Quantum Leap (1989)

Watchseries; One of the best shows ever made. A timeless classic!

One of the best shows ever made. A timeless classic!

Quantum Leap watchseries. I enjoy originality. Quantum Leap falls into this, but works on so many levels.

First off, Scott is Sam and Dean is Al. Period. These two created their characters and it's a hoot seeing how they progress throughout the series. The two's bonding (and bantering) is a gem of the series. You'll never cease to get a chuckle from these guys. Next, the writing and storyline is so rewarding that you really get caught up in what leap will be next. Each show was unique in their own way. QL also has the ability to have you laughing one second, serious in another, and then anticipation of will Sam finish the mission. Add in some accidental history changing (we're talking time travel here) and bump-ins with historical figures and Quantum Leap shows there is no competition. Although I was disoriented and perplexed by the last show, that's only because I wish these two could have kept leaping.

I loved this show! It was amazing. I was almost crying when it ended. "THEY CAN'T LEAVE IT THERE!", I shouted. It is kind of sentimental and honest at the same time. Everything from the theme music to the inventiveness and unpredictabilty of it all makes it a truly classic show. I hope they make a movie of it some day. If they do it'll be a box office smash.

What can I say? I loved this series! It had humor, it had sorrow, it had drama, it had suspense. It spanned the dimensions of every emotion, even when the plot was painfully thin.

Sure, there were some episodes that would have been better left on the cutting floor, but for the most part each episode was a single contained enjoyable event.

I didn't like the ending, but as it has been said the network decided to end the series and so they didn't care much how it ended.

I'm waiting for the entire series to be out on DVD (the first season is already out). I could watch these over and over ... and I will!

As a moviegoer, I don't have a great esteem for television. Sure, it has spawned many good shows, and cult characters. But I rarely felt the need to watch EVERY SINGLE EPISODE, afraid of missing even one. And believe me, I'm no short-sighted elitist.

But Quantum Leap is an absolute classic. It's got Heart, great characters, ambitious stories, and it's both accessible and clever. It may not be the strongest Sci-fi concept, but it's the most likely to reconcile the fans of Star Trek AND Magnum P.I. Who could've imagined that?

Donald Bellisario created a true gem of a show, centered around Dr. Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) a scientist whose time-travelling theories are backed up by the military, represented by the retired Navy Admiral Al Calavicci (Dean Stockwell). The experiment goes wrong, and Sam is sent in the past, with most of his scientific knowledge and memories temporarily erased. His body vanished, his mind now trapped in other's bodies, and Sam soon discovers that a "superior authority" can transfer his mind from time to time, only if he manages to "fix what's broken" and give his "host" a better life. Al can communicate with him through holographic form (only noticeable by children, animals - "and blondes, too") in order to help Sam to complete his mission, whether it's to inspire a song to an artist, defend the case of a young Black in a Southern State court during the segregation days, or help a journalist to obtain a Pulitzer Prize while covering the war in Vietnam.

The variety and humanity of the show is what makes it stand above the others. Some episodes are light and humorous, when others are darker, even tragic. Some conclusions are bittersweet, and help the main characters to evolve slightly, but regularly throughout the show. What helps even more is the fantastic chemistry between the two main characters. Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell have found the role of their lives, delivering touching, funny, overwhelming performances, sometimes in the course of only one episode! They're brilliant, as well as the writing, and art direction who recreates every decade from the 50's to the 80's (and sometimes beyond!) perfectly.

As for the ending... without spoiling it, it's by far the most astounding, bold and emotionally charged episode ever produced in the TV history, as far as I know. So many TV shows end up in disappointment (while so many don't even bother to give us a finale, at all...). "Quantum Leap" ending is rewarding, and intriguing. It's ambitious, happy and sad. It's both on the human scale, and larger than life.

Oh boy, what a show.

I was so busy rearing two kids as a single mom while working, volunteering, and taking college courses that I totally missed the original run of the series. I'm playing catch up now, watching the re-runs on Sci-Fi. I happened to run into it just a few months ago -- and only b/c I stayed up too late one night. At first, I thought it was just *too cute,* but now I'm hooked. If I can't stay up till 2AM, I have to record it to find out how the next episode goes. It's fabulous!

I especially like how the show leads me to examine the history of the years between the 1950's through the 1980's -- the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly (e.g., the segregated South). Sure, it's encapsulated into a 60 minute segment, but the writers managed to hit enough of the key points to make it worth the air space. And sure, it's P.C. -- sometimes simplistically so -- but that only goes with the territory of the show's premise, which is the hope that we can make this world a better place for everyone, regardless of race, creed, color, national origin, mental abilities, or socio-economic class. That's not a bad philosophy. In fact, it's the same hope that led me to bear children, and then rear them to have hope for their own futures.