Quantum Leap (2022) has at times struggled with what kind of show it wants to be. I would have preferred something a lot more intimate, very much like the original Quantum Leap. I've given up on that as no one makes TV shows like that anymore. Every show has to be an ensemble cast, every TV show lead has to have an entire team, not just a buddy.
I was willing to buy into that and I set aside my expectations for what Quantum Leap means and how much I enjoy the original. My personal preferences aside, it has mostly worked. I have issues with one episode but you can check my review on that. It's not like every episode of the OG was perfect either. This Season 2, however, has failed to spark anything within me (so far). I'm just not interested in a three-year time skip on a second season of this show. I don't know why it's there. I don't know what I'm supposed to be taking from this. It feels like in the TV world having someone move on so harshly in 3 years is wicked fast. Maybe it's not but regardless, I'm not an invested in their drama. This is weird because I like Ben and I like Addison. I weirdly never just cared about them as a couple. Unfortunately it looks like that's the only drama that is going on (at least right now). At first I thought this was just a ploy to make Ian the person in the imaging chamber and I was actually interested in that. I think Ian's an interesting person and it would have been fun to see Ian as a hologram. At this point, I'm not sure that's what they're doing.
This episode features a sort of modernism that I find really pretentious. There's a point where Ian is the hologram and Ian is standing in a desk. Ben notices and gestures to Ian that Ian should step aside. Ian looks down and screams in shock, but why? It's the silliest scene and it doesn't make any sense and it feels like it completely is there for modern weird jumpscare short attention span tick tock sensibilities. It would have been much more interesting to see Ian casually step aside. I'm pretty sure Al did that in the OG.
In general Al was a lot more "cool" about being a hologram than the people in this show are. It gave the sense that the hologram technology itself was so old hat. They didn't send a scientist or a specialist. They just sent his buddy. After all in the future holograms are just the way we do things. Except here where people get amazed and shocked at being a hologram. I suppose that's the effect of telling Quantum Leap that takes place in the future vs Quantum Leap that takes place now.
This episode was so tonally out of step with everything that came before it, that the message is kinda weakened. I understand wanting to make an episode with a contemporary relevant message, which is fine, but you have to include the other writers who were making an actual story because QL2022 has been a lot of things but it hasn't been nearly as cringe at this. For an episode that scolds the parents for "keeping their daughter locked up" who "just want to be a normal girl playing with her friends" this episode really focuses on making every aspect of her exceptional. I mean I get it. It's a rough time right now, so maybe they felt it was necessary.
Every 10 minutes it felt like the screenplay had the words "And then everyone clapped". The overly inspirational uninspired music choices, the focused closeups on "lesson moments". It reads like after school special rather than a story about inclusion. This may not be my genre of choice but if they do another episode on this issue I hope they can focus on integrating it into a more cohesive narrative where people aren't talking in memes (ain't nobody got time for that) and metaphors are more metaphorical than literal. They already have a trans character I think and they are fine. That character is one of my favorites in the show. They did an episode about drag queens and that was fine even if I thought it was a little silly it worked within the world that was built.
I think the episode would have been better if it had focused on a singular aspect of the issue and then IMPLIED the rest. For instance if the episode has been about getting her on the team and playable and then implied stuff like being allowed in the locker room, it wouldn't have felt like it was trying to do every story at once. Personally I think the concept of misgendering a body is so complicated (because gender is a social construction but a dead body does have a sex which is a biological presentation and that suggests there's a whole realm of realistic possibility for that happened beyond that obvious "They hate her because she's not like other girls" narrative the episode was going for) that it might have been more effective to just trim that bit and the whole mystery about what happened when she ran away. It didn't feel like it added anything other than just hiding things from the audience for another gut punch reveal that wasn't that gut punchy. It's like an episode about a black women who has to overcome people assuming she's poor and shrill and being sexually available just because she dated a white guy all at once. And then the one black guy called her a hoe to show off to his white friends and the her uncle abused her. It's not completely untrue to reality. There are women who deal with all that but the narrative can't support that many threads. Not even when you delay the overarching narrative to focus on this episode. Something's gotta give and in this case it was the verisimilitude.
Whatever. It's fine. it's one dip in episode quality and it's not a big deal. Next time they'll be better probably. It reminds me of the BLM episode of The Rookie where they had the IA chief literally slam his fist at how frustrated he was at the idea of even the appearance of corruption. A moment so laughable I still chuckle because in real life IA aren't cop hunters. They're cop shields. When the police "investigate themselves and find nothing" that's IA at work. But it values the police if IA is always seen as antagonistic to regular police because then people IRL are more trusting of IA.
No rating. My rating would be on the lower end but not for the reasons most of the lower ends are gonna be using.
Edit: Rather soon after this episode aired (relatively) there's been a case where a trans person died and apparently law enforcement are using the legal name to identify them rather than the name they choose. I haven't looked into it but it appears to be an issue with limitations within how the law allowed names to be changed. I only mention it because while it seems tangentially related to a minor point I was making. There's a strong distinction that in this episode the police found a body and couldn't identify it and labeled it according to the sex they could identify where as in this specific IRL story a body was found and identified and they choose to identify it based on what their papers said rather than how the individual identified according to information they should have had available. Hopefully the nuance of those two concepts conveys why I stand by my assessment that the episode would have been better without that storybeat as implemented in the final episode.
Oh my God. Best fucking episode of season 3. Fight me on this, I don't care. A vintage musical inside a gangster film inside an episode of a superhero show? This was better than I could've imagined. The music and the scenery were wonderful, the atmosphere was perfect, and I'm amazed by how many musically talented actors there are on the CW/DC shows.
There were so many things I loved about this that I could write an essay about them, but I'm just going to list my top 5:
Melissa Benoist in that dress and with that hair. 11/10. She looked absolutely stunning.
"My sister says I put Kara in karaoke." What the shit? That's the best pun ever!
Stein and Joe as a couple of gay gangster dads. It doesn't get better than this.
"I'm your super friend" is my new favorite song. It was so cute and funny, and it just melted my heart. I love Barry and Kara's relationship so much, I still firmly believe that it's the best thing to have come out of the Arrowverse.
Barry proposed to Iris (again) and somehow it was even more touching than the first time. Such a beautiful scene.
And now, my top 5 least favorite things:
Mon-El talking
Mon-El breathing
Mon-El being there
Alex Danvers NOT being there (seriously, she would never agree to stay behind while Trashcan and J'onn took Kara to a parallel Earth. She just wouldn't let her sister out of her sight and it's bullshit that she didn't appear in this episode.)
Kara taking Mon-El back literally less than 24 hours after breaking up with him. Just. Let. Her. Live. I fucking hate this relationship so much. It makes me uncomfortable and sick to my stomach.
But yeah, still an awesome episode. I couldn't stop grinning like an idiot the whole time.
