It’s the 7th installment of #ThrowBackThursday? Oh Boy…
Not everything I talk about on this site is newer things, and not everything I talk about on this site is live-action either…you’ll see what I mean at some point. Today, though, I want to talk about Quantum Leap, which initially aired on NBC, but can now be seen in its entirety on Netflix. If you know me, you know that as far as preferences go, I prefer newer things. Not because they’re new necessarily, but because the writing team is much bigger – and throughout the years, they’ve gotten better with story creation and imaginative ideas…for the most part. However, now and then, you just have to sit back and appreciate the simpler things in life…or TV. Like Quantum Leap…which had a very simple idea, but it was incredibly intelligent at the same time.
Quantum Leap was ultimately about a scientist that is basically trying to invent time travel…with no luck. He theorizes that travelling through time is indeed possible within one’s own lifetime. Can’t go before your own birth, and you can’t go past your current state. Well, wouldn’t you know it – this project that he’s working on sucks him into a time vortex – sending him through space and time…and even though he’s got a doctorate, he’s not the doctor. Here’s the kicker, the time period he keeps getting sent into – his consciousness is placed inside someone else’s body. Throughout episode by episode, he has a mission to complete that helps this certain person in one fashion or another, in which he’s sent into another body in another time period to start it all over again. By his side is Al, a hologram that he can talk to – who gives him some basic knowledge to help him on his quest. And this is how it is. Every episode.
This is a procedural show that I can get behind. Shows back then had a weird ability to just make you smile in anticipation…or just out of sheer joy. Quantum Leap was kind of a magical show that you knew could always make you smile. You would watch it and notice a few things – each episode more or less worked the same way, but the mystery they continued to bring was always enough to leave you satisfied until the end. You wanted to know how he would solve this crisis before moving along. You even anticipated how each episode would end, because you wanted to know why Sam was going to say what you know he’d say all along, “Oh Boy” Oh boy what? Oh, you’re a woman. Oh, you’re Elvis. Oh, you’re a gangster. Countless possibilities, each one as fascinating as the last.
This show could be remade though, even though it covers certain eras of time anyone would be able to identify, most kids these days were born after the show itself ended. So if they did it again by an adult in 2015, just imagine how different the show would be. I don’t usually agree with TV show revivals, but sometimes I do. Quantum Leap doesn’t have any revival series in the works that I know about, but enough time has past in order for it to be just as great. They can even have Scott Bakula or Dean Stockwell return as well….I think I’ll have to pitch this to NBC…anyways.
You can watch the entire series on Netflix and Amazon Prime, so get on with it. You never know when Netflix will take down a great series for no apparent reason. It’s worth the watch, and especially great if you feel like watching something – but can’t think of anything.
Dave Examines TV 