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Friday, October 6, 2023

TV Show Review: Quantum Leap - Season 4

Stars: 4 out of 5
Pros: Two leads and many fun episodes
Cons: A few episodes don’t work for me
The Bottom Line:
More leaping through time
A few episodes don’t work
But most entertain



“Oh, Boy.”  “You Can Say That Again.”

The cliffhanger at the end of season 3 of Quantum Leap got me.  I couldn’t wait to see how they would resolve things at the beginning of season 4.  Okay, so it still took me a few months to dust off the DVD set and dive in, but when I did, I found another fun season.

If you’ve missed the original incarnation of this series, it features Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) who stepped into a time machine and vanished.  Now, he is bouncing around from time to time, into the body of some other person.  Sam is always there to help them or someone around them avoid a life altering catastrophe that is about to happen.  To help him figure out what is going on, he is visited by Al Calavicci (Dean Stockwell) who appears as a hologram that only Sam can see and hear.  Al is from the project headquarters, and he has access to databases that help them figure out what Sam needs to do.  Not that it is ever easy.

Of course, all this is turned on its head in the season opener.  As a result of what happened in the third season finale, Sam and Al have switched roles.  Al is the one who leapt into someone else, and Sam is the hologram from the future.  Not only is it fun to see them switch things up, but it allows us to follow Sam into the future.  I do have to say I found their vision of the future rather funny.  The episode originally aired in the fall of 1991, but the vision of the future looked like something from a low budget 80’s science fiction show with lots of neon and Tetris like blocks.

The only other thing I will say about this episode is that it definitely changed the dynamic of the show for me.  We learn some stuff about Sam that makes me wish he could get home all the more.  And I think it will impact my feelings about the series finale when I get there.  (Yes, I do know how it ends.)

Of course, by the end of the season premier, we are back to normal, with Sam being the one to leap and Al being the guide.

Over the course of this season, Sam finds himself leaping into the body of a sheriff trying to prepare for Hurricane Camille.  He even becomes a chimp in the early days of the space program.  He becomes a member of a chain gang trying to help prove that a fellow member is innocent.  In one leap, Sam crosses paths with someone who claims to be an angle.  And Sam becomes part of a comedic trio with an unfunny future.

Which brings us to the season finale.  I’m not going to get into specifics, but it is another wonderfully creative episode that twists things a little.  They seem to save the most personal leaps for the beginning and ending of the season, and that was the case here.  I loved what they did with it.

And, for the most part, I enjoyed the normal episodes along the way.  The writers use a lot of creativity in finding problems for Sam to deal with and complications along the way to keep him from getting there too easily.

There are some episodes that don’t quite work for me, however.  Usually, these seemed to be clumped together, too.  Unfortunately.  These fall into two camps.  The first is the one where Sam has to prevent something from happening, and none of the other characters listen to him at all.  Basically, we get an entire episode with Sam arguing with the characters, who keep doing what they were going to do until suddenly things change at the end.  We need some other developments along the way.

The second type of episodes are the preachy episodes.  There are only a few of those, and we’ve had them in earlier seasons.  In earlier seasons, I felt like they were handling the lessons in a more entertaining way.  Here, it is all preaching with stereotypical characters.

But either subset of these episodes aren’t enough to make me dislike the season.  Overall, the show continues to entertain me here.  And I love the fact that the episodes end happily.

Of course, this was a show from the late 80’s and early 90’s where very little if anything changed from week to week. 

My enjoyment is helped by the performances by the two leads.  They are always fantastic, and I watch because I enjoy seeing them interact.  The guest stars always step up and deliver great performances as well.  I always get a kick out of watching for names I recognize in the credits.  Among those I spotted this season were the likes of Neal McDonough, Glenn Morshower, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Anna Gunn, Sean O'Bryan, Tamlyn Tomita, Eriq La Salle, Carla Gugino, Dr. Laura Schlessinger (as herself), Frances Bay, Brian George, Amy Yasbeck, Bob Saget, and Terry Farrell.

The season consisted of 22 episodes, and I watched it via a DVD set released quite a few years ago.  The discs are double sided, so we get three of them.  The show is in its native full frame and stereo sound.  In the way of extras, we get a half hour show about TV from the 80’s, which is really an ad for other Universal shows that have been released on DVD.  And it worked because now I want to watch them. We also get a bonus episode from the middle of season 5.  Why that one was picked, I have no idea, mainly because I’m waiting to watch it when I watch season 5 in a few months.

If you are a fan of Quantum Leap, you’ll be happy to leap into season 4.

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