[Transcript] Season 4, Episode 4. Quantum Leap 2022 Eulogy
Gone too soon! Quantum Leap (2022-2024) has been canceled and Ron and Mon aren't taking it well. We share our thoughts about the show, what we loved, what could have been improved, and we run through a list of our favourite episodes.
Listen to the episode on Spotify.
Hello, and welcome to a new episode of Stereo Geeks.
I'm Mon.
And I'm Ron.
This is our Eulogy to Quantum Leap 2022-2024.
Rest in Peace.
Can I just say, I did not see this coming, but I feel like you had an inkling that this would happen.
The first season was renewed almost immediately, and this one, it came, it went, no one talked about it.
And then I got that feeling, you know, it's like, you just know it's doomed.
And I was right.
I know that there are going to be no more seasons, we only got the two, but we still want people to watch it wherever they can find it, which is why we're doing this episode.
So a little bit about the show.
Quantum Leap is not exactly a remake, more like a half sequel to the 80s Quantum Leap show.
It was extremely popular.
2022, we heard about Quantum Leap.
We thought, let's give it a try.
We quite quickly fell in love with the show.
First season went absolutely brilliantly.
We were excited for the second season.
And yeah, now, alas.
So let's take a look at the cast.
We have Dr. Ben Song, played by Raymond Lee.
His fiancee, Addison Augustine, played by Caitlin Bassett.
Then we have the kind of tech genius, Ian Wright, played by Mason Alexander Park.
The security chief, Jen Chu, played by Nanrisa Lee.
The head of the Quantum Leap division is Magic, played by Ernie Hudson.
In season two, we had a recurring character, Hannah Carson, played by Eliza Taylor, and also Tom Westfall, played by Peter Gaddio.
I'm probably pronouncing that wrong.
We also have, throughout the two seasons, a few appearances by a character called Janice, played by Georgina Riley.
Not too much into her because spoilers.
I'll also shout out some notable guest stars.
We had Brandon Routh, aka Superman. Obviously not playing Superman here, but still.
Lou Diamond Phillips, a veteran of Hollywood.
Melissa Roxborough, who we recently saw in Manifest.
Justin Hartley, who's been in a lot of stuff, but I believe most people know him from This Is Us.
Jewel Staite, who most Canadians know because she's a Canadian actor.
Deborah Ann Woll, who's coming back as her character Karen in the Daredevil series.
Robert Picardo, who obviously we know very well because he was the doctor on Voyager.
And James Frain, who is in everything, like he's James Frain.
Season one had 18 episodes.
Good, solid season.
Season two had 13 episodes.
I guess the signs are already there.
I really think so.
I mean, we didn't realize it, but anyway, this is a celebratory episode.
We're never going to see these characters again.
But yeah, this is the goodest time of the year to just get in there, watch these two seasons, enjoy a really heartfelt, rousing show about finding the best in humanity.
Let's get into it.
We never got around to watching the original Quantum Leap.
They didn't show it where we were.
It's a bit hard to now get into it.
80s aesthetics, some of the sensibilities.
I hear that the original Quantum Leap was way ahead of its time.
You know, people are fans even now.
Even though we went in cold, one of the most exciting parts about Quantum Leap in general is time travel.
And this reboot, remake, reimagining definitely stuck to a lot of time travel.
Yeah, I love time travel in any of its forms.
I have seen some shockingly bad films because they were apparently about time travel.
Anyway, I think the reason why the Quantum Leap concept is so fun is because generally with time travel, you don't want to change the past.
That's a bad thing.
Butterfly effect and all that.
But in Quantum Leap, the whole purpose is to change the past because that's what's going to make things better.
Yeah, absolutely.
And it makes things a lot better for characters who are queer, especially in this show.
And that's actually one of the things that I really like about the show being made in 2022.
Love how all the show's characters are just unabashedly allies of the queer community.
It's like not even a second thought.
No one's fighting that battle.
And it's especially great because Ian, played by Mason Alexander Park, is a queer character, and they are queer in real life as well.
So this just feels so much more layered.
They don't go on and on about it, and all of Ian's storylines are not about them being queer, but they're definitely the center of it, when that's the episodic storyline.
I thought all the characters were really interesting.
It's a very diverse cast.
The dynamics among the characters are very interesting, but each character also has an arc of their own.
It wasn't just, you know, Ben and Addison's romance, but you know, in the background, you have Ian, Jen, and Magic.
Like they're this trio of heroes that are making things happen and trying to save Ben.
Speaking of Ben, this show lives and dies by the fact that he's not only played very carefully and sweetly, I would say, by Raymond Lee, but he's also really well written.
He's purposefully written as this very kind-hearted person.
He believes in the best of people.
He knows that, yes, sometimes you're in a situation that is absolutely terrible.
You've done something or you could be doing something, which is horrible, but there's something to redeem you.
I just love that so much.
And that plays into how each episode is structured, because it's all about the rousing speeches at the end that Ben gives.
He wins the heart of whoever he's talking to, but he also wins the heart of the viewer.
Absolutely.
Ben so easily sees the best in people, and that's why when he makes a sincere appeal to their humanity, they listen.
And we as the viewers are also listening.
And I feel like after every episode, we just felt like better people.
Yeah, if there's one major grouse with the show, it's that we only get two seasons of it.
Exactly.
I mean, we're definitely upset the show is canceled because Raymond Lee was so game to do anything in this show.
Like he was a flight stewardess in one episode.
He was a lady bounty hunter in another.
It could have gone so many different places.
And we probably would have seen more opportunities of him hanging out with his other teammates because they would have been the holograms instead of just Addison.
We got to see that a little bit, but season three, they kind of promised that that would actually happen.
And now we never get to see it.
Yeah, exactly.
The first few times that the others got to be holograms, it was a lot of fun.
Like Jen was singing about it, which was absolutely hilarious to watch.
Like when magic got to be a hologram, so much emotion, just so much emotion.
But yeah, now we'll never get to see that.
But is there anything that didn't work for you?
I think the one major thing that didn't work for me at all was the whole Janice plot line in season one.
I think it needed to be fleshed out a lot more.
They were trying to be very cagey and keep things under their hats, but I feel like maybe they went overboard.
Or if they'd been able to stretch it out a little bit more over two or three seasons, we would have really felt, I think, the stakes of exactly what was happening and why a little bit better.
For me, I think season two, the Addison-Tom relationship, it didn't work for me.
I couldn't really see the chemistry between them.
And for some bizarre reason, I just couldn't trust Tom.
I still don't trust him, and we'll never know if our concerns were warranted or not.
Since this is a celebration, let's chat about some of our favorite episodes.
It was really tempting to put all 18 of the first season and all 13 of the second, but you know what?
We need to be tempered in our view.
So if you are wondering if you want to invest so much time into the show, maybe start with just these faves.
Kicking off with season one, one of the episodes that I really found quite emotionally stunning was episode three, Somebody Up There Likes Ben.
First of all, there's a lot of physicality in this episode because Ben leaps into the body of a boxer.
There are a lot of stakes.
It's an emotional roller coaster, and it also has a really powerful message about mental health.
It was so lovely.
It will definitely have you quite emotional by the end of it.
The first two episodes of the first season got you hooked.
Episode three was when I realized this was a great show.
And they tried different things.
They weren't just formulaic or one-note.
With episode seven, for example, Oh Ye of Little Faith, it was a Halloween episode, and it was completely a horror genre.
And how they made it work and made it plausible within the context of the story was fantastic.
But this was so good.
This was…
It was hilarious.
It was kind of scary.
And Ben Song was an absolute delight in this one.
To make the horror elements work within the world, it was very impressive.
They could have done so much more.
And there was another genre episode that I was really impressed by.
That was the 10th episode of the first season, Paging Doctor Song.
It's a medical episode.
Generally, I don't like medical shows.
They make me feel ill.
But even though this episode is kind of gory at times, it's so unexpected and unpredictable plot-wise.
And again, the emotional beats, they just come out of nowhere.
Well, I think this particular episode for me was a reminder that the show is about people.
It's about how we interact and live with each other.
And that's what makes us come back for more.
And we would have come back for a season three if they hadn't canceled it.
And literally the next episode is probably one of the best.
It's called Leap Die Repeat.
Look, time loop episodes are a mainstay of the time travel genre.
They are also some of my favorite tropes.
I can't think of a single time loop episode that was bad.
But there is also so much danger in this episode.
The stakes are insanely high.
Ben could die at any time, but he's cycling through these time loops and he is actually running out of time as well.
There's always, you know, there's got to be some deadline to your obstacles.
Also Robert Picardo is in it.
It's a banger.
Yeah, I have to say that was edge of your seat stuff.
And the next episode after that is also our favorite.
This is odd.
All we can say is that middle part of season one was really good.
So episode 12, Let Them Play, it's a chance manifesto.
We won't get into the details, but it is so full of feels.
There's a lot more of the episode characters rather than the main characters, but also a focus on Ian and how they're bringing the queer perspective and the queer lived experience to what the story is about.
Mason Alexander Park really brings a lot of emotionality and depth to Ian's storyline there.
Some great scenes about being trans, about being queer.
It's really, really a very good episode and absolutely a joker.
Oh yeah, that one just, it really does bring so much emotion.
It's a really powerful story as well.
And also an interesting mystery.
And really relevant to the current situation, even two years on, in the US and the UK especially, and now maybe in Canada.
Well, moving on to episode 13 of season one, that middle bunch of episodes was just spectacular.
Family style, it's an Indian episode.
We gotta shout it out.
But there are so many lovely little moments about this episode that made it stand out for me.
Ben loves to cook.
Like in the previous episode, he is overjoyed because he gets to be a basketball coach and he's a basketball fan.
But he is in his element in the kitchen.
He is losing his mind because he gets to cook this amazing food.
And also there are all these family dynamics that you and I recognized.
It's a top favorite for me.
Yeah, this one had probably one of my favorite closing scenes.
It was just like all the fields, all the fields.
But you know what I really liked about this one?
We live in a multicultural society.
Like the whole world is multicultural right now.
You can't imagine a time when we were growing up where you would have watched something where the main character of an American TV show would just be super excited to be in an Indian restaurant trying out this amazing Indian food and getting deep into actually trying to cook it.
And here's Ben just enjoying himself.
Like he's just having the time of his life and this is food that he's familiar with and he likes.
It's just so good.
It was just, it was heartwarming.
And so on to season two, I will say I was a little bit concerned when it started.
The first two or three episodes were a little off and it really was because of Ben.
Story wise, it made sense why he wasn't himself, but it didn't pick up till Ben was kind of back to his usual self.
And I think the turning point was really episode five of season two, One Night in Koreatown.
This one had so many feels.
I did not know what to expect.
It was so layered and nuanced and said a lot about racism in the US especially.
Racism among communities, about other communities.
It's not something that a lot of people are comfortable talking about.
But I think also what made it special was the fact that magic got to be the hologram.
And he's part of an event that he originally experienced as well.
I just found that Ben and magic's relationship, their dynamic, along with the dynamic of the family that Ben is involved with in the story, it was so incredible.
This was my favorite episode of the entire show.
This was a real standout.
I had actually heard an entire podcast series about this particular event.
So when I saw the title, I was like, oh my gosh.
I have to say I was a bit nervous because I was like, this is an event that it's left a mark on people.
They still talk about it.
And I wasn't quite sure how the show was going to handle it.
I think they went in the right direction.
They went ground level.
They hyper-focused on one small family, and the result was very relatable and as you said, a real tear-jerker.
Great stuff.
So moving on to something else, which would you believe it, I had just listened to a podcast series about.
Episode 7 of season 2, A Kind of Magic.
It was all about witch trials.
And as I said, I heard a podcast series, and then I heard two separate episodes of two different podcasts, which were both about witch trials.
One of them was about the American witch trials.
Another was about the European ones.
So I had a lot of information in my head when I went into this.
Again, this show does such a great job.
It just goes ground level.
Ben is in the body of this young girl, who is of course accused of being a witch.
And a lot of the stuff that I was reading about, it was super accurate in this episode.
I was very impressed.
And despite the nightmare situation, somehow Ben finds the positivity to inspire the people around him.
I just love that about this character.
Yeah, witch trials for me, every time I come across any storylines like that, they just make me so angry.
And the writers of the show just know how to calm you down.
Because you can't do anything with that misplaced anger.
This happened years ago.
So this episode felt a little bit cathartic for those of us who just are needlessly angry about something that has nothing to do with us.
Cathartic is the word.
We are just living constantly with impotent rage.
When you watch something like Quantum Leap, and you see Ben going into these situations, and you know that you can't do anything, and all the horrible stuff has already happened, and we are living through a time when there is more horrible stuff happening, and you get to feel some amount of positivity because Ben can fix the situation.
That's why we need this show.
You are making me sad now that we don't get more.
Let's talk about another favorite.
Well, literally the next episode, episode 8, it's called Nomads Egypt.
It's set in Egypt.
Who doesn't love Egypt and spies?
That is a fantastic combo.
And what really worked was that they shot on location.
You feel that.
One of the things that a lot of people complain about, a lot of entertainment media nowadays, is that everything looks flat.
You can tell that they shot on VFX.
Now listen, VFX, when done right, looks great and looks seamless.
But the people who work behind the scenes on post-production need time.
Guess what a lot of people don't give them?
Time.
And the other thing nowadays, everybody wants to cut budgets.
Hence, no location shooting.
So, what do you get?
Everything looks the same.
Thankfully, this episode, I don't know how they had the money to do it, but there they were in Egypt and it looked great.
It has this really nice, old-timey, heist spy movie sort of feel to it.
I love that.
Love that episode.
And in a similar vein, we have episode 10, The Family Treasure.
This was a stellar episode.
It's essentially Indiana Jones.
But it focuses on three siblings.
Ben is one of them.
And they are so wildly different from one another and have very, very different relationships with their dearly departed parents.
And all this comes to the fore because they're on a treasure hunt.
I love treasure.
I love adventure.
And this was only part of what this story is about.
We won't even go into the rest again.
It was just so heartfelt.
Ben is the best ally in all of TV history as far as I'm concerned.
Truly, truly, like Ben brings people together and really helps them see perspectives because they can't.
I mean, he just goes out of his way to see the best in people, and he shows them the good things about themselves that they're missing, which is exemplified in the episode right after that, The Outsider.
Honestly, the end of the season just bangers one after the other.
So Ben's unwavering positivity changes a journalist's mind about her own abilities because she had a bad situation and she let it get to her head.
But Ben would not let her doubt herself.
Honestly, we all need a champion like Ben in our lives.
This episode was sort of going one way, and then it just hits you in the feels because Ben just is like a dog with a bone when it comes to redeeming a person.
I felt very heartened when I watched this episode.
And then on to the finale.
You know, finales can be hit and miss.
The first season finale I thought was one of the weaker episodes of that season.
And with season 2, I was really wondering, where are they going with this?
Lots of twists and turns, quite epic, very tense and intense as well.
But again, that cathartic feeling because Ben is appealing to the best of humanity, even when all seems lost.
You can't even imagine that this man is going to win.
How is he going to win?
There's no way.
Despite all these twists and turns, you can't predict what will happen next.
And somehow Ben is like hanging on and telling you to hang on.
Because yeah, humanity is worth saving.
Yeah, Ben just constantly believes that humanity is good and that when the chips are down, we will do our best.
Apparently, he did not live through the pandemic.
But yeah, this was an epic season finale.
Very, very tense moments.
Some really quite shocking plot twists.
But the biggest plot twist of course was that we couldn't have predicted that they would cancel the damn show.
We are not at all bitter.
Spoiler alert, we are very bitter.
Alright, so that's our episode on Quantum Leap.
I know that it's gone.
It only lasted two seasons, but it was two fantastic seasons.
I'm so glad we got to meet these characters, hang out with them, even though it was only for two years, but they made us feel so much better.
Tuning in every week sparked a little bit of joy in all our lives.
We're going to miss you, Quantum Leap.
Ron: You can find us on Twitter @Stereo_Geeks. Or send us an email
[email protected]. We hope you enjoyed this episode. And see you next week!
Mon: The Stereo Geeks logo was created using Canva. The music for our podcast comes courtesy Audionautix.
1 note
·
View note