Quantum Leap

How the Tess Was Won - August 5, 1956 - S1-E5

Continuity mistake: Though he's leaped into someone else, we always see Sam as Sam, dressed in all the host's clothes (including glasses or sunglasses). His host is revealed only in reflections. But here, when he looks at his host-self in the mirror, the hat and clothes are all identical - except that the reflection is wearing glasses, and Sam isn't. (00:43:00)

Jean G

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Sam: Leaping about in time, I've found that there are some things in life that I can't change, and there are some things that I can. To save a life, to change a heart, to make the right choice. I guess that's what life's about, making the right choice at the right time.

Al: I went over to check out the cheerleaders. Oh, Sam. There was one little girl who had these pommelos, man.
Sam: Pommelos are grapefruit.
Al: Pommel - that's my point.

Al: Well, we been having some difficulty. Ziggy, he's, uh, going through mood swings. I think we need get a girl computer put it right next to him, one with a nice set of hard disks.
Sam: You would.

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Leaping of the Shrew - September 27, 1956 - S5-E3

Question: Shortly after Sam throws some items off the life raft, Al appears and tells him that because of what Sam had done, neither he nor Vanessa would be saved for quite a while. If Sam had not done anything, both of them would have been rescued within an hour. I might be wrong about this next part so further verification will help. Al also said that because of Sam throwing stuff into the ocean, that somehow, instead if only being stranded in the lifeboat for a few minutes, four whole hours have passed. How could tossing anything into the ocean have made time move so rapidly?

Answer: Sam threw items off the raft to lighten the load, so it wouldn't sink, in doing so he made the raft less heavy. Which made easier to float with the currents, if it was heavy the raft would have moved slower and not moved so far.

Except that Al said that immediately after throwing stuff out of the boat four hours passed and it was shown that they didn't really move from where they were. They were still in the same spot. Forgot to ask this too. When Sam and Vanessa are stranded on the island, one of them, can't remember who, did something and when Al appears, he tells them that because of it, time had suddenly skipped several more hours and if the event hadn't been interrupted, they would have been rescued by a boat. So, what happened on the island that once again caused time to speed up? It seems kind of strange that time could move so quickly on the island, especially since it was still day time and it never showed any sort of changes like the sun or clouds moving.

Mirror Image - August 8, 1953 - S5-E22

Question: I believe in the final episode, Al the bartender asked Sam where he would like to go and Sam said home. He then said he couldn't because he had a wrong to put right for his hologram friend Al, which he did. After telling Al's wife that Al is alive he leaps. I think it said after that that Sam never makes it home. So does he continue leaping forever or is he stuck in the last person he leaps into? I know he lost his memory but what happened after that?

Carl Missouri

Chosen answer: Per the Quantum leap page at http://www.scifi.com/quantum/episodes/season5.html. 8 August 1953: An enigmatic leap lands Sam in a Pennsylvania tavern, as his own grown self on the day of his birth. As Al and Gushie work frantically to locate him, Sam befriends a wise bartender (popular character actor McGill, who'd appeared in a different role in the very first "leap") and a group of coal miners. As a host of familiar-looking faces pass through the bar - with different identities than Sam remembers - Sam ponders his life of leaping with Al the bartender, who tells Sam he controls his own destiny. Pressed for more, Al the bartender simply shrugs and says, "Sometimes, 'that's the way it is' is the best explanation." Sam realizes he must right at least one more wrong before he can go home, and leaps back to tell Al Calvavicci's wife Beth (from "M.I.A.") to wait for Al, who will survive Vietnam and come home to her. The closing title cards state that Beth and Al have four daughters and will shortly celebrate their 39th wedding anniversary ... and that Sam Beckett never returned home.

Boobra

Star-Crossed - June 15, 1972 - S1-E3

Question: Al tells Sam that he's there to prevent the professor and his undergraduate student from having a shotgun wedding and ruining both their lives. That implies she got pregnant. Sam succeeds in keeping them apart. Um, does that mean he prevented someone from being born?

Brian Katcher

Answer: He means he's there to prevent there ever being the need for a shotgun wedding-that is, to stop the affair before there is a possibility of the girl getting pregnant.

raywest

Which would erase the child from history. That's my point.

Brian Katcher

Not if there was never any pregnancy to begin with. There was only the chance of one.

raywest

Answer: Not necessarily; it could also mean that someone such as Jamie Lee's (the student) father discovered that the professor was having a sexual relationship with her and coerced the two into getting married.

zendaddy621

This doesn't answer the question. You just described what a shotgun wedding is.

Bishop73

I think their point is that the "shotgun" aspect might not be due to a pregnancy, simply a forced attempt to legitimise an otherwise scandalous relationship.

My point was that a "shotgun wedding" doesn't always happen because an unmarried girl becomes pregnant; it can also happen because someone "stole her virtue", i.e had sex with her without being married or at least engaged to her. There's no reason to believe that Jamie Lee was, or would become, pregnant as a result of the affair or subsequent marriage.

zendaddy621

The term "shotgun wedding" means a forced marriage due to unexpected pregnancy. It's sometimes even used when the woman is pregnant but it's planned or the wedding isn't "forced." In common colloquialism (especially in the 80's when the script was written), it doesn't refer to a force marriage just because of premarital sex (which the term "make an honest woman" is used for).

Bishop73

No, in the 1926 Sinclair Lewis novel 'Elmer Gantry', they talk about shotgun weddings, when a groom is forced to marry a woman because he took her virginity. Obviously, the term usually refers to a pregnant bride, but I see zendaddys point.

Brian Katcher

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