Somehow, I didn’t see this episode until long after the series ended. The first time it aired I missed it. The re-run over the summer on NBC I managed to miss as well. It wouldn’t be until years later that it would be re-ran on USA and SciFi, which is when I finally got to see it, during the summer of 1996 – almost 4 years later.

This episode turned out to be one of the craziest in the history of the show. Sam leaps into a serial killer, (Leon) who is presently holding a mother and daughter hostage. Meanwhile, in the present-day, the man he has leaped into gets his hands on a gun and escapes the waiting room Sam is forced to buy time until he is retrieved. Al goes to chase after Leon, while Gooshie takes on the role of the hologram. Sam takes the liberty of explaining to his captives what is actually going on – that he is a time traveler. …yeah, this is a doozy of an episode. This episode is interesting in that we get to see the “future.” Leon immediately seeks out a prostitute - who is extremely fun to see by the way, with flashing lights and edible body paint. After getting shot, Al retrieves him.

Meanwhile, Sam bonds with the mother after letting the little girl go free. She still thinks that Sam is crazy and the time-traveler thing is BS, until she tells him she’s studying to be a doctor. Sam has her quiz him on everything which he aces – and he reminds her that Leon, the man that she thinks he is, is illiterate.

Al returns to tell Sam the good news, but Sam doesn’t leap. Leon previously had killed the sheriff’s daughter and in the original history, the sheriff kills Leon in cold blood rather than arresting him, which ruins his life. The sheriff barges in and is ready to do it, but the mother that Sam has bonded with stops him.

This episode had so much happening, seeing the future, Al gets shot, Gooshie gets to be the hologram, Sam reveals himself, and I didn’t know any of this until 4 years later. It’s really a must-see.

This leap takes place at the end of Vietnam. Immediately after leaping, Sam is confronted with a soldier who appears to be suffering from a flashback and is met with aggression from one of the male nurses. Sam is about to get up and stop him when Al shows up just in time to tell him he’s leaped into someone with no legs, a vet named Ron.

Sam encounters three key people in this leap: his wife Julie, a girl named Kiki (played by a very young Jennifer Aniston), and now quadriplegic soldier named Billy. Al tells Sam that Billy is found dead at the bottom of a swimming pool in the hospital. Sam is also told that he (Ron) is going to go on to have children, one of whom will end up in the Gulf War of 1991 and save an entire platoon. Sam and Kiki bond throughout the episode, while trying to snap Billy out of his depression. Kiki has a brother in Vietnam who she is convinced has gotten killed in the line of duty. Julie seems to be unable to adapt to the monumental changes that have happened to her husband. Al urges Sam to fix this as soon as possible so that the platoon in the gulf doesn’t meet its doom.

Eventually, Billy is given an electric wheelchair and is able to make his way to the pool, where he plans to drown himself and be done with life. Al reports this to Sam, as we see his wife telling him she’s met someone else and she’s leaving him.

Sam makes his way back into the hospital, but is stopped by the male nurse from the beginning of the episode. He wheels Sam into his room and is preparing him for bed. Al checks around and tells Sam the coast is clear, and in one of the more fun moments in the show, Sam stands up and we see his reflection in the mirror, a young soldier standing without legs. The nurse is stunned, Sam knocks him out and then makes his way to the pool. Billy makes one of the most powerful monologues I can remember in TV history. He’s bawling and talking about the war and how everything is different – how much he feels like the war was meaningless and all the suffering was for nothing. Suddenly, Sam agrees with him and tells him to go through with it.

Al is stunned by this! Sam explains that Billy needs to almost die to appreciate life again. Sam pulls him out of the water and saves him from drowning. Al confirms that Billy doesn’t try again. Sam tells Al that he’s glad he saved Billy, but he failed to save his marriage and now all of the soldiers in the gulf are going to die. Al checks and discovers that they all live after all and everything is unchanged. As they’re wondering how this could be when Julie has left him, Kiki shows up right on cue. Turns out she is indeed the mother of his children and Al never checked. She hands Sam a telegram that she hasn’t been able to read. Sam opens it and reads it, Kiki begins to lament about the loss of her brother. Sam tells her that when she’s done crying, she should bake her brother a cake, because he’ll be home in a few hours.

Another perfect episode.

I thought this episode was one of the best ever. Powerful acting, powerful story, great execution. It’s also awesome to see Jennifer Aniston pre-Rachel. You really sympathize with Billy, hate Julie, love Kiki and feel great when Sam knocks out the jerky nurse. This episode is a must watch, easily.

Sam leaps into a fellow named Nikos. We start off in the water, post ship-wreck. Sam ends up on a life-raft with a lovely lady (Vanessa, played by Brooke Shields). We soon discover that she’s a stuck-up, rich, daddy’s girl  who is the heir to his successful business. Apparently, Sam works for the same father, but is a low man on the totem pole. Eventually they end up on a deserted island. We discover that there is a romance of sorts brewing between them, but they also cannot stand each other and are anxious to get off of the island. Vanessa seems determined to get off the island and make it to her wedding, but it is also soon revealed that it seems more like she’s anxious to please her father and is only marrying him because the father loves him. This episode provides for a good excuse to show Brooke Shields in cute outfits.

What eventually happens is they start getting along and we discover that they both have some skills conducive to keeping them both alive while stuck on the island. Al eventually tells Sam that there’s a good chance he’s there to get them together. What eventually happens is they see a ship on the horizon are are going to attempt to signal it with a Jerry-rigged flare made of hairspray and a stick. Suddenly Sam gets the idea that they should stay on the island, an idea that Ziggy gives 100% probability of working.

So, this isn’t the most riveting episode of the season, far from it. In any other season it works, but this season is so strongly paced that this feels like a half-step in the progression of the overall story. It was a treat to have some star power in this episode, though. It was a very basic episode, but I suppose we needed it before things begin going as crazy as they’re about to go. If there were a “chick flick” episode of Quantum Leap, this would definitely be it. For a casual fan, I’d skip this episode. There aren’t many I’d skip in the last season, but this one, yeah.

Quantum Leap was the best show ever. I’ve been rewatching it for the past year with Ana, and now we are at season five, the season in which the show really goes nuts. Prior to the fifth season, the show was less sci-fi and more drama (with sci-fi elements). In season five, they turn up the juice on the sci-fi, but I’m getting ahead of myself, let me briefly explain the show.

Sam Becket is a super-smart doctor/scientist who heads a government project trying to achieve time travel. The government begins losing faith in the project and is going to shut it down, so before it is fully ready, Sam uses the time machine they have built. The traveling in time is referred to as “leaping.” Basically, Sam switches places with someone in time, yet he retains their appearance, so to everyone he is the person he has switch places with. He has a sidekick (so to speak) named Al, who is able to appear to him through brainwave transmissions. Al exists in the present day, but is audible and visibly transmitted to Sam. Sam sees him as he would anyone else, but Al is not really there, just projected as a hologram. Inversely, the time and surrounding that Sam is in is a hologram to Al. Al’s job is to work with the main computer programmed to run the project (named Ziggy) and figure out an event that took place in the time and place Sam has leaped into. Sam is supposed to fix whatever has gone wrong. He then will leap out and move on to whatever the next leap is. The leaping also affects Sam’s memory, so he is unable to remember many details of his life or previous leaps.

What I want to do now, is a retrospective review of each episode, now that they are fresh in my memory again. The first episode of this season, Sam leaps into Lee Harvey Oswald.

The episode is title “Lee Harvey Oswald.” In this episode, Sam first leaps into Oswald in early 1963. He is with Marina as she takes the famous picture of him holding the newspaper and the rifle. He has an exchange with her, in which he is able to speak Russian. After some banter, he finds himself become angry at her, eventually slapping her. This is completely out of character for Sam, who from prior episodes has displayed he is the most honorable and gentlemanly boyscout on the planet. He suddenly leaps and he is several years prior to 1963.

He is first in 1957, in Japan. Toward the beginning of the episode, Sam and Al reminisce about the Kennedy assassination. Sam recalls that he was learning to drive a tractor with his father when his mother came running out of the house screaming. They thought they were getting yelled at, but then found out what had happened to the president. The episode proceeds to really follow Oswald’s life closely and it paints the picture of a very socially awkward loner, desperate to belong and be important. We see early on that he seems to be obsessed with Russian and learning Russian and the Marxist ways. We follow Oswald to Russia in 1959 when he tries to defect and the April of 1963 when he tries to kill General Walker. Throughout these leaps, we cut back to the present day, in which Al is interrogating the actual Lee Harvey Oswald, who really isn’t budging.

We also see the introduction of a new plot device in the Quantum Leap universe, Sam’s mind is melded to some extent with the person he leaps into. With Oswald it gets worse and worse to the point where he loses control and does exactly what Oswald did. After all of the speculation and guessing, the episode address the theories that Oswald is the lone assassin, examining the possibility that he was a gun for hire. It finishes off where Oswald is acting alone and is just a sick individual. By the time we reach November 22^nd, 1963, Sam is completely taken over by Oswald’s mind. He is actually in the book depository, loading the rifle and ready to shoot. Al, who previously is able to snap him out of these episodes by asking him questions about complex science subject matter is now at a loss. Finally, he remembers Sam’s story about his father. Flashback: Sam is always very emotional about his father, he lost him when he was fairly young and never recovered from it. So now Al is pleading with Sam to think of his father and what is happening, Sam snaps out of it and suddenly leaps. Sam leaps into a secret service agent and immediately bolts toward the president and Jackie. President Kennedy is still shot and killed. Sam thanks Al for snapping him out of it, but feels as though he has failed. Al reveals to Sam that Jackie Kennedy was killed in the original history and from what Ziggy is able to estimate, he was there to save Jackie, not John F. Kennedy. I thought that was a cool twist.

Perfect episode, strong story, great acting, emotional ending.