Quantum Leap Rewatch (Episodes 19-24)

(13-18)--(25-30)

Two thirds of the way through season 2, I find myself wondering if it is just a case of them still needing to find their sweet spot, or if I have always remembered this season as being more impressive than it was. There is a lot of silliness and misfiring going on here:

Episode 19 “Catch a Falling Star” 

Sam thinks he is on a mission to have his teenage crush on his piano teacher fulfilled, but he is really there to perform a bunch of off-Broadway via montages. And why does Sam keep thinking that people will recognize him? But actually that is a pretty good beat. Men really do not see themselves as they really are, but as their internal self. I don’t know if that sentence made sense to anyone but me.

Episode 20 “Portrait for Troian” 

If Broadway wasn’t silly enough, Sam gets to help a woman expose a plot to trick he into seeing ghosts, by inhabiting a man who believes in ghosts, but who isn’t the one trying to scam her. AND the ghost reading instruments register the quantum leaping and holograms. AND… there is a ghost. ???

Episode 21 “Animal Frat” 

Making a three-for-three situation, the series decides to do a take on “Animal House” but also do a serious story about the Baby Boomer’s guilt obsession about Vietnam. They expose the stupidity of the hippy terrorist movement, but also can’t bring themselves to come down too hard on it either.

Episode 22 “Another Mother” 

Sam gets to walk a mile in a single mother’s shoes in his first foray into the eighties. As if that wasn’t enough, little kids can actually see him and Al, AND a sexual predator is after her/his teenage son. The ticking clock of the van approaching is way too much.

Episode 23 “All Americans” 

We finally get a serious story that is void of any gimmick. Sam is a Hispanic football playing in high school who has to prevent his best friend from throwing the game for a gambler.

Episode 24 “Her Charm” 

In an interesting twist, Sam finds himself having to save a woman in the witness protection plan from… his host. Up until now he has always had to struggle to change things that are largely out of his control. Here he simply has to stop doing what he is doing, only he first has to realize that he is the one doing it.