While I have already stated an opinion of this episode I'd like to amend it without even backtracking to remind myself of the previous. It's far in the past.
What truly brings me back to this thread is Bowspearer's amazing comment which reflects how I feel wholeheartedly.
There is no way I could outdo this statement:
I have to say that she's about the strongest example of the old saying of "behind every great man there's a great woman" that I've ever seen.
Personally I am a huge fan of the Sam and Donna relationship and her character, I and my best friend both. From the joy it brought him to be around her and his determination to make her his forever in
Star Crossed to the same spell she had him under and their instant reconnection like they hadn't been a part for a minute here during his short return home.
Actually a moment that always gets my heart going no matter how many times I watch this episode is the powerful emotion that came over Sam as the memory of his beloved wife was returning to him and the betrayal in his demand of Al:
"Why didn't you tell me!?"
Scott expressed in last year's Comic Con panel in response to a question regarding Donna's situation that his outlook was that she understood and accepted his purpose along with the uncontrollable circumstances in which he fulfills it, including his having no memory of her. She tells Sam herself:
"I never once felt that you betrayed our love." This despite some questionable situations such as Sam's rekindled crush on his piano teacher, Nicole in
Catch a Falling Star.
Scott also seemed to disagree with Donna's statement to Al that Sam couldn't act as freely with the memory of her because Sam is the kind of person who never turns his back on anyone in need at literally all costs and he would know that Donna understands thus that he would not be hurting her.
We've seen him ensure a mission's success regardless of conflicting perspectives such as disapproval of a task or a personal pursuit such as Donna herself. Sam Beckett will always do the right thing in the end.
You can fine the panel at Youtube. Search Quantum Leap Comic Con 2012 (I advise turning up your volume especially when Dean speaks though he doesn't much, the sound system is poor at this panel. I couldn't make out most of the questions and barely some of the answers).
This leads me into my next point; the conflict between his marriage to Donna and his deep relationship with Abigail during a series of very intense leaps. For some reason it doesn't seem to be a popular opinion that Donna and Sammy Jo could co-exist and logically would since Sam had changed his future with Donna first (though you could get complicated and argue this with the years in which the leaps occurred). Abigail was not a betrayal of their marriage not under the circumstances and Donna could have chosen during that leap to remind him that he's married.
Another good point that my best friend brought up was in making a brilliant connection to
Leaping in Without a Net the line Eva used about her mother's death and her father's blame lying with her brother.
"He couldn't blame mama, he loved her too much."
Here I'll probably be no more than repeating Bowspearer's wonderful description but Abigail was a relationship of circumstance. In a sense he knew her for most of her life and was deeply effected by the tragic and eerie situations he always found her in. It could have also been in play that the adult Abigail he slept with happened to resemble Donna if memory serves. Though it's not canon the concept that he could unconsciously recognize his wife in those who resemble her was explored in the novel 'Independence' when he once again leaps far outside his lifetime into an ancestor. This time it's even farther back in his ancestry, in the middle of the Revolutionary War and he gets quite the crush on his host's wife who greatly resembles Donna. The ending scene where Al explains this to Donna is real well done.
The fact that Sammy Jo is implied to be the key to bringing Sam home is something Donna would certainly embrace and you could argue was the real reason he kept being put in Abigail's life. Not for her but for himself, to conceive the child who would provide what the project needed to bring him home, a version of his own mind.
This is why when I just read the novel Loch Ness Leap which revolves around Sammy Jo it bothered me that Donna was not there. That and I just adore Donna.
To touch on a more light hearted matter, the second best thing about this episode is the humor revolved around Sam and Al switching sexual mind sets. Sam is such a crack up the way he's immediately shamed every time he vomits an Al comment.:roflmao:
Side Note: Though it's clear why Sam's carrying the memory of Donna while leaping would cause conflict, my best friend and I have discussed how it doesn't fit with how he seems to be able to recover most every other memory of his personal life. Such as how at the end of this episode Al tells Donna that Sam doesn't remember the simo-leap and yet he references it a few episodes later in Dreams. But I digress.
