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“Play It Again, Seymour”
Originally aired 5/17/1989
In which Sam has to [insert mangled Humphrey Bogart quote here]…
It seems like the perfect setup for a TV show, right? You’ve got a cool, high-concept premise that allows for considerable flexibility in terms of time period, cast, and setting; you’ve got a core relationship that’s both funny and heartfelt; and you’ve got a charismatic leading man who’s game for pretty much anything. There’s novelty, wonder, and even a dash of mysticism. One could hardly ask for more from this era of television.
And yet, here we are at the end of the first season, and you can already feel the writers straining for novelty. It’s not just that Sam jumps into a private detective in New York in the early 1950s. It’s not just that he finds himself holding a gun over the body of a man he’ll soon learn was his partner. It’s not even enough that Sam remembers some of the story he’s living in thanks to a pulp novel he read in his pre-time travel past. He’s also jumped into a guy with an uncanny resemblance to Humphrey Bogart, in case any of the references were unclear.
There is a certain amount of fun to be had here, provided you don’t mind more than the usual share of corn. The writers have a lot of fun confusing Sam with supposedly current ’50s slang, but regardless of whether or not that slang is legitimate, the gag sounds awkward and forced from the start. It doesn’t help that the movie a good chunk of the episode appears to be referencing, the John Ford version of The Maltese Falcon starring Bogie, was released in 1941.
To be fair, femme fatales, gumshoes, and corpses never completely go out of style. But the episode keeps trying to pretend that all of this stuff is still one hundred percent relevant, and there’s no acknowledgement that Nick is a man rapidly aging out of his time. The story ultimately hinges on Sam convincing Seymour (Willie Garson, who you may recognize from Sex And The City), Nick’s nebbishy sidekick, to go into writing pulp detective novels. The problem being that the genre that gave us Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, had already peaked in the ‘30s. Folks were still writing mysteries in the ‘50s, of course, but Seymour’s love of lingo was already well out of date.
All of which is a bit on the nitpicking side; a show that’s already featured a young Buddy Holly learning that “Peggy” is a better word for a song then “Piggy” isn’t really interested in realism. But it’s the kind of nostalgia-glazed indulgence that can make the show difficult to take seriously as anything more than a relic of its own time.
I praised “Camikazi Kid” earlier this month for its authenticity, something “Play It Again” could desperately use more of it. Instead, we get some enthusiastic cliches and a lot of emphasis on how hot Claudia Christian is. Christian, who plays the dead partner’s wife, spends the entire episode in a low-cut “mourning” dress, and there’s considerable time spent on trying to figure out if she’s in on the murder, or if she’s being honest when she tells Nick she loves him. Again, we have Sam falling head over heels for a new woman, despite Al’s repeated advice to the contrary; we even get a brief falling out between the two, although it doesn’t last very long.
None of this really seems to matter much, not even Sam’s realization that he’s already read a version of the events he seems to be living through. The meta-angle is cute, but the show has too much of a commitment to its baseline level of “realism” for it to add up to much. The solution to the mystery isn’t all that inspired either.
“Play It Again” isn’t a chore to watch. Sam, and the show as a whole, remain charming throughout, and, if you can manage to forget just how many times this kind of homage has been done on television, it’s possible to enjoy the affection the script has for its subject. It’s just that affection can only carry us so far, and without a good story, the charm tends to end up spinning its wheels for the duration. The conflict here never feels like it matters much, not even when we learn that Nick originally died in the end. It’s a mediocre entry that demonstrates the show still figuring out what it’s capable of.
Stray observations
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• There’s a gag where Nick meets a nerdy kid who mistakes him for Humphrey Bogart; the kid is supposed to be Woody Allen, and the whole thing is a reference to one of Allen’s early hits, Play It Again, Sam. Between this and Michael Jackson’s appearance last week, it’s funny how some things age in ways you don’t expect.
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• I don’t think the face in the mirror looks that much like Bogie. Tales From The Crypt had an episode where it used a CGI reflection to sell the joke, and it was awkward but more convincing than this one.
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• It was fun seeing Claudia Christian here. I’m currently reviewing Babylon 5 over on my Patreon, and she makes a much different, and more interesting, presence on that show.
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• The jump we see at the end of the episode (Sam in a bubble bath realizing he’s jumped into a woman’s life) is from “What Price Gloria?” which would end up being the fourth, not first, episode of the next season.
(Screenshot: Quantum Leap)
“Honeymoon Express”
Originally aired 9/20/1989
In which Sam takes the train to romance…
Oh hey, it’s season two! Time for a tweaked opening credits sequence (goodbye strange splatters of color), an absence of Sam voiceover at the beginning, and even an attempt at new lore, or whatever you want to call it. At the same time, it’s still the same show at heart–Sam leaps into a man making out with a beautiful woman and almost immediately freaks out to learn that they’re newlyweds and she’s expecting him to, ulp, perform his husbandly duties. So to speak.
I mentioned in the previous review that “Play It Again” showed the writers straining, and “Honeymoon” helps to give some of an answer as to what makes scripting for the show such a challenge. As great as the premise is, it comes with some pretty strict caveats. Sam can only jump within his own timeline, and the things he accomplishes in each jump are rarely earth-shattering–at least, they’re rarely earth-shattering except for the people whose lives he touches directly.
This all comes up while Al is testifying in front of a congressional committee to determine if the Quantum Leap program will continue to receive funding. It’s not a cheap program (the cost is in the billions), and the various politicians seem skeptical as to the value of continuing the project, especially when Al flat out states that they no longer have control over Sam’s leaps, if they ever did. While it’s been alluded to before, this may be the first time that God’s involvement is explicitly mentioned, without any ambiguity whatsoever. It’s an honest observation, but not one that’s likely to convince the government to hand over gobs of cash.
All of this boils down to a new kind of conflict for the show. Up until this point, the dramatic stakes have focused on Sam and his adventures. His “present” has been referenced, even briefly seen in the pilot, but apart from Al occasionally having to get creative to help Sam, it’s never really been something we’re meant to focus on.
This makes dramatic sense, in that it ensures our primary identification point will always be Sam. Since he’s the guy we spend the most time with, he’s the guy we care about the most, and the closer we are to his perspective on things, the more we’ll invest in the show. It’s also a clear difference between this era of television and modern TV. I didn’t see the Quantum Leap reboot, but I’d be shocked if it didn’t spent more time in the “present,” and all the potential narrative complications that allows. It used to be that TV strove to make it possible for each individual episode to appeal to viewers who had no familiarity with the series as a whole; these days, it’s much more about building fan loyalty through convoluted lore and backstories.
But that’s a rant for another day. Suffice to say, Al’s desperate attempts to get Sam to influence world events on a larger scale are an interesting diversion in an episode whose main story could probably use them. We’ve moved past pastiche this time, and into something like an erotic thriller; Sam is Tom McBride (heh), a New York cop recently married to Diane (Alice Adair), the aforementioned beautiful woman who, in addition to being real into cuddling, is currently studying for the bar exam. Unfortunately, her psychotically jealous ex-husband, Roget (Mathieu Carriere) is also on board the train, and he’ll do whatever it takes to get Diane back.
As setups go, it’s not bad, just comparatively straightforward. There’s no real attempt at meta-humor here, which is kind of a relief. The train does make for a restricted setting, and Sam spends a lot of time agonizing over Diane’s horniness, using her studies as an excuse to avoid sealing the deal (so to speak). It’s an interesting angle, as the show hasn’t really gotten into the ethical quandary of Sam being physically intimate with a person under false pretenses.
One of the ways Quantum Leap tries to appeal to its audience is as both fantasy and wish fulfillment. As we’ve discussed, Scott Bakula is a handsome, extremely charismatic dude, and that makes it easier to accept him macking on the many different women he’s encountered in his various leaps. (Funny how all of the women tend to be equally hot—maybe God is a bro?) But when it comes to actually having sex, it’s a bit creepy to think about.
Which is probably why it’s played largely for laughs here. Diane is horny, Sam is also horny (heh, Sam and Diane, cute), and his awkwardness is meant to be read as the fundamental sweetness of his character, a good boy in over his head. We’re not supposed to get too caught up in the ethics of all of his, because if we did, it would be more difficult to enjoy the fantasy of it. We know Sam is a decent man, and he’s probably hotter than her actual husband, so the whole setup looks fine to us at home; and it’s not like the wife will ever realize what happened. (Well, this is an unusual case, but we’ll get there in a moment.) As long as we know Sam isn’t eagerly taking advantage of a stranger, we just sort of roll with the rest.
The psychotic ex-husband makes for a creepy threat, and it’s worth noting how often Sam’s adventures put him in a position to help a woman deal with a problematic man. Here, it’s saving Diane from her past; in “Camikazi Kid,” he had to save his “sister” from her potential future. I’m not sure I have enough for a thesis just yet, but it’s worth keeping an eye on going forward. Who Sam helps and why is core to what the show is all about, and while the writers are more than willing to offer up the occasionally ridiculous small-stake situation (technically, the first leap of the season has Sam saving an old woman’s cat), it’s worth paying attention to the bigger stuff.
It all works out in the end, because of course it does. The big twist is that, in addition to saving Tom from Roget’s threats, Sam also gives Diane the clarification she needs to pass her bar exam—which, apparently, leads to her beating a certain politician running for re-election, which ultimately has her as the chair of the committee responsible for deciding the fate of the Quantum Leap program. The change happens while Al is in the room, and the idea that reality can shift and he’s the only one who notices the difference raises a lot of questions. We’ll have to wait and see if those questions are ever addressed.
Stray observations
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• Forgot to mention that Sam is saying “Oh boy” pretty regularly now, and it continues to give me joy.
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• Is this the first reference to Sam Beckett being similar to Samuel Beckett?
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• It is very funny how they choose to make Alice Adair look “old” in her politician form. She reminded me of the schlubby news anchors in Batman after all the make-up gets Joker-fied.
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• Alice is also the first person we’ve seen who encountered Sam over the course of his travels. She doesn’t make the connection during the committee meeting, which isn’t a surprise, but given that Sam did tell her his real name, you wonder if she’s going to wake up in the middle of the night some night in a cold sweat.