307 Black on White on Fire

[alsplacebartender]

Black on White on Fire
August 11, 1965

Watts, Los Angeles, California


Set during the Watts Riots of 1965, Sam is a black man with a white girlfriend trying to protect her from being killed by his angry prejudiced brother.


Written by: Deborah Pratt
Directed by: Joe Napolitano


Rate and comment on this episode!

 

[Vince Beckett]

Great episode. You see prejudice from both sides.

 

[Sam Beckett Fan]

this episode in my opinion was sad but informative, i loved how this was such a realistic example of a true event and how awful segregation got back in the fifties and what it did to people and the scars (emotional) it costed them.

I love the beginning where it showed the passionate love between Susan and Ray(Sam).
The Watts riot was hard to watch, Luckily Sam's host has some medical knowledge like himself so he was able to save a lot of people being hurt before, Sam himself got beaten to a pulp, it was so hard too look at him limp and barely able to see through one eye, bleeding everywhere. It made me sad to see Sam get hurt, but thats what happened in the Los Angeles Riot, people got hurt for no reason whatsoever and as far as everyone saw, Sam was a black man. A black man engaged to a white woman and no one liked it Especally Ray's brother Lonnie, who then threatened to kill her if another black was killed. When Lonnie was shot dead himself, Sam morned him, i think because he was thinking of his own brother, who like lonnie put him through medical school, and i think Sam was remembering the previous time line when Tom had died in vietnam much like Lonnie was dying now in a different war. i believe that Sam felt like he was losing another brother. The way he rocks the lifeless Lonnie in his arms and the sobs in his face show how much pain it gave him to see another brother die in a pointless war.

 

[Samantha Beckett]

The most incredible episode of the series. It took me forever to get to see it though. I would always see the "leap in" for that ep at the end of Miss Deep South, but somehow I would never get to see it. The power would go out, or my recorder would break or malfunction. I finally saw it on the dvds and i was in awe...i couldnt believe what i was seeing. That was another episode that made me cry when I saw it.

Samantha Beckett

 

[Janna Galaxy]

Yeah it was a good episode.

But....I can't watch it sometimes. I think it's because of the subject matter.

I come from a mixed family. I'm 1/4 black/African, the rest of me is white/British and Irish.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing when I first watched that episode. The bigots....black skinned people beating white skinned people.....white skinned people beating black skinned people. <sigh> With so much anger in the world it's a wonder that we're all still here.

I got my mum to watch the episode....she's mixed. She used to watch QL when I was young, it was because of her that I'm the big fan I am now.

My mum was quiet all the way through. She never hardly flinched. Not like me. I kept shouting at the telly and getting very angry. The part that really got to me was that when Ray's mother said..."Bringing up your children won't be easy anywhere. They won't be black and they won't be white."

I looked over to my mum and I asked her which does she consider herself? She said does it matter. My mum would of been about 6 years old at the time this episode is set but in a different country.

Sorry about my rambling, it's just episode hits me on a personal level.

 

[desirelife]

This is one of the VERY FEW flawless episodes of QL. It's episodes like these that transcend QL above any other series and is the reason why I got into it.
You really see how things were and the tension that was around there. Being from Nigeria, it's an episode that connects with me personally. The ending as well was sad but very true which makes it a great episode.

 

[isz]

An Excellent episode,But as much as good as it was,i probably won't vote it to be one of the top 10 episode of the all series.
Deborah pratt did an excellent writing but,again... went too far. first of all something really bothered me with the character of Lonnie,but i still didn't decide what it was. Another thing was the ending(of course). First of all - Lonnie's character Destiny was to to die. so why did it take her so long to do it?!
Secondly -Lonnie's character line - "it hurts so much..." what?! what the hell hurt him so much?! this line was,in my opinion, so out of context on so "without a point".
and there were a few more problems,and that why i voted -Good.

BTW - did you noticed the line sam's said when he took susen home at the begining?! the line of Sam About how clear it is to him susen loves ray so much because..."the way she looks at him as Ray and that there were only one woman who looked at him(Sam) like this..." Are you thinking what i'm thinking?!:|

 

[JuliaM]

Hurt does not have to indicate a physical pain but an emotional one which is what Lonnie was expressing at this point.

I don't think the writing goes too far on this at all. The Watts Riots are an actual part of US history and were very violent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Riots). It would have been unrealistic to have written this episode in any other way because that would have sugar-coated a very turbulent event.

 

[Sam Beckett Fan]

"the way she looks at him as Ray and that there were only one woman who looked at him(Sam) like this..." Are you thinking what i'm thinking?!:|

Yeah the first time I saw this ep it caught my ear which was two years ago.
(see if you read my thread called "The Donna Thoery" I told you his heart knows her and is looking for her )

And the Watts Riots were taking the segregations way too far because it was a brutal massacure of innocent people. So how can this episode have been written not too far?

 

[isz]

Hurt does not have to indicate a physical pain but an emotional one which is what Lonnie was expressing at this point.

I know it doesn't mean physical pain,only...
Anyway - What emotional pain do you think it refered to?! try to convince me this line was necessery...

 

[Sam Beckett Fan]

The Emotional pain of losing his friends and family. Remember how he reacted when Pappa Dee died. And that's why he threatened Susan's life to protect the other innocent black people that were being killed.

 

[JuliaM]

The Emotional pain of losing his friends and family. Remember how he reacted when Pappa Dee died. And that's why he threatened Susan's life to protect the other innocent black people that were being killed.

Add to that the fact that he knew, despite the laws that were being enacated, that he'd continue to be treated basically as a second-class citizen simply because of the color of his skin.

 

[Sam Beckett Fan]

Ah yes, he refused to believe that the new laws would help.

 

[isz]

You brought up good reasons,but I still think this line wasn't necessery. With this episode i think Deborah wanted to deal with another painful subject in the History of the US like she did in "the color of truth" but if you're doing it why falling for cliches like this line i mentioned?!
Anyway maybe if i'd been an American citizen this episode had a stronger Effect on me.

 

[JuliaM]

Anyway maybe if i'd been an American citizen this episode had a stronger Effect on me.

I think you just hit on it right there. This was a painful point in American history and Lonnie's words are perfect for what he's going through. I may have been born a couple of years after the Watts Riots in LA and on the other side of the country but I still remember growing up and hearing about racial tension on the news.

You have to keep in mind that even though QL was shown internationally, it was made for an American network and an American audience so it's going to touch on subjects that would have appealed to that audience in a way that audience would understand. Hence you have the use of Rock and Roll in one episode to demonstrate the First Amendment guarantee of Freedom of Speech; you have several episodes that deal with race relations - something that still effects America today; an epsidoe about the Cuban Missile Crisis; and other episodes that touch on small parts of American life.

 

[Sam Beckett Fan]

Yeah Julia is right that's why its a good idea for non American veiwers to do a little touch up on their American History before watching certian episodes such as this.

I am an American citizen and while I did not know of the Watts Riots before viewing this episode, I did however know a great deal of Segregation from school and I know that this was an episode dealing with segregation so a riot just made sense to me. I can see however how it was not that easy for you grasp. Thats why brushing up on your American history a little would have been helpful. You still have your opinions eaither way though and they are respected by all.

 

[bluedana]

This one is hard to watch. Brilliant, edgy, ambitious, right on point, but too painful to see as an entertainment. I have to be in a right frame of mind to watch it.

Lonnie is such a ball of rage; he's mad at everyone and everything: The white cops for kicking the crap out of innocent people for no reason; his brother, who is going to leave the neighborhood and probably never come back once he's a "rich doctor"; his mother, who's going to let him; the white girlfriend for turning the kid's head; the neighbors for trashing their own neighborhood; white society for making them have to do things the violent way; life in general for never letting him be a man; poverty; hopelessness; and the heat.

It's that unrelenting rage and violence, even from the teaser, that makes this one so difficult for me to watch. I generally skip it. But it's an excellent episode - a piece of work right up there with Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing.

 

[Lightning McQueenie]

Even though I agree that this episode is flawless in story and execution, there is one small mechanical flaw. Sam has been beaten to a pulp, and it has been established that it's Sam's body that is leaping, not his mind. It's also established (though in later episodes, like Revenge of the Evil Leaper) that any injuries sustained during a leap should carry through to the next leap and the leapee should return relatively unharmed. However, when Sam leaps out, when he "lands" he is fully healed...

 

[MichelleD]

This episode is intense and hard to watch--It's one of the very few episodes where I didn't laugh at least once. A great episode with an important message about how destructive bigotry and prejudice (on any level) is. The scene at the end where Sam is crying and holding Lonnie is just so sad.

 

[leaper1]

Even though I agree that this episode is flawless in story and execution, there is one small mechanical flaw. Sam has been beaten to a pulp, and it has been established that it's Sam's body that is leaping, not his mind. It's also established (though in later episodes, like Revenge of the Evil Leaper) that any injuries sustained during a leap should carry through to the next leap and the leapee should return relatively unharmed. However, when Sam leaps out, when he "lands" he is fully healed...

These are the tricky issues that spark lively debates and separate fans into 'camps' - but let me suggest this...
When Sam leaps from Tom Stratton to Tim [blanking on the name] the baseball player in the pilot ep, it feels instant to Sam, but Al says they'd been popping champagne corks for a week at HQ. So the potential is for Sam to spend time 'in limbo' between leaps. If GFTW decides he needs to be fully healed to cope with the new leap - he's kept in limbo to heal. How about that for PCR? :hmm

 

[Lightning McQueenie]

These are the tricky issues that spark lively debates and separate fans into 'camps' - but let me suggest this...
When Sam leaps from Tom Stratton to Tim [blanking on the name] the baseball player in the pilot ep, it feels instant to Sam, but Al says they'd been popping champagne corks for a week at HQ. So the potential is for Sam to spend time 'in limbo' between leaps. If GFTW decides he needs to be fully healed to cope with the new leap - he's kept in limbo to heal. How about that for PCR? :hmm

It's a decent compromise

 

[blue enigma]

This is an excellent episode. It's hard to watch but it's one of the best in the series.

 

[Donofrio_QLTD]

VERY dark episode. Just the way I like them. If I had to select 3 top Deborah Pratt episodes, this one would be number 2, while TCOT would be 1 and "So Help Me God" would be 3. That's hard because I also love "Dreams" and "Last Dance...", but anyway...

Very few moments of peace with this episode. It keeps you going and going and then everything keeps getting bigger and bigger until the final resolution. Outstanding how Deborah managed to not "sugar-coat" it, as somebody else put it up there. The ending, pretty sad and dark and, most important, very POETIC. This was not so usual in a QL episode.

Felt very bad when papa Dee died, he was one of my favorite characters from that episode. My favorite scene: After he dies and Sam tells his brother: "Papa Dee didn't want to go with you and Lonnie, he did because he believed in you and you were wrong... You were wrong and he's dead.", and then all hell breaks loose.

The line isz says wasn't necessary, I believe the exact opposite. I'm not from the USA, either, but I believe that what Lonie was implying there when he said that was that he finally came to the epiphany that all that violence wasn't necessary at all and now there was no way for him to stop it. Sam got through to him in the way that Lonnie understood that he was part of a problem that became out of his own control. He repented in the last second but he was exhausted, that's why he told them to get out of his face. But it was too late. Very intense stuff from DP.

My rating: Excellent. Yet another classic and emblematic episode for QL.

 

[ladystoneheart]

I didn't know anything about Watts Riots till I saw this episode. The episode itself is dark given the subject matter.

There are so many good episodes in season 3 that I can't even put them into the order,which one I love most =)

 

[chris-oates]

A very dark episode this one. Normally, I'm not a big fan of overly dark stories with little to no humour in them. But this one is so harrowing and gripping that I've always enjoyed it. Out of all the episodes that deal with racism, I think this is the most forceful. Everything is so charged right from the beginning. It's so hard seeing Sam in this situation. Desperate to prevent something that had in reality already being set into motion decades and decades before.

Bit of pointless trivia for you regarding my life. I'll always be grateful to this episode for helping me with my history GCSE exam when I was 16. Everything on the exam paper was a surprise and I wasn't expecting to have to write about the Watts riots (most of my studies were for World War I and II). It wasn't all about the Watts riots but one of the four parts were. The only knowledge I had about the riots were thanks to this episode of Quantum Leap. I knew about Marquette Frye's arrest being pivotal and the extent of what happened and how long it lasted. So yeah, I have this episode to thank for helping me get an A pass.

I think the best part of this episode is Lonnie. He's such an intense, conflicted character. Some of his actions are questionable, of course. But that scene where he dies at the very end of the episode is just heartbreaking. The raw pain and emotion on his face. It's just so hard to watch. Tremendous acting there. And that last scene with Sam muttering about having to stay there himself is just haunting.

My rating. Good. A sometimes hard to watch, but still quite brilliant episode.