Hologrammatical Error #1: Al’s shadow is everywhere, especially in the semi-lit airport. (ARS)
Hologrammatical Error #2: Al’s reflection appears in the shiny bartop at the Blue Island. (MPB)
MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE PROJECT:
Project Trivia #1: We do hear the Imaging Chamber door in this one--a pneumatic sliding sort of sound--but we never see it. (MPB, ARS)
BACKSTORY NITS:
Sam Backstory Nit #1: Sam Leaps in four
months before his birth. His theory says that a person’s life-string starts
with his/her birth. (LW, MPB)
PCR #1: Sam’s theory is wrong, and the
string starts with conception or at least some time during gestation. (NM,
MPB, ARS, SH)
PCR #2: Sam’s leaping period is defined,
not by his life, but by his DNA string (as we learn later in "Leap Between
the States"). At the time he Leaped into Nick Allen, Sam’s DNA was already
formed, and so Sam was able to Leap into a time before Sam’s own birth.
(SVJ)
PCR #3: God is Leaping Sam around and
God can do whatever He(She/It/They) wants. (SVJ)
Sam Backstory Nit #2: Sam smokes with nary
a cough, and Al doesn’t even comment about Sam buying cigarettes from the
cigarette girl. But we know that Sam doesn’t smoke, and is in fact an adamant
anti-smoker because of his father’s death. Sam also drinks a martini, which
is a very un-Sam-like drink for him to order--he seems to be mostly a beer-drinker,
and not much for mixed drinks or hard liquor. (MPB, ARS)
PCR: Nick and Sam psychosynergized during
the Leap and a little of Nick’s persona has remained behind. (HJK, MPB,
NM)
Al Backstory Nit #1: When Sam reads Nick’s
description of Alison ("a redhead who could make Father Flanagan forget
Boys’ Town"), Al comments that his first wife was just like that. But when
we meet Beth in "MIA," she’s a brunette. (MPB)
PCR #1: Beth liked to dye her hair. (MPB)
PCR #2: Al was only referring to the second
part of Nick’s statement--that Beth could "make Father Flanagan forget
Boys’ Town," but not to her hair color. (MPB)
MIRROR NITS:
Mirror Nit #1: In the jail scene, when Sam is talking to Al, he shakes his hand, and at the corner we don’t see his hand moving in the reflection in the mirror. (ARS)
GENERAL NITPICKING:
General Nit #1: The book is a big puzzle.
If Nick was writing it, who continued it to add his death to the story?
Clapper maybe? Or Seymour, perchance? But if Sam was there to turn
Seymour into a pulp fiction writer surely before Sam's leap he would not
have been writing.
Possible PCR: The details of the
jail scene were very detailed.It would not be unreasonable for Allen himself
to have updated the narrative to the point where he went out after the
Clapper and was killed. The subsequent entries could merely have been extracted
from the police reports. And what does Sam's memory of the book say about
his reading tastes? (Other than that it confirms that English Literature
isn't his forte. Was Sam reading Who Killed Grimsby and Allen? when he
should have been studying Wuthiering Heights?) (MPB, LW, MH)
General Nit #2: When Sam returns to Nick’s
office, he takes off his gun and puts it in his desk. But when he leaves
the office and Seymour asks if Sam has the gun, Sam says the police have
it. Of course they don’t, because Sam returns to get it later. (MPB)
PCR: Sam was lying to Seymour--but why?
(MPB)
PCR to PCR: Sam lied because he figured
leaving the gun in Nick’s desk would seem out of character to Seymour.
(LW)
General Nit #3: When Sam reached for his
hat on leaving the office, he recognized Allen’s because it fit him. But
if it’s Sam’s body that Leaps, how would Allen’s hat have fit? (LW)
PCR #1: Perhaps Sam’s molecules stretch
or compress to take on the size of the Leapee, allowing him to fit into
his clothes. (LW)
General Nit #4: Wouldn’t Alison and Nick’s nightclubbing have attracted police attention? (LW)
General Nit #5: As always, television thunder-and-lightning don’t seem to follow Nature’s rules and somehow manage to occur simultaneously. (MPB)
General Nit #6: Also in typical television and movie tradition, Alison manages to get from the club to the taxi in a downpour without getting her hair wet. (MPB)
General Nit #7: How could Alison and Nick
go on a trip to Rio with no luggage or passports? (LW)
PCR #1: Since Lionel had planned the whole
thing, perhaps he had packed a suitcase for her and gotten her passport
or had one forged. (NM)
PCR #2: Alison and Nick hadn’t planned
the trip, so of course they wouldn’t have luggage. Since it was a spontaneous
jaunt, they’d have probably bought what they needed when they got to Rio.
(HJK)
DETAILS, DETAILS, DETAILS:
Detail #1: Sam’s comment about Thomas Magnum is a nice little in-joke, since "Magnum PI" was another DPB production. (MPB)
Detail #2: Sam Leaps into somebody who looks like somebody else, who in turn is famous for playing other people--it’s almost like looking into a mirror looking into a mirror, etc. Then we have Sam trying to do impressions (ironic to begin with, since as a Leaper, he’s forced to impersonate other people all the time), but always getting the actors mixed up. On top of that, Seymour admires Nick for being like a fictional character, never suspecting that Nick is turning his own life into a novel. The way fiction and "reality" (if you can call it that) are woven together here is just delightful. (MPB)
Detail #3: The nightclub is called the Blue Island--probably a reference to the Blue Parrot, which was Sidney Greenstreet’s nightclub in Casablanca. (MPB)
Detail #4: Don B. is from the Pittsburgh
area, and many of the episodes have Pittsburgh references, including one
in Seymour when Allison says she met Phil in
Pittsburgh.
OH, BOYS:
Lots of "Oh, boys" in this episode--although Sam’s first official "Oh, boy" was in the pilot, and he Leaped in with an "Oh, boy" in "Camikazi Kid," this episode really seems to make the exclamation his watchcry. Alison, of course, provokes most of the later "Oh, boys"--Sam emits one when he first sees her; he and Seymour let out a stereo "Oh, boy," when they see her waiting at the bottom of the stairs;and Sam, Seymour, and Al let out a longing chorus as they watch her sashay away toward the plane. (And boy, can that woman make a trenchcoat move!) (ARS, NM, MPB)
TRIVIAL PURSUIT:
Trivial Item #1: Who’d have believed that nerdy little Seymour would turn into Lee Harvey Oswald in a later Leap? (MPB)
AL’S WOMEN:
A redhead in Billings, whom Alison resembles.
THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY:
Where to begin? There’s the obvious reference to "Casablanca" in the last scene, the dead-partner plot, which comes from "The Maltese Falcon," Sam’s pairing with Alison, which becomes a little reminiscent of Nick and Nora in "The Thin Man," and the constant hard-boiled detective banter, which comes from "The Big Sleep," and a host of other 1930s and 1940s shamus movies. Seymour’s hero-worship of Nick recalls Woody Allen’s "Play It Again, Sam" (never mind the episode’s title and young Woody’s cameo appearance--by the way, is it any coincidence that Nick’s last name is Allen?) (MPB)
NAME THAT TUNE:
When Sam is in jail, the drunk in the bunk sings "Young at Heart," a song whose lyrics tell a lot about Sam and his dream of time travel, and also a lot about this particular Leap: "Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you, if you’re young at heart." Sam’s time travel is certainly a fairy tale come true for him, and his Leap into Nick is a sort of a fairy tale coming true, too--Sam’s living out a pulp mystery novel that plays like a 1950s adolescent boy’s fantasy. Other great Sam-lyrics from this song: "You can go to extremes with impossible dreams/You can laugh when your dreams fall apart at the seams." And, of course, Sam is young at heart in his kid-like excitement over each new adventure. (MPB)
The drunk in the bunk’s next selection is "You, You, You," (which segues into a recorded version) which not only fits the dialogue neatly, but foreshadows Sam’s impending infatuation with Alison. (MH, MPB)
At the Blue Island, the band plays, appropriately, "Blue Moon," then segues into "Red Sails in the Sunset" when Al tells Sam about Alison and Seymour taking off for Rio. (MH, MPB)
Of course, "As Time Goes By" is played as Bogey’s theme song, but it would make a perfectly good theme song for one Sam Beckett as well. (MH, MPB)
FAVORITE QUOTATIONS:
Nick Allen: "She was a flamer: a redhead who could make Father Flanagan forget Boys’ Town."
Nick Allen: "Her body would part the Red Army."
Sam: "We’ve got Clapper."
Al: "Careful, Sam. There was no
cure for that in 1953."
Al: "Some women have kinky taste in men...Thank God."
Al: "You wanna have safe sex with her, you’d better wear a bulletproof vest."
Sam: "When it came to Alison, I was as blind as a dead bat and tighter than a granny knot at a Cub Scout picnic."
Sam: "If I’m lucky, I’m gonna spend the rest of my life leaping around from one place to another instead of face down in a pool of blood."
Sam to Seymour: "Oh, God, I understood you!"
Sam: "You’ve been on me closer than my underwear, and it’s getting boring."