Last year when I reviewed
the new version of Quantum Leap for my column I spent too much time
dealing with the haters who had already come out for this series for existing
as opposed to reviewing the show itself.
That part, however, was
inevitable considering that even before the new version had aired a single
episode the same internet trolls that have been deriding any new version of a
TV series that dares to make it more accessible for a modern audience
had decided that any show that decided to replace Scott Bakula with an
Asian-American scientist was automatically preaching to some kind of
politically correct choir. You know, the
same people who never saw a single episode of the original Wonder Years but
considered the fact that it’s family was an African-American in Alabama in the
1960s was somehow blasphemy. (Because,
you know, the 1960s had nothing to do with race.) The people who were
upset about hated Ms. Marvel or Obi Wan without having to watch
it because the former involved a Muslim teenager as the lead and the latter had
an African-American female jedi.
Now at some point you
wonder if those people even bother to watch the reboot before they actually
judge. I know that they didn’t in the case of Quantum Leap because this
isn’t a reboot the same way that Magnum P.I. or The Equalizer are
but a continuation. This Quantum Leap
takes place thirty years after Sam
Beckett disappeared at the end of the original series. On the night before his fiancée Addison is
about to go on a leap, Dr. Ben Soong (Raymond Lee) inexplicably enters the
accelerator. His team spends as much time in Season 1 trying to follow the
traditional pattern of Ben’s leaps as to why he made this rash decision in the
first place.
I enjoyed the series very
much when I watching its first season but when it went on hiatus during the
winter of 2022 I never got back to it. (At the time I was hooked on Freeform’s The
Watchful Eye which I’m angry at the network for cancelling, but that’s a
story for another day.) It had nothing to do with the quality of this version
which even by the time I stopped watching it was far more intriguing then the original
series had been in terms of concept. For
all the power that so much of the 1990s version of Quantum Leap had, at
the end of the day, it was essentially a two-man show. Scott Bakula and Dean
Stockwell were incredible, no question, but a lot of the time – I’d actually
argue until the final season – the series never quite unlocked its full
potential. It had a great concept,
worked brilliantly at times, but so much of it was based more on good ideas
than when it actually did.
The newer version of Quantum
Leap, I’d argue, works better because it acknowledges that there was a team
beyond Al and Ziggy. Every so often on the show, you’d see an odd member but
they never developed much, and Al was only really seen through how Sam viewed
him. This version goes out of its way to give not only all the characters but
to give them a backstory, some of which is beyond interesting. Yes all of the major characters are either female or
minorities. (So was the original team besides Al in the first version but I
imagine no one cared or noticed now.) But by putting it like this version gives
Quantum Leap depth and reverses some of the more problematic aspects
that the original had.
Raymond Lee as Dr. Ben Song
makes this version of Quantum Leap work in a different fashion than
Soctt Bakula’s did for the original. Bakula’s roguish good looks gave him the
appearance of the All-American boy. Lee takes on the version of the awkward
nerd. The vast leap forward in time shows
the disconnect, but now it is shown in terms of social mores as much as it was
generational ones.
In the original Sam kept
trying to get home to be reunited with the woman he loved. The new version has
the woman he loved be Ben’s hologram. Caitlin Basset represents a different
kind of strength and it makes for a different kind of byplay. Throughout Season
1, Addison had a similar kind of smarminess but with less of the dirty attitude
that Al had (which, I have to say, was problematic thirty years ago) it turns
into a different kind of byplay.
In the original Al was military
and the rest of the team were scientists. The new version has a mix between the
two. Ian is the resident science geek, who is also non-binary. Jenn is an
ex-spook whose military connections have helped. The team is headed by Magic
(Ernie Hudson) who gives the show the gravitas it needs. Everyone in this remake is fully aware of
what happened the last time around, and as we learned Magic actually
experienced one of Sam’s leaps. (It took place in Season 3 when Sam made a leap
to Vietnam to try and save his brother.)
Most of Season 1 dealt with
trying to solve a different mystery: why did Ben decide to go into the accelerator
in the first place? The first season spent as much time trying to figure out
why Ben had chosen to do so as it did tracking his leaps and it was eventually learned
he had made a plan to try and save Addison’s life and the entire world. The
first season climaxed with him doing so – but Ben did not leap home.
The new season, like the
first, continues to tap the potential that the original rarely managed to
reach. Ben made his first leap into a military mission in Russia and there was
no sign of Addison or anyone on the team. When he managed to achieve his goal,
Ian showed up – and gave him the shocking news. While there has been no time between
his two leaps, three years have passed for everyone else.
As we saw in the opening of
Season 2, during that period the military shutdown Quantum Leap after two
years. For reasons we do not yet know
Ian never shut the project down and managed to locate Ben. Everyone had moved
on – and most heartbreakingly, so has Addison.
She is currently engaged to Richard a man in the armed services.
Much of the first three
episodes has been showing how all the characters are dealing with the trauma
that has unfolded. Perhaps not surprisingly Ben is taking the worst. In what
may have been Lee’s most brilliant performance to date (he has already been
nominated for an HCA award for Best Actor for Season 1) Ben spent much of the
last episode as much trying to put right what went wrong as he did working
through the trauma of what he has lost. Throughout the leap, he behaved in a reckless
and uncharacteristic fashion that worried everybody. When Addison tried to calm
him by saying: “I lost you three years ago.” Ben shouts at her: “For me it was
three days ago!” Ben has managed to keep his cool through an impossible series
of events so to see him at this level of fury was fundamentally unsettling. It’s
clear that Ben is trying to deal with his own grief in addition to everything
else. It remains to be seen if Addison
can.
I should mention that the
leaps themselves show even more potential than much of the original series did
until the final season. (For all we know, Bellisario might have been willing to
push it harder than that in the season he had planned to wrap it up with.) From
almost the start Ben has been leaping outside his own lifetime and while the humor
is clearly there, it can also lead to some gripping drama. In last night’s
episode Ben leaped into a man for Project Scion and as sci-fi fans knows this
is one of the early projects that ‘might’ have to do with UFOs. What followed
was not merely a gripping story of family and love but also the best X-File
origin story we never got. (There was
even a nod to Area 51 that I appreciated). Now to be fair, this episode does
not say aliens existed and there is a scientific explanation to everything that
happens. But for a change, most of the cultural shocks were ignored and
stripped down to a very simple narrative. It made for great drama and some
truly brilliant imagery.
We also met a waitress
named Hannah who clearly had a rapport for science. Played by Eliza Taylor of The 100 Hannah
played a woman who had studied science worked on a computer during the war and
her job dried up. Ben wrote a note and gave her information for the physics department
that would have openings for women in the near future. At the end of the episode Ben said goodbye but
she refused to go along with saying: “So long for now.” Based on imdb.com and
the cast list, we will be seeing Hannah in future episodes and I am looking
forward to it.
Like The Wonder Years did
two years ago Quantum Leap is the kind of reboot TV should be doing. It
takes the potential of the original series and shifts it in a direction that does
not simply play on the same theme that the original did. If you have fond memories of the original
series the new version will not spoil them. If you never saw the original at
all, this version will make you wish you had. Quantum Leap does what
almost no reboot I have seen in the last twenty years has done – it is fresh
and vital and it has a purpose for existing beside the nostalgia factor. I hope that it lasts long enough for Ben to leap
home – but that it doesn’t take too long
so I can appreciate the wonder.
My score: 4.5 stars.
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