentially, I stopped writing about Quantum Leap (and everything else) and did not provide y’all with any final reflections on a fun but messy season of television.

And so, ahead of tonight’s S2 premiere, I wanted to provide some thoughts on the episodes I missed, general reflections on S1, and some hopes and wishes for S2.

Episodic Reflections: Catching Up On Missed Time¹

• 1x11 (Leap. Die. Repeat.): In which I mostly had fun watching a pretty okay episode of 90s sci-fi television in 2022. The time loop is a staple of episodic sci-fi storytelling, from classic episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation to Stargate SG-1, to more recent stories in shows like Dark Matter, that even cast Robert Picardo of Star Trek: Voyager and Stargate: Atlantis fame. While the idea was good in theory, the execution wasn’t amazing. Fine but middling episode.

• 1x13 (Family Style): A lovely small-scale story about a family restaurant under threat of closure with a lot of heart. Definitely somewhere near the top of the season for me. It also found a way to centre Ian in the present-day storytelling, which the show has generally struggled with. Balancing a story that connects to audiences in the past (and all of the exposition required for a new case-of-the-week that keeps half of its cast separate from the rest) has made it difficult to tell meaningful stories back at QL HQ. Ian being easily the runaway breakout star of the show for me (although Ben is also wonderful), I was glad to focus on them.

• 1x14 (S.O.S.): Another episode with potentially gigantic stakes (i.e., war with China) that was actually quite well grounded in intimate storytelling about Addison’s father. While Ben successfully saves the crew of a sub set to sink, and prevents geopolitical tensions from escalating, Addison also learns why her father left. This story really works, especially after Ben saves Addison’s dad’s reputation, but it still doesn’t stop him from leaving her anyway (a bittersweet conclusion).

• 1x15 (Ben Song for the Defense): As with Ian in 1x12, Jenn becomes the hologram; it’s nice to see opportunities for the full cast to participate more. We also learn limitations of the technology, with more than one person in the imaging chamber causing glitches. My only real comment about the case-of-the-week is that I don’t know if it’s brave to tell a story about queer women in love through Ben as the Leaper, since its just a straight couple kissing to the viewer. Also, Ben actually seemed to embody his Leapee differently than how he holds himself? Also, it had weak pacing/editing—I could feel content being cut, especially toward the end.

• 1x16 (Ben, Interrupted):. Although it swung big, it had some issues. I was really curious about embodiment this episode, like, how does electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) work on bodies and minds for Leapers and Leapees? Ben’s consciousness depends on a body—if it's knocked out, he's knocked out. If they die, he dies. He moves the body. So what happens when you mess with a mind via psychiatric care (beyond a silly truth serum drug)? Anyway, Ian acknowledges the existence of Evil Leapers (who put wrong what once went right), which is kind of fun, and we learn that Martinez leaps by saving people—and so he cannot be an Evil Leaper.

Serial Developments and Legacyquel Baggage

I don't mind when a show breaks its own rules just a bit for the sake of telling a better story, but the new Quantum Leap has made choices that just don't make sense to me. Janis wouldn't tell QL HQ anything because, in a world where time travel agents can enter into anyone’s body, nothing you say is truly private. That's a fascinating problem, except that Janis pretty immediately starts telling everybody everything.

When they reveal Ziggy as the spy… like, duh? How had none of these supposed geniuses figured that out before. Characters are only as clever as the writers behind them, and calling them clever while making them do silly nonsense can be frustrating.

The far worse contradiction, the one that upset me the most, was how—way back in 1x04—Magic described the process of being a Leapee as involving consent. If that’s the case, how did Martinez Leap into him? If Martinez had truly been an Evil Leaper, then that would have been fine—they presumably work by different rules to make things go wrong, and violating consent seems like a hallmark of evil—but how do they justify this choice when they established that Martinez was a Good Leaper, actually?

That being said, while Martinez’ actions don’t totally make sense if you squint hard enough, I actually really loved the explosion of the timeline. We get Timeline 1: where Addision becomes the Leaper and Ben the hologram. Timeline 2: Martinez is sent back to kill Addison. Timeline 3: Ben leaps before Addison can do so to save her from Martinez. Timeline 4+(?): Ian leaps from a post-apocalyptic future to stop nuclear winter. We have a whole bunch of swirling time travel paradoxes that are just fun.

Concluding S1 Critiques

Tell smaller stories: So much of what didn’t work for me about S1 focused on the big picture. I don’t need Ben to stop largescale events like domestic terrorism (as in the pilot) or a drug ring; I would rather the show make me care about the stakes for the people Ben is sent to save. I want the smaller, more meaningful, more intimate stories—like Stand By Ben, probably my favourite episode that aired. Smaller stories can still interact with broader social challenges successfully—like the episode about trans* kids in sports—or even large-scale tragedy, like the earthquake episode.

Make me care about the big from the small, not the small from the big! I don’t think this critique comes from a place of hoping for the legacyquel to be more like the OG series (although I’m sure that my expectations and some rose-coloured glasses certainly play a role here). For me, it has a lot more to do with this second critique.

It's all a numbers game—and preventing nuclear winter is the biggest numbers game of all. In my review of 1x10 (Paging Dr. Song), I dove into S1’s problematic implicit utilitarian ethos. The show seemed to be arguing that it was never enough for Ben to save just one life, one relationship, one restaurant, etc. Most Leaps snowballed into dozens, even hundreds more lives saved downstream. In one of my favourite episodes—the almost pilot set against the backdrop of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco—Ben saves a child (which would be enough alone) and yet the show still had to mention that the kid grew up to do Good Engineering saving thousands more:

What [Paging Dr. Song] really clarified for me is how an implicit utilitarian ethics has undergirded much of the action this season. I worry that if the writers keep placing Ben in bigger and broader tragedies (like the earthquake…), the story will inevitably continue to beg the question: why this particular life. Why couldn’t Ben save others…? 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…). I like the idea of one small story feeding bigger social narratives, and it has worked (including the earthquake episode), but I still have some concerns about new QL.

I won’t dive into why I believe that utilitarianism isn’t a great framework to choose for QL, but I would at least appreciate it if the show could bring forward more nuance and maybe consider other approaches to ethics that aren’t just a numbers game.

Hopes for S2 [Beyond Addressing my Above Critiques]

I had originally hoped that hints of Ian Leaping in S1 would mean that each season might feature a different character Leaping (something that Future Ian implies could be the case), but, sadly, no such luck. I do genuinely love Raymond Lee as Ben Song, but I also love radical storytelling choices that shake up the narrative.

So, instead, my hope is that we will see more of the extended cast taking on the role of hologram, maybe more of their personal lives tied (directly or indirectly) to the Leaps, and deeper thematic connections across time. As in, if Ben is struggling with an issue in his Leap, why not have QL HQ struggle with different but related problems? It would help tie together the narrative and make the HQ Team B Plot feel meaningful.

I hope everyone enjoys tonight’s S2 premiere and I’ll be back soon with more WoT coverage!

1. This is funny because Quantum Leap is a show about time travel.