128 - Leaping

 I watched a fairly rubbish video today about TV shows ending bad, and it was full of utter nonsense. One notable thing was a complete misunderstanding of The Prisoner's ending... I'm not even going to go there. Clearly a buffoon.

But I am going to talk about Quantum Leap, which according to this melt was an example of a bad ending to a TV show...

...before I dive in...

...here be spoilers...

...if you don't want to know how a show that ended in - what, 1992? - ended, stop reading now...

Apparently according to the melt the ending, particularly the final caption;

"Doctor Sam Beckett never returned home."

was a betrayal of the whole ethos of the show, which was only ever about Sam getting home, and getting to properly reunite with Al.

Whilst Sam very much did want to get home, that wasn't the be all and end all of the show; Sam was driven by the urge to put right what once went wrong, and to help change other lives. He was weary of this at times, as he thought he wasn't having much of an impact just helping out a string of individuals.

But then you have that beautiful scene in the last episode where Sam is talking to the bartender (who may or may not be God; no, really...) who tells Sam that he hadn't just been saving individual lives, he'd had much more of an effect. For every individual he'd helped it hadn't just helped them, but their family, and friends, creating a ripple effect helping more people than he could possibly have thought possible. 

This seemed to galvanise him, and when he was told he could control his leaps, and he could go home, the very first thing he did was to leap back to a point in history and save Al's first marriage, to let Beth know that Al was still alive. And that was the subject of the first caption at the end of the episode that Al and Beth had recently celebrated their 39th wedding anniversary with their four daughters. 

Sam had, selflessly, helped out his best friend. And this changing of things didn't in even the slightest manner diminish the ending of the episode MIA - which to my mind is the shows best - and made you so happy for Al and Beth, and you're just thinking it's all a happy ending... which made the second caption (quoted above) all the more of a gut punch. 

But it was the only way to end the show. 

There was talk that this episode was, however, intended originally just to be a season finale, and that some changes were made to dialogue to close things off. But had there been a sixth season, the Al & Beth change would have carried through. This would have created a potentially interesting change in Al, who was very much a womaniser; he'd had something like four wives after Beth in the original history, and many flings. A version of Al as a family man would, likely, have been very different. I'd have liked to have seen that.

Remind me one day to post again about Quantum Leap; firstly the implication about the ending of the Lee Harvey Oswald episode, and secondly why (and how) the should bring it back. (Even though Dean Stockwell wouldn't be in it.)

[Edit; looks like I already did the latter in post #31. Oops!]

Just on a tangent; I read a thing today also that suggests that Captain Archer may be seen again in Star Trek. I would very much like that. He's probably the most under-rated captain.