Quantum Leap 1.08: Stand by Ben

[aelfgyfu_mead]

I think the Quantum Leap withdrawal might be setting in before we'd even have gotten a new episode, but the last one gave us a lot to chew on!


So Ben leaped to save Addison! Holy cow! That seems clearly to require knowledge of the future, though. Did some future leaper come back and tell Ben? Did a future Ben leap back and tell himself so he could prevent it? I'm leaning towards that.

I also have to ask why Ben involved Janis and cut out all the others: easier to ask forgiveness than permission? The forgiveness part clearly worked, since Addison in particular worked until she literally dropped, to keep him alive and leaping. But wouldn't Magic and the others have pitched in even if they knew in advance? I feel like they would have, but a) it doesn't matter if Ben thought any of them would have prevented him, and b) maybe he hoped he would get them in less trouble if he did it without their knowledge? I feel like he was wrong about B as well: Jenn has already been threatened with being sent back to prison, and it doesn't take much imagination to imagine everyone else getting sent to prison either.

Magic is still (or again) active duty, right? So he could get court-martialed. And I bet Addison and Ian could be in serious dren too, and possibly the many others who apparently work there.

It seems like at this point, the best thing would be to bring Janis in to share with the class, if they can persuade her.

I love that we got more background on Jenn! I'd been asking for that! I hope her father really is just lonely and not trying to get something else from her. I know too many people who have cut ties with parents for good reason to be fully comfortable with Magic's advice. And it seems Jenn's shady past was at least in part an inheritance from her father.

And Magic referred to being a father! Tell me more! How many kids? Still married? (Has he been wearing a ring? I need to pay more attention!) I'd like to see more of Magic, but I noticed that he's also busy making episodes for the other series he's currently in, The Family Business, where he seems to be a far less sympathetic character!

It was hilarious when Jenn and Magic quite reasonably asked Ian for help getting out of the elevator they were trapped in and Ian went on a tear about how everyone is bothering them and Magic just waited and then said, "Feel better now?" It seems like they do this periodically and have to get it out of their system.

Oh, yeah, and the main storyline. I was a bit nervous about an adult man leaping into the body of an adolescent boy on the run with three other adolescents. I did not expect the other kids to decide that it was just fine for Ben to talk to his invisible girlfriend since it seemed to lead to good results, but I liked it! This show does have a way of making me sympathetic to new characters really fast, and I was especially sorry to say goodbye to Leah. And I don't know about youth ranches in California, but if they're like the ones in Florida, teens actually die in those places. I hope viewers realize that. And race is often a factor in these places, which really didn't emerge from a story where the two boys who escape are white.

I have more questions! If Addison had to be quantum bonded (whatever that means) for Ben to be her observer—or, as it turns out, for her to be his—how can Janis do it? Does it just take a heck of a lot more work? It seems like it ought to take a heck of a lot more work simply because Janis doesn't have full control of Ziggy, just some access.

Ben seems to have a nasty habit of remembering things right before he's leaping; does the start of the leap somehow trigger memories? At least he got out the reason before the end of the episode; I was afraid they were going to leave us hanging with "why I leapt in the first place." But we still don't have enough of the why!

I, for one, am quite eager to see the second half of the season! But I'm not eager for January 2 because I have way too much to do before then.

And here's a tidbit! Janis's name came from fan alterations to the original Quantum Leap Wikipedia page (see note and link on this Quantum Leap Wiki page: fans named all four of Beth and Al's girls, and the show adopted the one name. We don't know if they might use others in the future. I think that's really cool.

Comments

[aelfgyfu_mead]

LITTLE SPOILER FROM PREVIEW
The preview seems to show Janis being brought in to the main floor by military guards with her hands bound, so maybe "persuade" is the wrong verb here.

[astrogirl]

fans named all four of Beth and Al's girls, and the show adopted the one name

Oh, I didn't know that! That's lovely. :)

[aelfgyfu_mead]

I only learned it today! I was poking around the Wiki, mostly trying to figure out why I see both "Janis" and "Janice" as spellings. I still have no good answer for that, except that "Janis," while it's on Wikipedia, in the IMDb, and on the Wiki, is probably the less common one, and people are defaulting to "Janice" (sometimes even in the Wiki, though now i forgot what page that's on).

The creators and writers seem to have a real love for the original and the fans that I wish more shows had. (Some Doctor Who writers and show runners could take note!)

[nialla]

I really thought with Janis being involved, we were getting a setup for trying to rescue Sam. Perhaps that was the original idea, but without Bakula committing to a cameo, they scrapped it?

Where could Ben get the knowledge that something would happen to Addison? Future leaper is definitely an option, and perhaps that's at least part of why he didn't involve the team. Not just how hard it would be for them to help and not tell Addison, but perhaps the project is subject to a hostile takeover in the near future? Perhaps they're going with a variation of the "evil leaper" and he knows that they're Bad Guys who want to erase the current Leaper, so he took over for a rescue mission knowing they've come after him instead.

Just about any IT person could relate to Ian's rant. :)

Not sure about "quantum bonded" either, but in the original, there was something about Sam and Al having... was it surgery with an implant? Something like that anyway. It was what allowed them to talk to each other. I'm reading way above my level, but a bit of googling shows references to the "quantum mind or quantum consciousness" which is "a group of hypotheses proposing that classical mechanics alone cannot explain consciousness". So a sciencey way of rewiring consciousness to see things others cannot might be in play.

I did not expect the other kids to decide that it was just fine for Ben to talk to his invisible girlfriend since it seemed to lead to good results, but I liked it!

It's been bugging me that Ben rarely comes up with a cover story about "talking to himself". I liked that it was worked into this plot, but that leads to another niggle. They've established that the person Ben leaped into isn't in a "waiting room" and doesn't remember what happened. So what happens when this kid returns to himself and wonders how he suddenly has three best friends for life (and possible an unrelated to him uncle) who tell him he was talking to his invisible girlfriend?

[aelfgyfu_mead]

It's been bugging me that Ben rarely comes up with a cover story about "talking to himself". I liked that it was worked into this plot, but that leads to another niggle. They've established that the person Ben leaped into isn't in a "waiting room" and doesn't remember what happened. So what happens when this kid returns to himself and wonders how he suddenly has three best friends for life (and possible an unrelated to him uncle) who tell him he was talking to his invisible girlfriend?
Yes, that's a problem! I thought it might be a more immediate problem to be, say, an astronaut and suddenly find oneself knocking on the cosmonauts' door with no memory of the previous X problems, but this one's more a long-term problem! Does everyone assume some kind of traumatic memory loss? Or memory loss caused by too many hits as a boxer? I got hit by a car and lost maybe 45 minutes; it's never coming back. I tried to remember for a long time. It freaked me out (though I perhaps ought to have been more freaked out about being hit and thrown by a car). What would it be like to lose several hours, or a whole day, as Ben Kept seems to have done?

I am wondering if there will be a hostile takeover by Congresswoman, who will bring in different military people, including Ramirez, who then may think that Ben is following him when it's really more the other way around. Because Magic has totally covered the fact that they're not in control of what's happening at all!

I've also wondered if they'll pick up the Evil Leaper story from the original show. I don't remember how that worked very well! There was an Evil Leaper, but then it turned out she wasn't really evil, but her observer was? I could look it up. . . .

And I want to believe that Janis has her own motives too and may want to save Sam, whatever else she may be trying to do.

[nialla]

I think they've retconned the waiting room. Magic told Ian he has no memory of his experience with Sam leaped into him, just a "nudge" to be pushed aside, then waking up after saving his whole platoon, including Sam's brother. No mention of the waiting room, though of course he could just have amnesia about it, but I think it's just been written out.

There's been talk of consent issues being much more problematic these days, but I'm not sure how pushing someone's consciousness down is better than pushing them out completely.

I'm still a bit unclear on Ben's memory loss. Did he get it all back, or did he just finally have a spark to remember why he decided to leap? Pretty sure it's the latter, as they'd probably prefer to keep pulling out memories for plot points. You'd think he'd be much more disturbed about losing most of his "personal" memories, but maybe the leaping is taking too much of his attention.

I don't really remember the Evil Leaper stuff, other than it existed. I can't even recall if it was a popular plot or not, but I guess I didn't care for it, since I don't really remember it.

Janis could definitely have her own agenda. I just can't quite picture her willing to drug her own mother to steal some of Al's stuff to rescue some woman she doesn't really know. Perhaps she was willing to do anything to get into the program, and Sam opened the door for her to rescue Sam like her father always wanted?

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Janis clearly had a lot of resentment about being kept out of the program! So yes, I think she'd do anything to get into it, and Ben may even have known that and exploited it.

I assume Ben's getting bits back and still has a lot of memories missing. I think they're being purposely vague because they haven't worked out all the details.

Consent is tricky any way they do it. Yes, they seem to have eliminated the waiting room. Are we supposed to forget that some guy escaped the waiting room and attacked people in the original series? Because I do remember that! And if I woke up in someone else's body and were told someone was using my body for a bit, I'd be pretty upset too; I'm surprised it only happened the once!

[nialla]

I think what's really weird about the waiting room is there's an easy fix. Just have Ian say something about the new project recoded things and the leaper switching consciousness wasn't necessary anymore.

[aelfgyfu_mead]

So I was talking with Brilliant Husband about this, and he declared there's no problem with Magic having no memory of the waiting room: "There's a simple quantum explanation," he said, and it's only as I type this out that I decide "simple" and "quantum explanation" do not belong in such close proximity. "What happens in the waiting room is in the future, so from the point of view of the person leaped into, it hasn't happened yet. And when they go back, it could change, so they can't remember it."

I feel like we're probably forgetting something from the original series that may have indicated that someone did at some point remember it. Maybe the senator? But I can't give him a definite counterexamples, and he's usually Counterexample Man. Do you remember anything that could contradict this?

And it doesn't rule out your main point: they could absolutely acknowledge that the waiting room existed in the previous version while saying that they don't have it in this.

[nialla]

Agree that Magic not having a memory of the waiting room isn't that big of an issue. Memories are very weird anyway. The issue is the team working on the project have made no mention of it. They're in a different location, so the physical room isn't there. Could it be a case of the government editing files, and the current team doesn't know about it? Perhaps they used the edited files to recreate the project, and found a way to do it without the waiting room, not even realizing that had been a thing.

I could go along with a fluid memory of events until it's settled, then the leapee (such as Magic) having the changed events updated in their memory. But Magic specifically talks about feeling that "nudge" and then coming out of it days later being told he saved everyone while he has no memory of it. You'd think there'd be a lot of people talking about "blacking out" when some big event happened with them. Perhaps it could happen, but it's just not well known?

IIRC, there's always a rule with an exception. Such as nobody could see Al or the real Sam, until they could. So there's no waiting room, no memory of events when they're "nudged" out of the way, until it happens? The reboot seems to be trying to honor the original rather nicely, but I don't think they thought it through on this point. Or we're overthinking it. :)

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Us? Overthink things? Nah!

[nialla]

We've got to have something to do until new episodes! :)