S01.E11: Leap. Die. Repeat.

[secnarf]

Quote

When Ben leaps into one of five people in an elevator at a 1962 nuclear reactor, he must figure which one triggers a bomb that kills them all. Each time the bomb goes off, he leaps into another one of them an hour earlier, resetting the scene.

Original air date: Jan 30 2023

[Clanstarling]

Sounds fun.

[DoctorAtomic]

Oh, I am all in on your groundhog day type plot. Plus it's nuclear! I feel like they wrote it just for me!

[KaveDweller]

Sounds cool because it isn't your regular groundhog day, he is in a different body each time. I wonder if it totally resets or if his is interacting with himself in the other bodies?

[DoctorAtomic]

That's a great observation. I'm thinking even if, say t = 0 is the first leap in, and he goes back to t = 0 every time, the unleaped person isn't going to remember anyway. Recall how Magic said he 'came to' a couple of days later after Sam leaped out. Since he's leaping back in time, it might essentially erase the prior leap as well. 

It's almost like when Sam leapt into Lee Harvey Oswald and then leaped into a secret service agent just at the same time. 

It's also interesting in the current show because presumably Ben and Janis planned the leaps to slingshot to whatever end point they showed on the time map. I wouldn't think they planned him leaping into 5 people at the same time.

I have to wait until Tuesday evening though. 

Edited January 21, 2023 by DoctorAtomic

[SnarkShark]

So.. the show is breaking it's own rules?

[AnimeMania]

Highdee Kuan as Mallory Yang
Matthew Glave as Colonel Jack Parker
Robert Picardo as Dr. Edwin Woolsey
Mike Wade as Moe Murphy
Joseph Dinicol as Eugene H. Wagner

[DoctorAtomic]

That looks like it could be an actual nuclear reactor. 

[Maverick]

 Someone must be a Stargate fan since Woolsey was Picardo's character name on that show. 

[KaveDweller]

I enjoyed this episode, I thought going back into the same event worked really well and we were able to learn new things each time. And even though you knew he would survive you didn't know how, so it was suspenseful.

I haven't hated Addison as much as some, but I thought the acting where she reacted to Ben dying was not great.

That conversation with Magic and Jen at the end made me wonder if we will see some kind of reset where Janice ends up working there all along. The original show did reset things that impacted project Quantum Leap, we just never saw them.

[Irlandesa]

33 minutes ago, KaveDweller said:

That conversation with Magic and Jen at the end made me wonder if we will see some kind of reset where Janice ends up working there all along

It makes me wonder if they'd get rid of Addison, because aren't the leaps supposedly all about trying to prevent her death (That was mentioned in the show, right?) and have Janice come on.  That'd take care of the love interest part and maybe the leaps would be about trying to reprevent Addison's death? 

And Ian could leap!

I liked the mystery part of this where he jumped into different people. I wouldn't hate seeing that concept again.

[Rose Quartz]

This is the first episode I remembered to watch this year and it was....OK.  My biggest annoyance is something that even I'm willing to admit is petty - they assumed Ben would have infinite opportunities to find the killer.   I get that they were relieved to realize that Ben was in a time loop and wasn't dead after all, but they're all supposed to be geniuses and no one even thought to question if it was an infinite loop?  It would have worked a lot better for me if they'd had a throwaway line about why they thought that only to later realize that they'd made a bad assumption and he only had a limited number of leaps.  Also, Addison really doesn't work for me.  Her reaction when she thought Ben was dead was definitely over the top and the rest of the time I just don't care about her.

On the plus side, I do think having Ben leap into multiple people was an interesting approach that I wouldn't mind occasionally seeing again.  I also like how the team figured out that there was a coverup by finding out that all the supposedly unrelated deaths occurred within a few days of each other.  And I liked how Janice had a chance to get more involved with Quantum Leap.  I have a soft spot for that character since she's Al's daughter so I hope that eventually she becomes a full member of the team.

[iMonrey]

I'm always up for a good time loop story and this wasn't half bad. But there is still way too much time spent on the HQ part of the show and it adds nothing to the overall plot, all it does is pull focus and time from the leap story. And this episode didn't even end showing us Ben's next leap. Instead it was just some cliff-hanger of Janice promising to name a name, something I'm sure will have no immediate impact on the show since they are determined to drag out the mystery of why Ben leaped until at least the end of the season. 

I'm not sure what's going on here but whoever is in charge of this show just doesn't get what made the original so special and is focusing on all the wrong things.

[Cobb Salad]

26 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

I'm always up for a good time loop story and this wasn't half bad. But there is still way too much time spent on the HQ part of the show and it adds nothing to the overall plot, all it does is pull focus and time from the leap story.

I'm not sure what's going on here but whoever is in charge of this show just doesn't get what made the original so special and is focusing on all the wrong things.

I liked the time loop as well but I agree there’s too much time spent in HQ.  If we had this time loop plot in the original they would have had Al telling Sam that Ziggy says … not all of this stuff with the HQ people looking at obits about the people at the nuclear site and coming up with their theory.  I think we’re supposed to care about the people Ben interacts with in each episode- so let’s spend more time with them than the people at HQ. 

I don’t like them dragging out this mystery stuff with Janice either.  That scene where Ben “died” and Addison’s reaction was way way way over done and cringey.  

[Lisa418722]

42 minutes ago, Cobb Salad said:

I don’t like them dragging out this mystery stuff with Janice either.  That scene where Ben “died” and Addison’s reaction was way way way over done and cringey.  

Unpopular opinion but I really don't mind Janice.  I think it's sentimental because she's Al's daughter.  
Addison's reaction when Ben "died" was way over the top.  I think if she had looked at all the vitals going quiet and just got quiet, as im being in shock, would have been better to me.  But I also don't care that Ben leaped in order to save Addison.  

[KaveDweller]

24 minutes ago, Lisa418722 said:

Unpopular opinion but I really don't mind Janice.  I think it's sentimental because she's Al's daughter.  
Addison's reaction when Ben "died" was way over the top.  I think if she had looked at all the vitals going quiet and just got quiet, as im being in shock, would have been better to me.  But I also don't care that Ben leaped in order to save Addison.  

I don't mind Janice either. I didn't think that was unpopular. I don't like them spending so much time in the present day instead of the leaps, but Janice is a good foil and she is Al's daughter. I wonder if Al wanted her to work at Project Quantum Leap. We know her mother didn't, but I don't think we heard what Al thought. 

I don't really care why Ben leaped one way or another. The show is about the journey of his leaps, it doesn't need to be some big mystery.

[DoctorAtomic]

2 hours ago, Lisa418722 said:

Unpopular opinion but I really don't mind Janice.  I think it's sentimental because she's Al's daughter.

Clearly, Magic agrees because he said that QL is her 'birthright'. The show is doing the work fairly with the audience as to why Janis is tight lipped. So, viewers are going to either buy in or not. I would concede Janis is being too 'tv-antagonist'. I don't know if she's being directed that way, but on the other hand, the rest of them are being directed to be overly tv-hostile too. I'd almost rather Janis blow up and say something like, "how dare you people? You aren't my father, and none of you could tie the shoes of Sam Beckett! You have no idea." We're not getting anything from her pov because she can't talk to anyone based on how they set up the original problem of Ben leaping. I think the show might have dropped the ball with the scene of Janis and Beth alone before Janis drugged hergave her the sedative to clue us in. Or when she did make contact with Ben, nothing came of it. They could have dropped a clue there. 

I think Hudson is trying to be more subtle in service to the big picture. Everyone is invested in Ben surviving. Magic clearly wants to find out what happened to Sam. I think part of the reason is that we only have 42 minutes of show, and the other is that tv is massively overly written. Someone with the chops of Hudson works better between the spaces of dialogue. I'll give the actor credit at the end when Jenn was trying to communicate her frustration in that she's 'family' and being confronted with Magic saying, 'well, what if Janis had been if I didn't blow it?' They just had her talk too much. Let the actor act. 

I know there's criticism about the split between the leaps and QL HQ, which is also fair, but Ernie Hudson really did well in the HQ scenes all around. 

I am surprised that no one thought that since Ben was leaping into different people, that the leap might have been finite. I figured the janitor would have been the last. Overall, I think the plot held up.

Ben mentioned that what would people who came back to 2023 think about him leaping and QL? I'm wondering if he forgot about the irritable leaper. When Magic and Jenn visited him, they said that they think it's still probably a decade before he leaps. 

I do feel obligated to say that a 'reactor making nuclear weapons' is how any nuclear weapons State made nuclear weapons. They're still around today. Around the early 60s, they were really, really big. So I'm going to assume this was an advanced design that was smaller but still was able to make a lot. I still liked the show though. 

Edited February 1, 2023 by DoctorAtomic

[bunnyface]

Okay, I hate to be dumb, but I'm missing something.  In the original timeline, all the people died within a few days and it was believed to be a government cover-up.  I got that.  But are they saying they all originally died in the bomb blast and the government made up their deaths a few days later?  No one saw them or missed them for a few days to a week after the reactor test?  At first I thought they witnessed the reactor and then the government had them killed to cover it up.  In their everyday lives.  But then the bomb...  I feel like I got confused somewhere in the middle.

[DoctorAtomic]

No, that's all it was. The government covered up the reactor accident by making up deaths for each of the five people. 

[yanksno1]

I liked the episode for the most part, def a different take we haven't seen before. Did I miss it or was the name that Al's daughter going to give someone in the present or that she gave Ben to find, aka Sam. Please be that, please be that haha. Hope she joins the team, Ben obviously trusted her.

[iMonrey]

Quote

That scene where Ben “died” and Addison’s reaction was way way way over done and cringey.  

All the more so because there's literally no way the show could kill off Ben. That would be the end of the story.

[QuantumMechanic]

The puzzle-box part of this show is so stupid and forced.  The pathetic and unrealistic ways they stall and stall and stall giving any information is ridiculous.  If that's how you're going to play the present day part of the show then please for the love of god eliminate the present day part of the show.

[iMonrey]

The revised concept of leaping in this reboot still bugs me. If Ben is literally possessing another person's body, then when he leaps into a female, he suddenly has lady parts. And shows no reaction to it, to speak of. I mean, that's pretty profound to suddenly be in the body of the opposite gender. It's happened three times now and each time he has zero reaction to it as though it means nothing. 

That's why the original concept made much more sense. Sam wasn't actually possessing another person's body. He retained his own body, the leap just made everyone see him as that other person. 

I wonder why they changed it. I assume they didn't want to deal with the messy idea of the waiting room. But the fact that Ben doesn't have any particular reaction to becoming a woman (I mean . . . things would be different, ya know?) speaks to how little attention is being paid to the leap part of the story. It feels sort of lazy and slapped together, and not the primary interest of the writers.

[KaveDweller]

7 hours ago, iMonrey said:

I wonder why they changed it. I assume they didn't want to deal with the messy idea of the waiting room. But the fact that Ben doesn't have any particular reaction to becoming a woman (I mean . . . things would be different, ya know?) speaks to how little attention is being paid to the leap part of the story. It feels sort of lazy and slapped together, and not the primary interest of the writers.

Also, it brings up a lot of questions. Like, Ben is in someone else's body but still has his own mind and memories? Or at least some of his memories. But if it's not his body, it isn't his brain, so where are the memories coming from?

[peachmangosteen]

[Starchild]

On 1/30/2023 at 11:29 PM, KaveDweller said:

I haven't hated Addison as much as some, but I thought the acting where she reacted to Ben dying was not great.

On 1/31/2023 at 10:14 AM, Rose Quartz said:

Also, Addison really doesn't work for me.  Her reaction when she thought Ben was dead was definitely over the top and the rest of the time I just don't care about her.

On 1/31/2023 at 6:08 PM, Cobb Salad said:

That scene where Ben “died” and Addison’s reaction was way way way over done and cringey.  

On 1/31/2023 at 6:52 PM, Lisa418722 said:

Addison's reaction when Ben "died" was way over the top.

I think it's precisely this lack of subtlety and nuance that makes me dislike the character. If the actress could be more realistic (like Hudson for example, as someone mentioned above), I don't think I'd hate her as much as I do. 

 

On 1/31/2023 at 7:19 PM, KaveDweller said:

I don't mind Janice either. I didn't think that was unpopular.

I actually found her quite charismatic. I'd be happy if she ended up replacing Addison. Although Ian would still be my first choice as Ben's hologram.

[Commando Cody]

By the end of the episode, I was wonder why Addison and Ben are together. Do they have anything in common? They don't have any chemistry. After she screamed my initial thought was "That was terrible". 

I don't know what the other workers name is - who works back at the lab. She was whining. "Why did you trust Janice over me"? Shut up. It's just business. Go do your job and stop complaining. 

Donald Belisarius is producing this thing. I don't know why he didn't stick with told formula. That worked. I noticed tonight while watching on HBO, that this remake only has a 66% audience score. For the most part it was just Sam and Al and the leap. Every once in a while, we would get a glimpse of the lab - not a bunch of scenes with a lot of whiny drama queens and bad acting. 

I did like the leap. If I hadn't read this forum, I would not have understood that part of the cover up was the manufacturing of how people died - because, at the end, I didn't understand how he saved everyone from their unrelated deaths. I get if now. 

[Trini]

I don't have a lot of commentary; I liked the time loop plot and thought they did it well.

I was a kinda annoyed at Magic (the writers) telling SecurityLady (the audience) that 'hey, maybe Janice isn't a villain' -- when they've been teasing her as a villain this whole time. She's Al's daughter, so she probably wasn't going to be a real villain, anyway; but still.

[DoctorAtomic]

I did like that they at least framed it with Magic saying, "Maybe we wouldn't be in this mess if we didn't fire her." I don't think anyone really thought that she was the villain, so I don't think the show is trying to pull a fast one on the audience. They established there was a reason Ben did go to her first too, which we learned fairly quickly. So if she's supposed to be a villain, then Ben is too. Clearly, neither are.

Drugging your mom isn't a good look though.

[JH Lipton]

On 1/30/2023 at 8:29 PM, KaveDweller said:

That conversation with Magic and Jen at the end made me wonder if we will see some kind of reset where Janice ends up working there all along. The original show did reset things that impacted project Quantum Leap, we just never saw them.

In theory. having a new, clean and renewable source of energy should have vast repercussions in the future.   Including how QL gets its energy.

On 2/2/2023 at 8:23 AM, iMonrey said:

The revised concept of leaping in this reboot still bugs me. If Ben is literally possessing another person's body, then when he leaps into a female, he suddenly has lady parts. And shows no reaction to it, to speak of. I mean, that's pretty profound to suddenly be in the body of the opposite gender. It's happened three times now and each time he has zero reaction to it as though it means nothing. 

I think (but I'm not sure) that the first time that he leapt into a woman's body, he made some comment about having breasts (possibly about wearing a bra).  Talking about other bits, or having more comments about body differences wouldn't work with the tone of the show.

[Nerfect Drifty]

On 1/31/2023 at 5:08 PM, Cobb Salad said:

I liked the time loop as well but I agree there’s too much time spent in HQ.  If we had this time loop plot in the original they would have had Al telling Sam that Ziggy says … not all of this stuff with the HQ people looking at obits about the people at the nuclear site and coming up with their theory.  I think we’re supposed to care about the people Ben interacts with in each episode- so let’s spend more time with them than the people at HQ. 

I don’t like them dragging out this mystery stuff with Janice either.  That scene where Ben “died” and Addison’s reaction was way way way over done and cringey.  

Caitlin Bassett definitely saved craft services some money that day with all the scenery she was chewing.

I liked this episode.  I thought seeing Ben in 6 different characters, while at the same time having a chance to see those people normally, was a lot of fun.  I'm glad that they were able to come up with a plausible way for Ben to accidentally trigger the explosion the one time he was in the villain, so that it didn't become quickly obvious.

[Nerfect Drifty]

On 2/6/2023 at 6:42 PM, JH Lipton said:

I think (but I'm not sure) that the first time that he leapt into a woman's body, he made some comment about having breasts (possibly about wearing a bra).  Talking about other bits, or having more comments about body differences wouldn't work with the tone of the show.

He wouldn't be wearing a bra because he had boobs and other lady parts.  He would be wearing a bra because he would be wearing all the same clothing as the person he leaped into.  He'd be wearing the thing even though he doesn't actually need it.  In the original show, it was established that Sam kept his regular physical shape but everyone saw an illusion of the host.  This was shown definitively in a season 5 episode where he leaped into a man with no legs.  In one scene, he got up and walked, to the surprise of a hostile nurse in the VA hospital.  The nurse, and the mirror image, simply saw a double amputee floating in mid air. 

I don't know if they've actually abandoned that idea though.  With this iteration, they seem to be making everything up as they go along.

[DoctorAtomic]

The earliest it was mentioned was the boxing episode where it was implied that Ben was possessing the body. Addison said he didn't need to 'learn' how to box because the leapee already knew how. There's another comment about it in the next episode if you want to ask there. 

I don't think they're making it up as they're going along because they said it right off the bat. It is a departure from the OG, and they seem to be deliberately not going into detail. I'm not sure what the decision was to eliminate the imaging chamber because you didn't see that much anyway, but given their decision to go this way, I think not getting highly detailed about it is probably the right call. 

 

[catherinejane]

One thing I wondered was how does time work?

 

at the end Ben Leapt and everyone at hq seemed to pack up for the day. Does Ben go to a void over night? Is there a night shift?