This is a very emotional episode and the ending was very moving. But overall I think it's flawed. The emotion is driven by Sam's refusal to try to change Beth and Al's past, yet the very next episode makes something of a hypocrite out of him. I also don't see the general harm in Sam simply telling Beth "I have it on good authority, through my police contacts, that Al is still alive." Beth still might have married the lawyer guy, but that would have been a much more practical approach then whatever Al was trying to get Sam to do, and far less harmless.
Ironically, I think Beth might have ended up marrying Dirk because her "ghost dance" with Al convinced her he really was dead after all and was saying goodbye to her!
Finally, the actor who played Dirk looked like too much of a skeeve for Beth to marry.
Actually this approach has the flaw that Al was listed as M.I.A for a reason. It means the appropriate authorities (who I don't see why an undercover cop would have connections with or the clearance to receive such information, not to mention how the hell would Jake know the name of Beth's husband, the whole mystery of the episode is that it's never mentioned) are unaware of his current location and activity thus nor whether he's dead or alive.
The only thing I can see this accomplishing is frightening her because this is information there is no way Jake or even Sam (since she doesn't know him either) should know.
It does however bug me how he ran out on poor Beth upon seeing the photo on the mantel which revealed Al as her M.I.A husband. Even in his refusal to try to reunite them he could have still kept his outing with her. Though this would have prevented him from his true assignment to save Scaggs despite that he obviously leaps upon success, the series never directly clarifies whether or not Sam could still leap if he fails. This also leads to a debate between the importance of Al and Beth's marriage vs. Scaggs' life since without having the identity of Beth's husband sooner, by the time he did Sam was forced to choose between them.
It annoys me quite a bit how this episode makes a huge hypocrite out of Sam even considering that he does not know that he'd succeeded with Donna. Still he made the effort to reunite himself with his own wife yet refused to give the same to his dearest friend.
Al is a damn loyal friend to both he and Donna to have kept his mouth shut on that subject in this particular situation. Though honestly I would have liked to see him throw at least the attempt in his face. Then in the very following episode Sam once again makes a hypocrite of himself and this time Al does throw it in his face as well as the fact that he was blessed with the chance to even see his family again, good for him.
Actually in that very same scene Sam angrily shouts:
"Why can I help total strangers but not the people I love!?" when he in fact had just refused that chance.
Al is an amazing man and friend to not only never throw Sam's hypocrisy in his face but to also even at his own self sacrifice support Sam's personal quests of both Donna and Tom. It saddens me that Sam could have been so selfish particularly with Beth and Tom but it just shows us that he's not perfect and that he like Al had carried some deep scars from his losses. Something the two men have in common.
Though made several years ago this is an excellent point:
JuliaM said:
Al was deliberately decieving Sam about what he was supposed to do. Yes, there are episodes where it can be said that Sam acts selfishly to change something for his own best interest but when that happens he's very up front about it.
It's true that in Sam's personal pursuits of Donna and Tom he didn't lose sight of the person he was sent to help and straight up told Al what he was doing. In Vietnam it's not actually clear what the actual task was though the novel
Mirror's Edge suggests that he could have in fact been there for Tom.
Al certainly made a mess of his attempt by not being straight forward with Sam and not making him aware of the true task. In fact doing so would have made Sam more likely to have been able to accomplish both getting Beth to wait for Al as well as save Scaggs but it doesn't excuse that Sam refused to try for his best friend what he bent the rules to recover for himself. As the saying goes 'two wrongs don't make a right'.
Not that Sam would have been able to accomplish it by that point even without Scaggs' life in danger since it would have been beneficial in the beginning to have introduced Jake as a friend of Al's, the honest approach he used in
Mirror Image. It proves that the knowledge that Al is alive is believable to Beth coming from a friend of his.
Sam had come on very strongly upon first approaching her as Jake and even straight up (falsely) admitted to snooping into her records. Then he'd barely gotten away with the calalillies. She was pretty alarmed by his knowledge of something as simple as her favorite flower. So even by the point in which he'd gotten Al's identity she still could have been deciding whether not she trusted him. If he'd told her he knew Al was alive it would have likely come across as cruel or frightening as I had stated of iMonrey's suggestion.
This in fact is what kept Sam from succeeding here and the perfect set ups of each of Beth's run ins with Dirk is what caused him to doubt the attempt. The PQL rules were not at play here. There truly seemed to be no coincidence in Dirk's appearances including through his mother but what Sam refused to consider was Al's suggestion of the Devil working as God does through Sam.
Later the season 3 episode
The Boogym*n does seem to support this.
"Who gave you the right to go bungling around in time, putting right what I made wrong!?"
We then have the evil leapers to support another force opposite the one which had enlisted Sam effecting lives. Whom we are even introduced to while they are on a mission to destroy a marriage. It could even be possible that Dirk was Alia. The line
"She's (his mother) not sweet, she has a single son and wants grandchildren" is so suggestive it's just twisted enough to have come from someone intending to steer Beth away from Al.
(Though if Sam had touched Dirk at some point, which I don't recall for certain we'd have known).
Think about it, the fact that Al was even a POW was certainly not God nor a coincidence.
So while Sam was not in the wrong for this view, I don't buy that excuse for not trying.
The fact that Sam was later able to amend this alone proves that it was in fact achievable and a wrong. Sam is not able to make a change that isn't meant to be made.
Let's take
Leap of Faith for example. Why wouldn't he have just been leaped in early enough to stop Tony from committing the murders? Then there'd be no trial for him to stand and thus a murderer is not made of Father Mac. Here's why, Tony's life was turned around when it had been threatened and then spared and Father Mac's eyes were opened when he had nearly taken a life. He begun rehab and made something of his life as well. Tony needed to see through the eyes of his victims to realize his wrong and Father Mac needed to be in the wrong to see what was right. To see how far gone had strayed from God and be lead back to Him. Recall he'd thanked Sam for stopping him from killing Tony.
Let's also remember that Sam was not able to save his father and sister.
I am glad that Sam was able to amend his failure to Al. It may have been Al's own fault not Sam's that the initial attempt was not doable in the end but Sam had no excuse to not have wanted to try. It's like Diane McBride had said when she'd replaced the chairmen of the committee:
"Whether or not they succeed is not so important as the fact that we try."
In fact I wrote a short story several years ago about the day Al and Beth meet Sam at Star Bright and Beth who had believed the man who came to her in '69 and told her Al was alive in Vietnam had been a dream was mesmerized to find herself standing before him. She even confronts him about it.
blue enigma said:
I'll have to watch 'Honeymoon Express' again but I'm pretty sure he is addressed as Admiral Calavicci at least once in that episode.
Not he is not. He is addressed as simply 'Admiral'.
