“Sounds Like an Adventure to Me.”
I really enjoyed the first season of the Quantum Leap reboot, but it was clear they had an initial story to tell involving why the new main character leapt. Since they resolved that at the end of that season, I was very curious what they were going to do for season two. While the initial set up was a little shaky for me, I wound up enjoying this season, too.
The first episode starts just like any other episode – Ben (Raymond Lee) leaps into a new situation. In this case, he’s in a plane that is about to crash over 1978 Russia. However, he’s not getting any assistance from anyone back at Quantum Leap headquarters. Finally, Ian (Mason Alexander Park) shows up to help Ben. But Ian also reveals that, while to Ben it’s just been a few minutes, to the rest of the team, he’s been missing in time for three years, and everyone thought that Ben was dead.
While Ian brings the team back together, Ben has to deal with the revelation, most noticeably that his fiancée, Addison (Caitlin Bassett) has moved on and is now dating Tom (Peter Gadiot). Meanwhile, Ben keeps meeting up with a woman, Hannah (Eliza Taylor) in various leaps. He is clearly starting to fall for her. Why is he seeing her multiple times?
Of course, all this is happening while Ben keeps leaping through time trying to fix history. He leaps into a bank teller about to be a victim in a bank robbery. He becomes a government agent investigating extraterrestrial activity. He finds himself accused of witchcraft in 1692 Salem. And he becomes a news producer trying to help a reporter nail a comeback story.
I hate it when a show jumps forward in time and one character isn’t aware of the passage of time. So when I realized that was what they were doing with this season, I wasn’t happy about it. And I did roll my eyes at the usual tropes, like Ben being upset about Addison moving on, and Addison being torn between Ben and Tom.
But as the season went on, I began to appreciate the choices the writers made as a result of this time jump. A couple of my assumptions about what they were planning to do with the characters proved to be wrong (thankfully). I was actually blown away in the last couple of episodes with how they brought everything all the characters were facing together for a complete season long story. Yes, this is an example of excellent writing. They clearly had a plan in place for the season before they started, and they executed it wonderfully.
What they didn’t have a plan for was the cancellation of the series. A couple of weeks after the finale aired, NBC announced that the series wouldn’t be back in the fall of 2024. And we are left once again unmoored in time. I don’t blame the writers since they didn’t know when this was written or filmed.
To be clear, the storyline for season two was wrapped up. Instead, what we got was a teaser for what season three would have been as a cliffhanger. That’s probably what makes it so mild for me. Yes, I would have been back, and I really want to know what the producers would have done with the storyline. But since the cliffhanger was more about setting up the story going forward, I don’t feel as if we were left hanging in the same sense that we would have been otherwise. Make sense?
But back to the season we did get. Like the first season, we split our time between the leap of the week, which usually got a majority of the run time, and what is going on back at headquarters. I feel like the leaps also fed into what was going on in the ongoing storylines better this season, probably because Ben’s plot wasn’t about his missing memory and why he leapt. The writers did a really good job of giving us real emotional stakes in the episodes where we could feel for all the characters. There wasn’t a right or wrong, but people were still allowed to struggle with what they were feeling. I really liked it. And each episode also had very real complications that made it hard to see how Ben would accomplish his task to leap again.
I know I’ve been praising the writers so far this season, but equal praise goes to the cast, including the regulars I haven’t mentioned yet, Ernie Hudson and Nanrisa Lee. Everyone brought their best to each episode, fully making us invested in what their characters were going through. I enjoyed getting to see some of these characters popping up as Ben’s guide through his leap, which helped us get to know them better and see different sides of Ben.
There were thirteen episodes in season two. One of them did get into preachy territory, but it wasn’t as bad as last season’s preachy episode. But for the most part, we get a show with great stories and characters we can care about.
I am sad that season 2 is the end of Quantum Leap. I know many fans of the original didn’t like it, but I found the show fun for a modern day reinvention of a classic show.
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