Leap Dates: Friday, September 13 to Monday, September 16, 1956/August or September, 1968
Project Dates: Probably Saturday, May 13 to Tuesday May 16, 1995 (based on the date of the 1995 Lakers playoff game)
HOLOGRAMMATICAL ERRORS:
Hologrammatical Error #1: Al is affected by the wind when he is in the plane the first time. We can see his hair and his clothes blowing. (MF)
Hologrammatical Error #2: We can also see that Al casts a shadow on objects in Sam's world. (WY)
Hologrammatical Error #3: When Al joins Sam at the air base, Al's image reflects in both the airplane wing and a shiny car. (MPB)
Hologrammatical Error #4: Al's jacket sleeve makes contact with Sam's shirt sleeve just before Al makes the comment about Roy Hobbes. (LM)
MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE PROJECT:
Project Nit #1: When Sam is in the X-2,
Al is there with him. How does a hologram move that fast when he's not
really in the plane? (MF)
Post-Creative Rationalization (PCR): Al's
image is calibrated to stay centered on Sam no matter where Sam is or how
fast he's going. (SA)
Project Nit #2: Al comments that Ziggy
can't print out an explanation for why Sam has Leaped into Tim Fox. Why
doesn't Ziggy have a voice? (LW)
PCR: Either Al wanted a hard copy of the
percentages, or Ziggy was sulking. (NM)
PROJECT TRIVIA:
Project Trivia #1: In this episode, the
Imaging Chamber Door is shown as an actual door that swings on hinges and
has a handle. No light appears as the door opens; Al merely disappears
into the background. (WY)
PCR: PQL was still in the testing phase
when Sam Leaped. Changes in the Imaging Chamber door as the series progresses
are not inconsistencies, but rather they reflect later design modifications
at PQL. (BK)
Project Trivia #2: Notice in this episode
(and for the next three and three-quarters seasons), Ziggy is referred
to as a "he." (MF) But in "The Leap Back," we find that Ziggy has a female
voice, and toward the end of season four, Sam and Al will begin to refer
to Ziggy as a "she." (MPB)
PCR: It's not really until "A Leap for
Lisa" that Al and Sam begin consistently referring to Ziggy as a "she."
Perhaps something Sam changed during that Leap altered history so that
Ziggy not only had a female voice, but also caused Sam and Al to think
of Ziggy as a "she" rather than a "he." (BK)
BACKSTORY NITS:
These are not so much nits within the episode per se, but rather inconsistencies between this particular episode and other episodes in the series, especially in the matter of Sam and Al's biographies and personalities.
Sam Backstory Nit #1: Sam remembers leaving
the farm to go to college at the age of eighteen. But later, in "The Leap
Home," we find out Sam went to college at the age of sixteen. Which is
correct? (MPB & NM)
PCR: Perhaps Sam swiss-cheesed this. (MPB
& NM) Or perhaps Sam did something between "Genesis" and "The Leap
Home" to change his personal history. (MPB) Sam Backstory Nit #2: Sam remembers
his mom has lived with Katie and Jim Bonnick in Hawaii ever since Sam's
dad died in 1974. In "The Leap Home," Sam mentions his dad died in 1972.
(MPB & SA)
PCR: Again, Sam could have swiss-cheesed
this. Or perhaps he changed something between "Genesis" and "The Leap Home."
If, for example, he changed his personal history so that he went to college
at sixteen rather than eighteen, Sam's going to college two years earlier
may have deprived his dad of the extra help he needed on the farm. Not
being able to afford to hire another worker, John Beckett took on the extra
work load himself, thus pushing himself into a heart attack two years earlier.
(MPB)
Sam Backstory Nit #3: On the Ernst/Burger survey, Sam says he was expelled from college for streaking. This doesn't ring true with Sam's personality as it develops through the course of the series. How could the shy, self-conscious "Prudent Prince" have ever gone streaking? In "Animal Frat," Sam says he was a good little boy in college. (LW, MPB, GJM & SA)
PCR #1: Perhaps Al supplied him with this
answer. Streaking certainly seems like an Al-activity. (LW)
PCR #2: At college, Sam was young, foolish,
and away from home for the first time. Like many kids in that situation,
he took advantage of the situation to party a little, got drunk, and hence
the streaking episode. Upon sobering up, he was so mortified that he:
a) vowed to avoid getting drunk again,
hence his low tolerance for alcohol; and
b) ended up being very self-conscious
about his body, hence his shyness about playing "Hamlet" in the nude, leaping
into a Chippendale dancer, etc. (MPB)
PCR #3: Sam was just filling in fads that
he remembered from the past. (BK)
Sam Backstory Nit #4: In "Camikazi Kid"
and "The Leap Home," we learn that:
a) Katie left the farm when she was seventeen
to marry a guy who drank and beat her up;
b) this hubby was named Chuck; and
c) Katie was born in 1957, so she turned
seventeen in 1974.
Sometime in 1974, Katie married and divorced
Chuck, remarried Jim Bonnick, and moved to Hawaii, taking Mom Beckett with
her. That probably beats even Al's record for short marriages. (MPB)
PCR: Maybe Sam swiss-cheesed this and
got the ages and dates wrong. Or maybe he did something between "Genesis"
and "The Leap Home" or between "Genesis" and "Camikazi Kid" to change things.
(MPB)
Sam Backstory Nit #5: In "The Leap Home," Sam's dad will be played by a different actor than in "Genesis." (APP)
Sam Backstory Nit #6: The bit of the Beckett
house we see in this episode doesn't look at all like the house in "The
Leap Home." (LM)
PCR: Thelma Beckett did a major remodeling
in 1968/69. (MPB)
Al Backstory Nit #1: On the way to the
hospital, Al tells Sam, "I'd trade my ex-wife for any wreck they got."
Note: ex-wife is singular, not plural. (LW)
PCR: Maybe Al was only referring to his
most recent ex-wife, or to just one ex in particular. (MPB & SA) Or
maybe he'd trade any of them. (BK)
HISTORICAL NITS:
Historical Nit #1: The pitcher on the team
opposing the Waco Bombers is supposed to resemble a young Tom Seaver. Yet
Sam Leaps into Ken Fox in 1968; Seaver was signed by the Mets in 1966,
and so wouldn't have been playing minor league ball in 1968. (NM)
PCR: Would you believe a case of mistaken
identity? (MPB)
GENERAL NIT-PICKING:
General Nit #1: The opening scene, which
takes place in 1995, shows Al driving an experimental car. It's 1996, and
we still don't have cars like that. (WY)
PCR: Al's car looks remarkably like a
custom Ferrari. (LAJ and BK)
General Nit #2: We still don't have earrings
like Tina's. (WY)
PCR: Actually, we do have earrings like
Tina's. (APP) There are young ladies walking around Caesar's Palace in
Las Vegas with trays of similar flashing earrings for sale. (LW)
General Nit #3: Shortly after Sam wakes up, Peg tells him she bought some Burmashave at the 'PX.' However, if they're at Edwards Air Force Base, then the store wouldn't be a PX; it would be a BX (Base eXchange). The military stores are only called PX (Post eXchange) when they're located on an army fort (post). (TK)
General Nit #4: When Peg's dishing up breakfast, she grabs a (presumably) hot frying pan, using a towel for a pot holder. Then she promptly sets the hot pan down on her counter. Either it's an asbestos counter top, or it's rental housing. (MPB)
General Nit #5: When Sam first sees Tom's reflection in the shower, the images don't match up. What's behind Tom isn't the same as what's behind Sam. (BK)
General Nit #6: Peg would have to have been awfully huge to get stretch marks on her thighs. Several mothers have commented that, even with rather large weight gains, it's very uncommon for pregnancy to cause stretch marks on a woman's thighs. (MPB & LW)
General Nit #7: While test pilots are supposed to be very independent and pull a lot of practical jokes, it stretches credibility that anyone would pretend to forget how to fly while up there actually flying. Bird Dog should have been more worried about his best friend suddenly showing signs of losing his mind, especially since Bird Dog's life was very often in his friend's hands. (APP)
General Nit #8: When Sam is given control
of "Mother Hen," he lets go of the control and the plane starts to dive.
First, why didn't Bird Dog come back to
see what the problem was, and secondly, at the speed planes fly and the
time that lapsed before it got straightened out, wouldn't it have been
a lot closer to the ground? (BK)
PCR: Bird Dog did hurry back as soon as
he could, and the dip probably wasn't sharp enough to change their position.
(SA)
General Nit #9: Why does it take the wives
so long to spot the huge cloud of black smoke from Tony's plane crash,
yet they can see his teeny white parachute almost right away? (LM, MPB)
PCR: Once they were looking in the right
direction, the parachute was pretty easy to spot. (BK)
General Nit #10: When Sam goes fly fishing
with Mikey, his reel doesn't have any fly line in it. They're just using
regular monofilament fishing line, which is impossible to use if you're
trying to cast a fly, unless you've got a bubble or something for weight,
which they didn't seem to have. (TK)
PCR: Maybe that's why Sam had so much
trouble. (BK)
General Nit #11: When Sam told Al that he had to fly the plane in just a couple of days, why didn't they think of Sam playing sick? (APP)
General Nit #12: During the barbecue party, when the wives all come out to watch the plane, as Peg goes back into the house and turns to look at Tom/Sam, her hair is fixed differently than in the rest of the sequence. It's not pulled back anymore. But a few seconds later, when Sam comes in, her hair's back in a ponytail. (MPB)
General Nit #13: When Peg tells Sam/Tom
that he hasn't spent so much time with Mikey "since he got hit by the bus,"
the line seems very jarring. DPB was probably trying to create a poignant
moment, but instead drew an unexpected chuckle. Perhaps the scene would
have worked better if Peg had said something like "You haven't spent this
much time with him since he was so sick last spring" or something to that
effect. The getting-hit-by-the-bus line is just a bit over the top, and
ends up sounding unintentionally absurd. (CL, MPB)
PCR: In the 1950s, it was very easy to
get hit by a bus because of the way they were built. With the engines up
in front of the driver and such a big hood to look over there were many,
many kids who got hit by school buses. The bus drivers, no matter how slowly
or carefully they were driving, simply could not see if a kid just stepped
out in front of the bus. (APP)
General Nit #14: Why did Al give Sam the
Dick-and-Jane explanation of the string theory instead of the technical
one? Sam may have forgotten all about physics, but he was still a genius.
(APP)
PCR: Maybe Al didn't know the technical
explanation. Perhaps the Dick-and-Jane explanation was how Sam had originally
described the theory to Al. (BZ)
General Nit #15: When Al walks through
the plane, Sam says, "Al, I wish you'd stop doing that!" But this was the
first time Al had walked through anything. It would have made more sense
if Sam had said, "Don't do that" instead. (LM)
PCR: Maybe we didn't get to see all of
Al's conversations with Sam. Perhaps he walked through objects during one
of these conversations. (BK)
General Nit #16: How was Sam able to complete
the memory test with his mind so Swiss-cheesed that he could not even remember
his surname? (LW & SA)
PCR #1: Perhaps Al helped Sam with the
answers. Miniskirts and pantyhose sound like Al-type answers. (LW)
PCR #2: Sam was starting to get some of
his memory back. He may only have been remembering general fads from his
youth, and confusing them with events from his own life. Or perhaps the
retrieval attempt brought back some of his memories. It's just after he
wakes up from the failed first retrieval that he remembers growing up on
a farm in Indiana. The questions also probably prompted some memories.
Al was probably too busy doing other things at the project (or attending
the Lakers game with Martha) to help Sam with the test. (NM) (See Sam Backstory
Nit #3)
General Nit #17: When Sam was in the X-2,
wouldn't everything he said to Al be heard on the speaker back at the base?
Why didn't anybody ask him who he was talking to? (SA, TK, MPB & SH)
PCR: Perhaps the radio had some sort of
switch, which viewers couldn't see, that Sam could flip when he didn't
want the people at the base to hear him speaking. Then again, Sam seemed
too terrified and angry to think about flipping a radio switch back and
forth. (MPB)
General Nit #18: Even though Dr. Burger said "Losing your plane is worse than losing your wife," the pilots sure seemed to lose a lot of planes. Tony and Sam both bailed. (SA & TK) PCR: Tony and Sam didn't bail until their planes were about to blow. (BK)
General Nit #19: Look carefully at the so-called 'mirror' when Sam takes a look at himself as Fox. It's obvious that it's not a mirror but just glass. You can see Scott Bakula's reflection slightly. (MF)
General Nit #20: Where does Sam get enough change to call Indiana from Waco, Texas? And how come we never see him putting any money into the phone? (MPB)
General Nit #21: When Sam is talking to his dad, he pretends to be his dad's cousin, also named Sam. What will happen if Sam's dad eventually finds out he doesn't have a cousin named Sam? (MF)
DETAILS, DETAILS, DETAILS:
While it's a lot of fun to nit-pick about all the contradictory or inconsistent elements in an episode, it's all the little details of setting, background, props, etc., that make the show work so well in so many wonderful ways. Here's where we'll discuss all the details that *do* work.
Detail #1: In this episode we see something that we see in no other episode: the actual reversal of time (i.e., the clocks moving backwards). (WY)
Detail #2: The kid's show "Howdy-Doody" takes on a menacing aspect as Sam realizes what's happening--doesn't that puppet start to look a little demonic? As we later find out, Sam himself has become a puppet of sorts at the hands of God, Fate, Time, or Whatever (the infamous GFTW). (MPB)
Detail #3: Sam does a little double-take as he says "Doctor's orders" when he tells Peg to sit the next dance out, as if he's thinking, "Haven't I heard--no, *said* that somewhere before?" (MPB)
Detail #4: There were a number of parallels between Sam's life and Tom Stratton's. Both men's best friends were womanizers, and both were testing new machines. (APP) There were also parallels between Tom's relationship with Mikey and Sam's relationship with his own father. It seemed that, while Tom loved Mikey, he didn't express it well or often and perhaps didn't spend as much time with Mikey as he could have. Sam showed a considerable amount of guilt and regret for not having expressed his love for his own father. (MPB)
Detail #5: One nifty little juxtaposition was having Sam and Al realize that the coffee-perking noise is the fuel boiling in the X-2. Then the scene cuts to the coffee pot shattering on Peg's stove just as Sam's plane explodes. (MPB)
TRIVIAL PURSUIT:
Trivial Item #1: The real-life Lakers playoff game on May 16, 1995 went into overtime, just like the game that Al watched with Martha, delaying his appearance at Sam's test flight. Therefore, unless Al was making up the story about the ball game, Sam's first Leap took place sometime on May 13, 1995 (WY & TK, also Liz Storm in "Angels Unaware") Could DPB be psychic?
AL'S WOMEN:
Woman #1: Tina
A Tale of Two Tinas, or Who Is This Tina
Person anyway?
If we take the Al/Tina scene literally,
they've just met. But later ("Star-crossed," "How the Tess Was Won," "The
Leap Back," "A Leap for Lisa"), we learn that, not only have Al and Tina
known each other before "Genesis," but that Tina works at PQL, and knew
Sam before he Leaped. The Tina we later see in "The Leap Back" doesn't
look or sound like the Tina in "Genesis." She's a redhead rather than a
brunette. (MPB, SA, & WY)
PCR #1: There are two Tinas. This would
definitely appeal to Al, as he wouldn't have to worry about saying the
wrong name at a critical moment (then again, maybe he plays it safe and
says "Oh, boy!") (MPB)
PCR #2: This is the same Tina as in "The
Leap Back" and as the one Al keeps talking about, but she and Al are playing
a little spontaneous sex fantasy. Her car gets a flat, who should show
up but you-know-who, and she decides to pretend not to know him. He loves
the idea and plays along. The only problem with PCR #2: why don't they
stop playing when Gooshie sends the distress signal? As for why "Genesis"
Tina and "Leap Back" Tina don't look the same, maybe she decided she'd
rather be a redhead (or a brunette, depending on what her natural hair
color is). (MPB)
The Tina Al picked up can't be someone
not involved in the project, as the project is Top Secret. Al would not
have a job if he started taking people into PQL randomly. (WY)
PCR #3: The two Tinas are the same person,
but Al and Tina met for the first time in "Genesis." Al just wanted to
take Tina "for a ride," but when Tina found out about PQL, they had to
do something with her, and since she was an intelligent person, they hired
her. Her dramatic change in personality could be caused by:
a) her life with Al;
b) the shock of actually finding out people
could travel through time; or
c) DPB figured no one would remember the
pilot anyway, so he changed her character. (SH)
Woman #2: Martha ("the dish") who went into overtime with Al after the Lakers game. Woman #3: Brenda in coding, who got "so turned on" at the celebration over Sam's Leaping.
THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY:
DPB and company often "borrowed" from other sources for plots and scenes. In this category, we'll be listing some of the sources from which they've lifted ideas.
SOURCES FOR "GENESIS":
"The Right Stuff" (APP)
"The Natural" - note the lightning strike and Al's reference to Roy Hobbes (TK, MPB)
NAME THAT TUNE:
"Que Sera, Sera" - Doris Day
Using "Que Sera, Sera" as a sort of theme
song was a nice touch. The lyrics make an ironic counterpoint to Sam's
situation. As we find out, what will be *won't* be, and the future *is*
Sam's to see, sort of--if Al and Ziggy tell him, that is. (MPB)
"Picnic/Moonglow"
This song comes from the 1955 movie version
of William Inge's play about a mysterious drifter who comes to a town and
changes everyone's life (although the character is a far cry from Sam Beckett).
(MPB)
When Sam and Peg are driving, the DJ on the car radio introduces a song by Velton Bunch and the Deltones. Velton Bunch wrote much of the background music for Quantum Leap. (MF & SA)
FAVORITE QUOTATIONS:
"Oh boy!" -Dr. Samuel Beckett, time-traveler and righter of wrongs
Al: "...you're part of a time-travel experiment
that went... a little caca."
Sam: "How little caca?"
"Bad enough I have to give Dick and Jane explanations to the President..." -Al
"Once that's put right, you'll snap back like a pimp's suspenders." -Al
Al: "Your best shot is freezing the brain
until all electrical activity has ceased."
Sam: "That's called death."
Al: "I never said it would be easy."
"When it comes to quantum physics, you're still a mental slug." -Al
"I knew how it was gonna end when I took Brenda into the filing room. I still took her." -Al
"You know, maybe this quantum leaping isn't such a bad deal after all. Getting a chance to put things right, to make the world a better place. Who knows what I can accomplish before I'm done." -Sam
STILL UNANSWERED QUESTIONS:
What was the name of the radio program
that Peg and her friends were listening to when Tom/Sam's plane crashed?
One contributor suggested "Perry Mason"
(TK), and another suggested "Divorce Court." (NM) Does anybody out there
know for certain?