Last week, Quantum Leap brought it's 2nd season in for an epic landing.
It seems that Dr. Ben Song has inadvertently sewn the seeds of his own destruction and the end of Project Quantum Leap (PQL).
Ben's relationship with Hannah as he leapt from life to life and time to time (think River Song from Doctor Who but in the right order) takes a dark and sinister turn when her son Jeffrey discovers the truth of the time traveller who keeps showing up in his mother's life and blames him for the death of Jeffrey's father.
Jeff grows up to become Gideon Ridge, an evil billionaire tech guy who takes over PQL for the express purpose of destroying Ben and taking over as the time traveller, changing time for his benefit.
It was Gideon's "quantum chip" that Ian borrowed (stole) to get PQL up and running again Ian found Ben after being lost in time for 3 years.
Ian meanwhile is trying to crack the mysterious code that may actually save Ben and bring him back home. Turns out the code was written by Hannah.
Wibbly wobbly timey wimey, I know.
Side bar: Mason Alexander Park (Ian) is a national treasure and should be protected at all costs. They are just amazing (even if their portrayal of Desire in The Sandman is creepy as hell.)
Gideon is an evil son of a bitch who fires the entire PQL staff to be replaced with his own people including soldiers with orders to shoot to kill. Which includes PQL security chief Jenn.
Jenn is dead? Well, that sucks!
Meanwhile Ben, who has leaped into Ricky Jarret, Jr., a stock car driver in Sonoma, CA in 1976, who is there to prevent Ricky Sr. from dying after a heart attack.
He's also 20 miles from where Hannah and Jeffrey now live in 1976.
The fired PQL crew have reunited with Janis Calavacci (the daughter of Al from the original series) to fire her old school quantum accelerator to keep tabs on Ben and send Addison as a hologram back to help him. (Addison's using the old school hand link device that Al used in the old series.)
Ben is determined to solve both his current mission (save Ricky Sr) and help his PQL friends in our present/his future.
(Time travel writing is so....argh!)
The plan is for Ben to destroy the super experimental computer Jeffrey is building that serves as the key component in him becoming an evil billionaire tech guy.
But destroying things is not how Dr. Ben Song rolls.
Instead Ben convinces Jeffrey to help him MacGyver up a defibrillator that will save Ricky Jarret Sr.
Meanwhile in the present...
Er, future...
Whatever, work it out for yourselves.
Gideon is now Jeffrey and has become a philanthropic billionaire tech guy instead of an evil one. He still creates the quantum chip that Ian used to find the time lost Ben but Jeffrey is now doing his thing for good,
Anyway, it's time for Ben to come home but it requires Addison to step into the quantum accelerator and swap places with Ben.
Except it doesn't quite work.
Addison has leapt into somebody in the past but so has Ben. They are together again in the same physical space for the first time in years so what gives?
And that is where the season ends.
And perhaps the series?
Despite an early renewal for season 2, NBC so far has been silent on the fate of a season 3.
The numbers don't look good but damn, I hope NBC makes the right call. This new Quantum Leap deserves more time for more adventures.
Elsewhere on NBC, I caught last week's episode of Law & Order for the exit of Sam Waterston as Jack McCoy. Waterston portrayed McCoy in 404 episodes over a 30 year period.
The murder of the week is committed by (hey, get this!) an evil billionaire tech guy who has donated a crap ton of money to the mayor's election fund and the mayor's son who can close the case against the guy is reluctant to do so because he would have to disclose he had an affair. It's a mess rife with secrets and corruption and the mayor is a total prick who is more than willing to use his influence to make life hell for District Attorney Jack McCoy and his assistant D.A. Nolan Price.
McCoy's all "fuck this shit", takes Price off the case to protect him, gets the mayor's son on the goddamn stand, gets him to rat out the evil billionaire tech guy and delivers a kick ass summation to the jury his own damn self.
It's all classic Jack McCoy and it's a solid reminder of what used to make Law & Order so good.
Then McCoy resigns so the mayor can't touch him either and it's up to the governor to appoint a new District Attorney the mayor can't fuck around with.
I'll probably check in to see how Tony Goldwyn does as the new D.A. but I do not envy him following up on the iconic run of Sam Waterston as Jack McCoy.
And that is that for this week's Touchbase.
Next week, we welcome Resident Alien to the Touchbase.
Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.
No comments:
Post a Comment