Quantum Leap: M.I.A.

It is time for the 9th Annual TV Show Episode Blogathon. And my pick is one of the truly great ones! Quantum Leap is one of my ‘holy trinity of tv shows’, the other two being Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Bionic Woman. My blog post is thus long overdue.

***Spoilers***

The thing about Quantum Leap is… that it is simply brilliant. And my favourite episode is definitely M.I.A., set in San Diego April 9th 1969. This episode concludes the second season and oh boy, what a conclusion it is.

Sam Beckett leaps into a police detective Jake Rawlins. Sam’s holographic guide, Al Calavicci, tells Sam that during this leap, he needs to stop a woman called Beth from meeting and dating a man called Dirk and convince her to wait for her husband who is missing in action in Vietnam. Beth believes that her husband is dead. However, Al informs Sam that the husband is in fact a prisoner of war and will eventually return home.

From the first contact with Sam and Al, it is evident that Al is hiding something. He seems fixated in preventing Beth from falling in love with a man, a lawyer called Dirk, who keeps popping up in Beth’s way. At this point, the audience of Quantum Leap has come to know Al as a lighthearted ladies’ man who has been married several times and whose escapades with the ladies are numerous. Finally, it turns out that Beth is in fact Al’s first wife. While Al was suffering in a prisoner-of-war camp for several years, Beth mourned for him until she gave up, met another man, had Al declared dead and married again. This was very unfortunate since Al was Beth’s and Beth was Al’s one great love. And this is the reason why Al has not had very much luck with his subsequent marriages and affairs with women. Preventing Beth from falling in love was not the reason why Sam leaped into Jake Rawlins and when he realizes this, he and Al do the right thing and do not stand in the way of Beth’s happiness. But Sam does not leap until Al gets to say goodbye to Beth. This final scene is heartbreaking, it is the one scene one cannot watch without tears streaming, every time. But it isn’t just about the water works. This episode gives us a chance to know Al better. To understand what makes him the man he is. And once again, it celebrates the deep friendship between Sam and Al. So every time I hear the song Georgia on My Mind, I think about Al and Beth and Sam ❤