Theorizing that one could produce a show about time travel within a single character's lifetime, Donald Bellisario led an elite group of TV writers into the desert to develop a top-secret television series, known as Quantum Leap, a show starring Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell, where in each episode, Dr. Sam Beckett found himself leaping from life to life, facing mirror images that were not his own, and driven by an unknown force to put right what once went wrong, with his only guide on his journey being Rear Admiral Al Calavicci, an observer from the Project who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. After airing five seasons of temporal adventures and changing countless lives, the show vanished! Now, 30 years later, a new group of TV writers and producers are picking up where the original show left off, but the question for Quantum Leap fans remains, is this new show any good? Let's find out together!

GUMMY BEAR HANDLINK! GUMMY BEAR HANDLINK! GUMMY BEAR HANDLINK! GUMMY BEAR HANDLINK! GUMMY BEAR HANDLINK! GUMMY BEAR HANDLINK! GUMMY BEAR HANDLINK! GUMMY BEAR HANDLINK! GUMMY BEAR HANDLINK! GUMMY BEAR HANDLINK! GUMMY BEAR HANDLINK! GUMMY BEAR HANDLINK!

...Sorry about that. But yeah, we got to see one of the old, classic-style handlinks from the original show. (No, I don't care that it was apparently a stunt handlink so the colors aren't exactly right) This made me extremely happy and this episode was fantastic. Review over.

No, of course, I kid, but I will need someone to physically restrain me from spending $650 on a handlink replica because I'm at the point where I just might do it.

Somebody stop me! No seriously, somebody stop me!

Okay, let's see if I can temper all that until the relevant portion of the review. In this episode, Ben finds himself in '70s Las Vegas in the body of a prize fighter named Danny Hill on the eve of his title bout, but a larger danger looms as the fighter's brother, Daryl, is suffering from PTSD that will eventually claim his life. Meanwhile, Addison refuses to slow down and rest until Ben is safely home, a decision that catches up with her. Meanwhile meanwhile, Janis continues to evade our heroes and manages to steal a few of her father's things from Beth, including a certain blinking, chirping handheld device.

This episode was a damned sight better than the first two. Not that they were bad by any stretch, but to me, Quantum Leap isn't about action or excitement, it's about the characters. The Leaper, the Observer, and the people the Leaper meets along the way who need his help. And this episode delivered on all of that. Even the 50/50 split of Leap/Project is done way better than it had previously been, because their plot was linked to Ben's plot, with the Project stuff being primarily about Addison ignoring her own well-being to save Ben, and Daryl doing the same for Danny's benefit. Everything fit way better and I found myself more enamored with the story, particularly the leap, for which I feel like I haven't really cared about in the first two because they felt like afterthoughts. It was also nice to finally learn a bit more about Addison, and how her life and Ben's were intertwined until the moment that he decided to hop into the accelerator chamber and how that bothers her, but she can't focus on that until they figure out why Ben did what he did.

This is where the Project physician would tell Addison that she needs to stay in bed… IF THEY HAD ONE!

We also learned that Ben has a photographic memory, just like Sam, although I imagine that's less deliberate copying and more of a convenient narrative crutch so that they can have Ben learn things quickly, which I assume is the reason that Sam had it in the original show. And we've finally got time dilation!

I don’t know if the entire Project team should be away, maybe they should rest in shifts but whatever.

The end of the episode shows that Addison has enough time in between leaps to go home and watch TV, which makes sense, cause that's how leaping worked on the original show, it took time for the leaps to happen and I'm glad to see it here because it means that, unlike a streaming show, there's downtime in between major world-shattering events.

This is my brother Daryl and my other brother… Sorry wrong show…

The PTSD plot was done spectacularly well, and I particularly enjoyed the scene where the rival boxer's entourage harassed Daryl and called him a “babykiller”, which set him off. If you're a fan of the original show, you'll remember that Sam had a brother who was initially killed in Vietnam, but later saved by Sam (on the very leap in which Magic appeared for the first time) and there were a few episodes that dealt with the anti-Vietnam sentiment that put that into perspective, like in “Animal Frat” when Sam tries to deal with anti-war hippie rich kids. The '70s weren't kind to mental health if any era really is, but it was tough back then and I'm happy that Daryl got the support he needed.

Based on the decor, you know that Al let Beth handle the decorating.

And onto the Janis storyline, again, this is going interesting places. We got more talk about Al this week, and how Janis' arc is tied into Al, with her wanting to correct the mistakes of the past (putting right what once went wrong) and work for the Project in order to do what her father could never do, find Sam Beckett and bring him home. I sympathize with both of them, Beth for not wanting her daughter to go down the same path her father went down, and Janis, who just wants a chance to prove herself, being nearly as brilliant as Sam himself.

Can someone on this show wear something other than black? If she’s truly Al’s daughter, she must carry on his legacy of being the best dressed person on the show!

I don't however love the idea that after Sam left the bar in 1953 and went off as himself, Al spent the rest of his life wondering what happened to Sam and died without knowing. But since this is a time travel show, perhaps they seek to right that wrong, so I'll hold off on casting judgment until the finale.

If you won’t let me on the Project, I’ll just make my own Project! With blackjack and hookers!

We also see that Janis has built a mini-project in her new laboratory, and what looks to me like a mini-imaging chamber, so perhaps she might be showing up to lend advice to Ben and remind him of his mission? Or maybe she's going to be an Evil Leaper, who knows? But it was amazing to get to see the classic handlink again and I heard in an interview that we're gonna have a triple handlink episode, presumably Addison's, Janis', and Addison's original one from the first pilot (which I imagine will be the repurposed version of that pilot episode that's coming later this season).

Might be more useful to have their movements overlaid onto you, but this works too I guess.

Another aspect I loved was that we saw new handlink functionality. We saw in the first episode that it can emit holograms, but we saw that taken to its natural conclusion and now it can project full holographic images into another space, in this case, a boxing ring, so Ben can watch and learn to mimic with his photographic memory. I also like that they're acknowledging that they're going outside of Ben's lifetime without the goofiness of the original show needing genetics to tie into it. Yeah, the whole string theory is that every moment of your life is reachable, and Sam theorized that he could time travel within his own lifetime, but Ben's pretty young and it's gonna be boring to do '80s/'90s/'00s every single week so let's throw cowboys and disco into it! I would've just said that they had access to Sam's lifetime as well from the original Project, but that's just my fanfic writer brain talking. Though I do wonder what Professor LoNigro would think of all this.

I did a quick search and Quantum Leap used the name Angela (or a form of it) at least four separate times that I could tell. That’s a lot of heavy lifting for one name!

As for things I didn't like, I thought the inclusion of Danny's girlfriend Angela, who is also dating the champion for some reason, was sort of pointless. Maybe most of her scenes got cut, but from what was there, it felt like her scenes could be taken out and the plot wouldn't change at all. Really, what I wish is that they developed Angela more because I think the idea of her being with the champ but wanting Danny is interesting, but it's never followed up on. Also, it's interesting that she shares a name with Sister Angela, the character that Michelle Joyner played in “The Right Hand of God: October 24, 1974” back in the original show.

But overall, this episode felt in keeping with the classic spirit of the original series, just modernized in terms of visual effects and pacing. But it's not suffering from modern pacing issues as much, so I wonder if this might have been when Martin Gero joined the show since I know they shook up the production staff between the original pilot and the one we saw. Still waiting to see that re-purposed original pilot, but that won't be next week's episode because Ben has his first cross-gender leap! Which took Sam until Season 2 to do it, so this is progress! And it features a pair of bounty hunters, so the premise is definitely interesting, even if we are back to the '80s once again. Hopefully, we get more of the loud neon '80s than we did in the pilot. Until next time, observers! Let me know what you thought about the episode in the comments!

Oh, and Ben definitely needs a catchphrase. It doesn't have to be “Oh boy...” but he needs something to add a little panache.