Quantum Leap: Season 1, Episode 1: Genesis

Part 2. We left Sam in the cockpit, tilting dangerously to the left, screaming at the top of his lungs. (Here’s part 1)

(I know it’s hard to believe but I’m gonna have to make this a three parter. Once I get up to speed, I won’t have to talk so much about the overview of the show … but for now, I gotta get it out of my system!)

SO HERE IS PART 2!!!

Bruce McGill, on the ground, is trying to understand why the plane is tilting – do they have a problem? Meanwhile: Sam, poor passive Sam (he’s a MUCH more active participant in later leaps – once he knows the rules of the game), sits there and screams – afraid to touch anything. Captain Birddog returns from the back, takes over the plane, corrects the mistake, “covers” for his buddy by saying they had a “glitch” in the instrumentation of something – and all is well. Sam, drenched in sweat, basically whimpers, “Just don’t ask me to fly again.” The point of these missions is to drop the X-2 out of the jet, and have the pilot start from that height and try to reach “Mach-3”. Pilots can discuss in the comments what all this means. Because I’m damned if I know. I, as an audience member, who knows mainly about test pilots from movies and from certain friendships with certain people, do not understand the technology. But that’s okay: Quantum Leap is not made for experts. I know what I need to know, they’ve set me up perfectly. The mission is to break Mach-3. But they’ve had issues with this recently – fire warning lights going on, pilots having to eject … it seems, at times, that the aircraft is not built to even handle the stress of such speed. But that’s the whole point of being a test pilot. To push the limits. Regardless of personal danger. They were heroes, pioneers, wild men. And poor Sam – a brainiac – who obviously pushed the boundaries in science – is definitively not (at least in this moment) a courageous hero. You must know how to fly a jet, after all, to – you know – fly a jet!

One of the pilots (who actually looks, strikingly, like “Joe” – the doomed pilot in Only Angels Have Wings – as a young man I mean – who has his mind on “that blonde” and can’t see to land through the fog – I have enough faith in Bellisario that I do NOT think that this is a coincidence!) gets into the X-2, cradled in the back of the jet. Sam, stilll sweaty and shaken up, glances back there and sees … uhm … TUXEDO DUDE … standing there … smiling right at him and waving!! What? Who the hell IS that guy? Why is a man in a tuxedo standing in the back of a huge roaring jet? Sam nervously asks Birddog, “Uhm … is everyone back there … where they need to be … or …” Birddog, cool as a cuke, glances behind him. We see what Birddog sees. There is no guy in a tuxedo in the back of the plane. As far as Birddog can see. (The episode is structured brilliantly – to lure the audience in. There seems, at first, to be something almost malevolent about the Al character … we aren’t sure yet what the project is … we are as baffled as Sam is … and remember, at this point – we don’t yet know that he is a “hologram”.) So the X-2 drops. And “Joe” (I’ll just call him that – an homage to Howard Hawks and Cary Grant: “Who’s Joe??”) flips the switch for rockets 1 and 2. (This, for a newbie like myself, is great information – because it sets up the later scene when Sam has to go through the same thing. We’ve already seen “Joe” go through the procedure.) There is some sort of sonic boom at one point, and – we are back in the “period” kitchen with Peggy, Tom Stratton’s wife – and in one shot, we understand her fear. This will be very important later in the episode. It’s important, in general, because it brings to the crazy fly-boy atmosphere, the female element – the WIVES element – which is just as much a part of the test pilot experience as anything else. Those boys had wives. Those wives were brave, too.

Small tangent, forgive: One of the things I enjoy about this episode (and, largely, about the whole series) is the respect that it has for its characters. I never feel like Sam leaps into a past era – with its prejudices and gender roles – and condescends to that era. Now yes – progress has occurred – and the fact that a black man can’t sit at a freakin’ counter with white people is something rightly to be scorned (episode 6) … that’s what progress means – those who yearn for the “good old days” often conveniently leave out such pesky details as water fountains for “coloreds” and little things like, oh, a polio vaccine. So I’m all for progress. HOWEVER.

The stance that Quantum Leap takes – over and over again – is that people are doing their best. They are, perhaps, doing their best for 1956 – but should we judge them for NOT being able to see the future? Like Sam can? What kind of condescending nitwit would look at the past and ONLY see bad things? (like the little old white lady in Episode 6 – she is not judged. She is limited, definitely, because of the racist world she lives in … but she is not some white villain. She, too, like the black people in that episode, has been formed and shaped by the racist society. And the show has compassion for her. White people, too, were victims of racism. Not to the same degree – but we all suffer when some of our countrymen are oppressed. And the show didn’t soft-pedal that, by making her some racist horrible woman. I SO appreciate that about the show. I’ll get into that more later.) So. Now. Back to one of the other things I appreciate about this show is its LACK of condescension towards people from different eras. It is very easy to “look back” and think: “Wow. Everyone was so ignorant back then.” And in many ways, I think this is a valid response. I’m reading Bleak House right now, and anyone who reads Dickens and DOESN’T think that child labor laws are inhumane has something wrong with them! That being said, I, personally, have gained so much from NOT looking at the past as some black hole of ignorance … but as being filled with people, pretty much like you and me, who have struggles, and issues, and are trying to live the best lives they can. People in future generations, no doubt, will look back on us and tut-tut at how little we knew. This is as it should be, for God’s sake!

But let us not make a virtue out of nostalgia! Let us not think that things were automatically BETTER back then because they aren’t the present day (a viewpoint I find absolutely abhorrent and fight against it whenever it comes up – you know, the “God, things were so great ‘back then'” viewpoint! Oh really. They were? Wow! I won’t concede ground to people who feel that way. I will. NOT. I call them “the world is going to hell in a handbasket” people. A boo hoo, the world’s going to hell in a handbasket!! a boo hoo. Cry about it to someone else, I ain’t buying it.) Let us not add ignorance onto ignorance! I love movies and television shows that take place in other times that respect that “back then” there was complexity, too – that “back then” people struggled, and were doing their best … that human nature doesn’t really change. Husbands and wives had fights. People had affairs. People had sex before marriage. People got wasted and said things they shouldn’t say. Then, the next day, they cleaned up their mistakes and apologized. You know, same ol’ same ol’. The only thing different were the wardrobes. (And the 24-hour media cycle which puts us all in touch with each other at every moment … the effect of which on our modern world cannot be exaggerated). But please. Let us not be truly ignorant and think that all that crap wasn’t going on back then.

One of the fun things about Quantum Leap is that it could offer a panorama of American experience – and sometimes it took on deep subjects – like women’s liberation, or racism, or homophobia, or domestic abuse – and sometimes it didn’t – but no matter what: the characters in the episodes were revealed as three-dimensional people. They each had their journey to go through. Nobody was “written off” as “lost”.

I write all of this because I wanted to say a couple of words about Jennifer Runyon’s portrayal of Peggy, the pregnant wife, in “Genesis”. She has a son who is about 8 years old. She is 6 months pregnant and very jittery about it. She drinks coffee all day long. Her husband goes on death-defying missions every day, and she has to stand in her house, as her appliances shimmy towards her, and listen to the sonic booms, and NOT freak out. Of course she DOES freak out … but quietly. To herself. She looks up in the sky. She swallows her terror. She tries to be strong. And when push comes to shove, she wants her husband to be “the fastest man alive”. Because that’s what HE wants. It is the opposite of a condescending portrayal of a wife in another era. She is a three-dimensional woman – and I don’t want to make it sound like it’s some huge serious thing … I’m just saying: that as a woman, I very much appreciated her compassionate and deep portrayal of this character. She isn’t the “wet blanket” cliche of the wife. (Cue my post about the wife in Field of Dreams) But she isn’t also a starry-eyed Doris Day who just stands by her man with no personality of her own. That’s not satisfying for me, as a woman, to watch (and also, I imagine, for men – who have wives they love, wives who have complexity, who call them on their shit but who also have their back when it counts … etc. We’re all in this together, people!!)

The funny thing (and the brilliant thing) is that Doris Day is referenced a couple of times in this episode, and again – I can’t imagine it’s a coincidence. The references are: when Sam is awakened in the first moment by the alarm clock – it’s by Doris Day singing “Que Sera Sera”. And then later – in the last scene – when his pregnant wife is drunk in the hospital – she lies in bed, wasted – singing “Que Sera Sera” and one of the doctors jokes, “Doris Day is our patient.” When Al first says to Sam (in a couple scenes from now) that maybe he is ‘here’ to ‘put things right’ – he assumes that Sam is here to break Mach-3 and LIVE, as opposed to DIE, like the “real” Tom Stratton did. So that is what the two of them focus on: getting Sam thru the ordeal of breaking Mach-3. Once Sam breaks Mach-3 though, he lies on the ground in the desert, twisted up in his parachute, and we hear the voiceover again, the agonized voiceover, “I’m still here! Al! Why am I still here??”

The answer is in the Doris Day references.

The answer was there all along.

Peg stands in her kitchen. She hears the sonic boom. She puts her hand nervously on her stomach, kicks the washing machine back into place, and takes a sip of coffee. When “Joe” from Only Angels Have Wings pushes his plane past the point of no return, and it explodes – she gasps and runs out onto her lawn, looking up, looking up, looking up. The other wives, many of them pregnant also, all of them wives of test pilots, join her … they look up, they look up, they look up …

Guys, I’m not overstating this. I love this scene. It captures that whole world. It doesn’t condescend to that world. It respects it. But without the lying golden glow of nostalgia … which leaves out the bad stuff. The experience of the wives on the ground is PART of that pioneer journey … and Quantum Leap shows that … in the beautiful sunset-lit shot (or dawn-lit shot) of the pregnant wives, looking up in the sky, for evidence of their exploded husbands.

Without that affection for other eras, without that willingness to see them as being just like us – only with different wardrobes, and different contexts – the show would not have worked. It would have been schlock. Condescending schlock.

Please, fans of the show. I know it’s a tiny moment, and it’s not the “point” of the episode. But just watch all of those wives flood out onto the lawn, looking up. And tell me you don’t feel for them, tell me you don’t think: “God … what was it like for you????”

That’s the entire purpose of the show.

It’s not just about what it was like for Sam Beckett to suddenly be a test pilot – although, of course, the show is totally about that! It’s also about: who is Peg?? What are HER concerns? And who is Tom Stratton, this guy Sam has leapt into? How can I figure out what HE needs? The whole show is an exercise in altruistic thinking. It appeals to me, because it’s in my nature, I suppose – to wonder what it’s like to BE another person. And Sam Beckett has to learn that, which he does – episode by episode. He wants to “leap back” … with every leap he thinks: “will this be the one? will I wake up in familiar surroundings again?” But, as it keeps NOT happening … he realizes his mission is larger than he thought, or hoped. He, for whatever reason (and they even touch on it in this first episode) – is an “instrument” of something bigger than himself. And the greater good demands that he succumb to it, that he give up his own personal concerns … and care about people like Tom Stratton … which … how many of us, when faced with the choice of our own life – or the life of someone we’ve never heard of … would choose our own? The show (at its best) confronts such existential questions. Again, don’t mean to go too deep here – but that’s what I get from this show, at its finest. And, if you remember how it ends, if you remember that last episode … that’s the journey Sam Beckett is on. He is the ultimate sacrifice. He (for whatever reason, again – it’s never stated) has chosen to sacrifice HIMSELF.

Back to our plot. Joe from Only Angels Have Wings survives the explosion by ejecting. The next scene finds us in a divey bar in the middle of the desert, full of test pilots, military men, and blonde chicks wearing full skirts, red lipstick and heels. (Please. Let ME Quantum Leap to that place??) Sam Beckett, as Tom Stratton, sits in a booth with his pregnant wife, and all his fly boy buddies … and he starts to relax into his new role. He glances at Peggy at one point, who is laughing up at something Birddog is doing … and the way she is filmed in that moment, Sam realizes what Tom sees in her. Not that it wasn’t obvious before – but up until this moment, Sam has basically been terrified of her because – DUH. She is the wife of someone he doesn’t know – and she is pregnant – and he has no idea who he is!!! Imagine having to pretend you’re married to someone you’ve never met! Sam finds her terrifying. But suddenly, at the bar, he sees her beauty, he softens … they dance … She does show surprise that he actually CAN dance … and he bluff his way out of it: “I’ve never had such a … well-rounded partner before.” She laughs. They’re having a good time. A young married couple in 1956 on a date.

Until. He sees that damn dude in a tux again. Standing by the jukebox and looking around him as though he is having the best time of his life. Who the hell is that jagoff? It’s infuriating. Especially because Sam asks his “wife”, “Who’s that guy over there in the tux?” and she can’t even see him!! “A tux? In this place?” Okay. So he’s crazy, obviously. Sam doesn’t even know he’s Sam at this point, he cannot remember his first name – he has accepted “Tom” as his first name … and yet he has SOME semblance of sanity to know that seeing dudes in tuxes where no one else sees them is a very very bad sign. With an ominous manner, Sam approaches the stranger, who seems completely oblivious to why anyone should greet him with hostility. Tux-Dude says, happily, “Ain’t this something??” looking around as though he never wanted to leave. Sam pretends to look at the jukebox, and Tux-Dude begs, “Oh – do they have Be-Bop-a-Lu on there? That got me through some long nights at MIT. That and a little Lithuanian girl named Danessa.” (Many many clues to Al’s character and history in this small set of sentences.) Sam, still baffled as to who this dude is – who was standing in the back of the plane, unseen by Birddog – and now unseen by his own wife – treats the entire encounter with suspicion. “Am I dead? Because that would explain a lot if I were dead.”

Tuxedo-Man (who is, of course, the wonderful rumpled and sex-focused Dean Stockwell) treats Sam gently – but it is only over the course of this conversation that Admiral Al Calavicci truly realizes the level of swiss-cheesing that has occurred in his friend Sam Beckett. His DEAR friend Sam Beckett! Imagine if your dear friend didn’t know you anymore! Sam doesn’t even recognize Al! What a total loss that would be. What a sad thing it would be. Like Alzheimers, something I know something about. One must give up on the relationship that WAS, and accept the relationship that is THERE. What a hard thing to do. This is what goes down between Sam and Al at the jukebox. Al realizes: “ohhhhhh myyyyyy gooood, you don’t remember?? You have no idea who I am? Do you even know your own name, Sam?” The name, the first time we’ve heard it, gets through the fog. We can see it LAND on Bakula’s face. It gets through. “You know my name.” But Al – this creature from the black lagoon as far as Sam is concerned – a guy who looks at him knowingly – without knowing him!! – disappears without explaining more to Sam. Al, obviously, is frustrated and freaked out by the Swiss Cheese factor, and angry at Ziggy for not factoring this in. The last we see of him is him ripping open a door in the atmosphere, and disappeareing behind it, muttering angrily. Leaving Sam (Tom) alone. With most of his questions unanswered.

The next morning:

now this will be important later: The whole episode (after the prologue with Al and Tina) starts with a tracking shot over the desert, speeded up – tumbleweed, brush, sand … and the camera zooms very quickly at a house – into the window – into the bedroom – the clock turning over … and then: Sam’s quantum leap begins. It’s almost like in that moment we are Ziggy. Or – the “quantum leap” itself – rushing through time/space … into another life. So the next morning – we see the same shot again. An echo. Tracking shot over the desert, speeded up – tumbleweed, brush, sand – the camera zooms towards the little house – and then – abruptly – zooms backwards and up and away.

Huh?

What was that?

Sam wakes up – in bed with Peg – and we get a voiceover: “Not time to get up yet. After I milk the cows … I’ll get to school …” and BOOM. Sam’s eyes open. Alarmed, alert. Cows? Milk? Where did that come from and what did that have to do with Tom Stratton? Suddenly: some details come back. Rushing, in a flood. He grew up on a dairy farm. In Indiana. He remembers! He remembers too -with a flood of sadness – that his father has died. Yet … hope comign back … his father was alive in 56!!! So … what? Sam still doesnt’ know much – his last name – anything – but he’s got enough to go on. So he goes to the phone. To try to call his dad.

This moment will become VERY important in future episodes – and CRUCIAL in the last episode. If Ziggy, the hybrid computer, is NOT in control, then who is? Thank goodness the show did not go in a Touched by an Angel direction because that would have ruined it and made it sanctimonious and evangelical, which would have turned me right off. It’s not about a particular message. Al and Sam always refer to the force leaping Sam around as “God … or time … or whoever …” which I appreciated. And I believe in God. But to me, God is a private business and any relationship I have is between me and Him. Don’t try to “tell me” about God. Especially not if you have the arrogance to think that you “know”. That is not just insulting, but HARMFUL to something that is actually divine to me. And I will protect that which I believe to be divine from LITERAL-minded people. The irony is that those people are “religious”. Spare me, Lord, from the “religious”!! I add my cry of protest to the many others before me who have cried out such a thing! But I appreciated that non-specific spiritual vibe about the show. It was about people being GOOD, about making the right choices, about getting a second chance, about redemption – all things that we, in our measly little lives, could also see, and use … if we just opened our eyes, stopped for a second, and got beyond our own egos. What would it be like to get a second chance? To forgive? To let go? To make right? The show didn’t attempt to answer the big questions – however!!! It certainly POSED the questions – and left it at that. I loved that. Who the hell is leaping Sam around? We THOUGHT it was the computer itself … but if Ziggie is playing catch-up and isn’t the boss … then who is in charge here?

The last episode, in Season 5, attempts to address this. But what I love is that here – in the first episode of the whole series – with the computer (signified by the zooming tracking shot over the desert) TRYING to retrieve Sam … and then … uhm … for whatever reason … being unable to do so… and bouncing back off into the space/time continuum … the struggle has already begun. The struggle always was: Will Sam allow himself to leap back? Or, as Al puts it bluntly later, “You wouldn’t leap!!:

Now WHY wouldn’t Sam leap?

Ahhhhhhhhhh, that is the question.

Stick around til Season 5. It’s STILL the question … and the series confronts it head on in the very last episode and it nearly burst my heart into a million pieces.

Back to our current episode: “Genesis”. Sam (or Tom) has promised his young son to take him fly-fishing (even though Sam has no idea what he’s doing with fly-fishing!) It is during this father-son trip that Sam bumps into Al, yet again … only this time Al has appeared, out of nowhere, wearing pumpkin-orange pajamas, a black and white patterned bathrobe, and is drinking coffee = out in the middle of the wilderness – moaning about his hangover-headache. “Pleeeeeeeease don’t yell!”

Now there is NO reason for Tux-dude to be out in the mountains in his pajamas … so Sam finally confronts the weirdness. “Who. Are. You.” Al, who is coming off a bender and looks pretty much the worse for wear, says, nonchalantly, “I’m a man. Just like you.” Sam, who has already swiped his hand through Al, says, “No. Not like me.” Al relents and gives him a BIT of information … but warns him that “most of what you’re gonna want to know is restricted … so it would probably be better if you don’t ask too many questions.”

Just a small bit of trivia: This pajama scene was the scene that Dean Stockwell auditioned with. Tommy mentioned in his post (sorry, no permalink!!) that it was his favorite scene and it’s one of mine as well. It establishes who Al is. Al has a complicated social life back in the present day … and he’s not a “drop everything for work” kind of guy. Even though he’s totally dedicated to the project. Tommy puts it perfectly in his post:

Al,hung over and in his pajamas, while Sam is fishing? Classic, and probably my favorite scene from this episode. I just like the whole thing where Al Calavicci is dealing with what could be the most groundbreaking development in history and science, with the Quantum Leap technology. Add to that the whole deal where his friend is trapped in history, quite possibly in great peril. But Al, at times, looks at the whole thing as something of a hindrance to his social agenda. I enjoy that idea, that the whole “Save Sam” thing might just fall to second or third on Al’s social agenda, from time to time. Al personifies the whole “work to live, not live to work” mindset.

Al shows up – in the wildnerness – in his pajamas … and you know there’s a whole swirling cornucopia of sexual dysfunction and debauchery that is behind his bedraggled appearance … but Sam (and that’s part of the humor of their dynamic) never wants to hear the details. He’s not the kind of male friend who will be like, “Tell me everything!” He’s always mildly horrified at Al’s indulgences. So here is Sam, terrified that he is going to have to fly the X-2 on Tuesday!! A death-defying act for a trained pilot – and Sam doesn’t even know how to fly!! And here this “Al” dude shows up, in pajamas, hung over, with some woman at home in the future, wrapped up naked in his crumpled-up sheets? What the hell? THIS is the guy assigned to the project? Couldn’t we have gotten a guy who was married … who had more focus? And not so … on the prowl, for God’s sake?

Sam says to Al, cold, panicked, “This Ziggy will be ready to retrieve me on Tuesday? That’ll be a bit late. I’m scheduled to fly the X 2 on Monday.” There’s a long pause, and then Al says ruefully, “Have you ever thought of taking flying lessons?”

Part 3 (the last part, I swear!) to come tomorrow …

Quantum Leap: Before we begin …

Part 1: Episode 1 of Quantum Leap: Genesis

Let’s try Tommy’s permalink: He’s already on Episode 2 – I love his observations … it’s making me see new things in the show. Go check out his reviews (scroll, scroll!)