DoctorAtomic

Yes, very meta. I thought the same. It ended like that though with Bart and Lisa limping out of the woods together.

I totally forgot that.

When Steve said, "I'd like to hear that" re:Bullock and Centerfield; I said, they'd better have that. You're not having Patrick Stewart in the episode and just dropping it. Minimal Roger tonight, but he knew right where Stan was. I love pretzels at baseball games, so I liked Klaus enjoying his snack.

The colored pills came up today re: Halloween, and I delighted a co-worker by bringing up the razor blades in the apples. The younger folks were cracking up because they thought it was too preposterous to be real, but he backed me on it being a big deal back in the day. Anyone see the tweet about the One Ring and the snickers?

Maybe the leapee is just hanging out in the closet. They constructed a waiting room. The person would have still been there. Here, they could be assuming that this new 'leap map' code means Ben might get stuck. Technically, if Sam didn't leap, they just figured out Ziggy was wrong and figure something else out. Sam still would be stuck there. They're banking on Ziggy a lot more now for some reason. To be fair, in the second episode, Ben and Addison figured he only had to save the astronaut's life, which he did. They were wondering why he didn't leap, and it was because now everyone died. So Ben was 'stuck' in a sense; he did what they thought he should do and didn't leap.

I suppose the sun could be closer depending where everything is. Not that that helps at all. I don't know what else Rav could have come up with for a plan, since everyone was burying their heads in the sand. I didn't feel bad for Karen either. Who is the Other President? Was that mentioned last season?

I think it would be the bar as well.

I still like the running gag about Hannah wearing sweaters. Gordon teasing her was brilliant. LGTV! Winking is always funny. Rachel Bloom plays mortified just fantastic. Selma kills me. "The 83 Sixers should have given *me* a ring." Then they found a nude Selma with a young Gabe Kapler. I set up the metronome joke for a friend last week and he totally lost it. The writers' room probably has the best scenes for me because I like all the zingers. "She has two cats. Tilda. Swinton. Lesbian." It kind of reminds me of Arrested Development. All the kid movie titles are hilarious too. I don't feel too bad for Reed. He could just have said, "Bree is yelling at me for some reason. It's probably something else insane" to Nora. I really liked the scene with Knoxville and the director not accepting his apology. Knoxville is doing really well. He face just fell. I liked the point that the hulu exec had to say no to Zack because of the double standard. Funny resolution too.

"Don't worry kid, I was free up here... I was always free." Wow, I'm pleasantly surprised Magic spilled the beans already. Stellar monologue by Hudson. Ian's reaction shots really sold it. I really like when actors don't get saddled with overwriting and get to actually act. I probably should have seen "Carla" coming. I didn't think she was telling the truth, but I was still also surprised. And I didn't think she would shoot the guy. The show seems to have its legs after these last two. I liked here how Ziggy wasn't really of use because Carla disappeared so they had to figure it out. Please let this happen. That would be brilliant. Given Magic has seemingly all of Sam's leap data, I'm not sure how a mention of the waiting room might be missed though. Magic didn't seem to have any recollection of it, so he might not be specifically looking for it. Or they could say Al wasn't the best at filling out mission reports. Which is entirely consistent. One thing that annoyed me about the original was that even though Sam did sleep with some women, he was still kind of prudish overall. I don't think the original would have handled the proposal here with the overall nonplussedness or just being a woman, as it was here. Addison is getting some quips in. "30 seconds as a woman and you've been harassed, assaulted, and insulted. I liiike this leap!" I do think, as it was pointed out, that this might be the sweet spot in terms of minutes on the leap v the lab. I think they got a lot in though. You really only need one big lab scene; here, Magic and Ian.

It seems that this new code Ben uploaded was a workaround to the constraint of leaping within one's own lifetime. The QL staff was even surprised.

You know you all want a regular regular sized smoothie.

I don't have the time to make anything anyway. Sure, I'll hand out candy and have a good time, but I'm buying a bag of whatever at the store.

Yes, that's entirely true, and I hope that we do get that kind of content, but that wasn't quite my point. The original question was is it better for Ben to leap into a woman or gay guy *at this point in the show*. Show-wise for new viewers, leaping into a woman makes more sense from a world building standpoint. In terms of the direction of the content and leap plots, I certainly hope they take a page from the original. The last episode seemed to do so for me. Granted, the leap plots are shorter than the original but I think they hit the marks on what story they wanted to tell. You originally said that you didn't know what else could be explored by Ben leaping into a woman, but now seem to be on the other side of it in terms of the audience learning something. I'm with that all the way. I was saying whether it's a woman or gay guy, Ben probably is sensitive to unequal treatment, but actually being that person still will be an experience for him. That's a separate, though important point, from producing the tv show and drawing in an audience. Certainly anyone is allowed to change their mind, but it seems that this conversation has general agreement that whomever Ben leaps into has value.

That's not how I envisioned the Seanchan, but they are terrifying. I wonder if they're going to talk all weird like in the book. That's going to be hard to pull off with so many people.

I don't know who writes the 90s jokes for Alanis, but she clearly loves belting them out. Didn't she say Beck bit the head off something? Rich is what is makes me! I'm not Human Cat Cafe Lisa Loeb!

Was that the one on the train? They didn't prevent the 'big thing', but they ended up with a new senator on the panel that was the swing vote for the funding I think because Sam saved two people on the train that ended up getting married or something. Only Al saw the blue glow when the senator changed. Ah, ha. Nice work. https://quantumleap.fandom.com/wiki/Honeymoon_Express If they had a 2.4 billion budget back then I can't imagine now.

Back in my day the news was all about don't take apples from anyone when you're trick or treating because they put razor blades in the apples!

Related, there is a piece today on PBSNewshour about Berkeley repatriating local Native American artifacts back to their tribes.

That's basically a death warrant on tv. I don't think this show would go in that direction though.

That's good to know. Then I think my point about the plot being indicative about the times is even more apt. I'm sure someone like the brother wasn't one who was really going to be talking about it unless really confronted by Ben.

I watch on Peacock.

Claire's hair grows slower because she's from the future.

My take is Magic has enough clout to have gotten the project re opened, but this is as good a reason as any. Presumably, Ben would be the key member here that could have argued how they could succeed on this go around. I don't see why they couldn't include finding what happened to Sam as part of that, though not the mission priority. My own made up theory on time travel apropos of just reading sci fi is that preventing major events would be hard to do, like swimming against a really strong current. So if they're promising that, it's not going to happen. The small events are more probable. There's also something to be said for literally walking in someone else's shoes. Events like Sam's influence got the Governor's wife to invite him (leaping into a black guy) to sit with her at lunch and effectively kicking off the civil rights movement. Given all the data they have from Sam's leaps, Magic could probably make a good case for this kind of value. I preferred when the show stayed away from famous people. I like the premise that even 'regular' people can have a positive impact on history. I'm having fun talking about it though, whatever direction the show goes.

I'd like to see Bob use one of those quiet parenting moments to tell Tina to move on from J Ju.

There's also the take on Addison actually being a woman there with Ben v Al being Bingo as pointed out. At the time, ptsd was a real issue because it wasn't talked about. The whole plot was the key to the leap imo so it was a commentary on the times for me. There wasn't a name for it yet iirc, so that's what Ben brought to the leap because he did know about it. I barely remember myself, but returning Vietnam veterans in the 70s and their overall struggle to reassimilate back into society in what was objectively a very unpopular war was covered well for me in this episode and was what was going on back then. The reason they went to jail was because someone called the brother a 'baby killer'. Now, I would concede that they could have covered it more in depth and lessen up on the laboratory scenes, sure. I would prefer more time on the leap as well. That doesn't seem how they are structuring the show right now and is a different, though valid, criticism, than the actual show content.