WHY DO YOU LOVE Quantum Leap so much?

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electrictroy

Project QL Intern
Aug 26, 2005
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0
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I was just on youtube, watching Quantum Leap intro, and thinking to myself: "Why do I still love this show 15 years after it was canceled?" There are other shows that I watched around that same time period (Buck Rogers, Star Trek TNG, X-Files, seaQuest), but none of them have aged well & I don't really watch them anymore. You see Quantum Leap offers something that few other shows offer:

- great drama
- great comedy
- and loveable characters (Sam and Al)

It's like what Gene Roddenberry used to say, "Americans no longer have extended families. The characters on the tv have become their family, and they tune-in every week to see what the 'relatives' have been doing." Sam and Al are like family...... they joke around (sometimes dirty jokes), and they have flaws, but they are good people at heart. I enjoyed "inviting" them into my college dormroom week-after-week for five years.

That's something almost no other sci-fi or fantasy show offers:
- Star Trek TOS
- Babylon 5
- Quantum Leap
- and that's about it.
 
I want to add something do your question...In what ways do you believe the last line shown on QL "Sam Beckett never returned home" effect your hmm...affection for the show?!
 
It was smart writing, with multi-dimensional characters, as a start. Sam and Al were good people, but each had serious flaws. Sam was the quintessential Renaissance Man, and yet he never tipped over into "Mary Sue"* territory. And, boy, did he have some great flaws (a little bit self-righteous, stubborn, obsessive, selfish). Al constantly fought his trashy side, but never got to the point where you didn't like him. That's good writing and good acting, both. The chemistry on this show was amazing, both between Bakula and Stockwell and also between Bakula and the scores of one-shot actors over the 5 seasons. And some of the acting in QL remains among the best I've ever seen on screen anywhere.

As a time-travel show, it hit the mark every time in terms of atmosphere. The sets, the costumes, the music, and the feel of the characters were all dead on. I've seen enough "historical" pieces on TV and in movies where the characters are themselves anachronistic - way too liberated 50's housewives; openly defiant black people in the 40's, that sort of thing. QL got it right 99.9% of the time, and rarely resorted to stereotype.

I love how QL defied expectation time and again; e.g., its positions in The Wrong Stuff and Liberation were not the "Hollywood liberal" point of view you might expect.

And, Scott Bakula was (and still is) HAWT.

In what ways do you believe the last line shown on QL "Sam Beckett never returned home" effect your hmm...affection for the show?!
Click to expand...
I'm one of the four people on the planet who don't mind, even like, the resolution of the show. Yes, I'd have preferred that Sam come home, but I love (there I said it!) the implications of his not coming home. I see it as his making a choice to continue to do what he was destined to do, rather than settle for a life more ordinary. To me, it's that his desire to come home was never stronger than his drive to do good. I think that's deep.

As electrictroy said, QL has aged well. Other than the "this is what 1999 will look like" segments, QL could air fresh today. I guess that made it ahead of its time.
___

[*A Mary Sue is a character in fiction who is utterly perfect, wonderful, good, and talented, who is used as an extension of the writer. She typically is a secondary character in the story, but takes over the story line. Everybody loves Mary Sue, and usually she dies in some heroic way, provoking much weeping from the main characters.]
 
bluedana said:
I'm one of the four people on the planet who don't mind, even like, the resolution of the show. Yes, I'd have preferred that Sam come home, but I love (there I said it!) the implications of his not coming home. I see it as his making a choice to continue to do what he was destined to do, rather than settle for a life more ordinary. To me, it's that his desire to come home was never stronger than his drive to do good. I think that's deep.
Click to expand...

Let me rephrase it -How did the line "Sam Beckett never returned home" effect your "obsession"(if it's not clear i want to clarify i mean it in the good manner of the word). I know it did effect me very strongly.

Anyway,I want to say,that one of the main reasons i like QL is because of Scott Bakula - He's just a talented person - Great Singer,terrific actor,a very talented pianist and guitar player, and so much more. and of course QL is the only show that had so many unforgetable moments,during the 5 years it aired, in my opinion.
 
isz said:
Let me rephrase it -How did the line "Sam Beckett never returned home" effect your "obsession"(if it's not clear i want to clarify i mean it in the good manner of the word). I know it did effect me very strongly.
Click to expand...
I believe I answered your question when I said:
but I love (there I said it!) the implications of his not coming home. I see it as his making a choice to continue to do what he was destined to do, rather than settle for a life more ordinary. To me, it's that his desire to come home was never stronger than his drive to do good. I think that's deep.
Click to expand...
The non-resolution added a layer to Sam for me, and my appreciation for the show grew to include the idea that Sam had a destiny and embraced it. I also appreciated that there was no gift wrapped box with a bow of an ending (regardless of what DPB intended) as if people can only be satisfied with a happy ending. That, to me, separates QL from other series that have a feel-good ending. That QL didn't is what captured my imagination, and still does to this day.
 
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