Who Critiques The Critics?: Opposable Thumbs Review

Opposable Thumbs

Reviewing a book about two film critics is a rather daunting task. I didn't grow up watching Siskel and Ebert, not because I wasn't interested in film criticism from an early age. It was just that Gene Siskel died when I was about 2 and 1/2 years old, and I wasn't paying attention to the state of film criticism at that time in my life. And I vaguely knew who Roger Ebert was, I do have occasional fond memories of watching Ebert and Roeper as a kid, but I couldn't appreciate the effect that those two men had on both the film industry and the state of film criticism as a whole during their long and vaunted careers. Thankfully, Matt Singer came along to chronicle it all together and package it in a very informative and truly spell-binding book.

One of those fond memories, an segment I remember with perfect clarity, where Richard Roeper (joined by Mario Van Peebles, best known as “Kane” in Highlander III: The Sorcerer due to Roger Ebert’s illness) discuss the 2005 Aardman/Dreamworks feature “Flushed Away”. Roeper disliked it because he didn’t believe that rats and mice could be “cute”, a critique he would later lob at the Academy Award-winning Pixar hit, “Ratatouille”. [Image courtesy of That Old T.V. on YouTube]

How I discovered this book's existence is a fascinating story, at least I believe so. As I might have mentioned once or twice, I work in a bookstore and one day, one of my co-workers came up to me to ask where this book was because a customer was looking for it. At the time, it was a fairly recent release and I tend to work exclusively in the new release section of my store. Yet, it had slipped past me, and I knew that this book had somehow inadvertently been sent directly to the backlist “Film and Television Reference” section because if I had seen it come in, not only would I have given it a very prominent spot on the shelf, but I also would have likely purchased a copy for myself. Many of the internet reviewers who inspired me to flex my critiquing muscles were in turn inspired by Siskel and Ebert and I owed them the experience of being well-informed about the two men who changed our media and criticism landscape forever.

From their early days, Siskel at the Chicago Tribune and Ebert at the Chicago Sun-Times, all the way through the various iterations of their syndicated television show, be it Sneak Previews or At the Movies, to their personal lives and eventually their tragic and far too young deaths, Singer takes the reader through it all. The trials, tribulations, and production difficulties are all endlessly fascinating to read about. As are the discussions about who they were as people and how that informed their reviews and how they could make or break a film simply by featuring it in one of their episodes, the anecdote about their collective enjoyment of Hoop Dreams (James, 1994) bringing a documentary that likely would have been passed over by the general public to massive acclaim simply by introducing it to their audience who otherwise wouldn’t have known about it.

Love him or hate him (I choose the latter) Doug Walker is one of the internet critics who wore Siskel and Ebert’s influence on his sleeve and helped imbue me with the desire to criticize media I love, even if I have since outgrown him. [Titlecard by MaroBot]

For someone who unfortunately wasn't around to see all of it in action, I feel like I was there with the anecdotes, either from various interviews with Siskel and Ebert themselves, or interviews with those close to them and the show. I couldn’t stop thinking about this book during the entire week that I was reading it. In fact, although I have been doing fully produced video reviews for over a decade, (inspired by the aforementioned internet critics who Siskel and Ebert inspired) reading this book reminded me of why I love criticism and the power that a critic wields in their pen, or in the case of today's media landscape, the keyboard. That's partially why I'm writing this review that you’re currently reading, since as much as I enjoy making videos, reading about Siskel and Ebert and their newspaper columns also reminded me of the value of a text review. They revolutionized both criticism and the film industry and gave rise to the current media landscape of YouTube and internet reviewers who have risen up in their absence. Love them or hate them, you can’t deny that the effect that they had on the world of criticism was transformative.

Matt Singer, author, critic, audiobook narrator. [Image courtesy of Singer’s website: https://www.matt-singer.net/]

Matt Singer, a film critic as well as author, clearly understands his subjects and even states that he was one of the critics that they helped inspire. The book could have very well been a dry history of their partnership, but instead, it goes into great detail, exploring the context of the events, along with describing how the begrudging partnership, between two men who would have otherwise never spoken to each other, grew into something bigger, and even as they would argue over films, grew to respect one another. And it even extends past them, showing the impact that those two men had on the field of film criticism as a whole. As cliché as it might sound, I give Opposable Thumbs by Matt Singer a rating of two thumbs up!

I Am Not A Tech Reviewer: My Review of Google Pixel Buds Pro

I am not a tech reviewer. And no, this isn't one of my cheeky attempts to force-engineer a series title out of my articles. It's just a statement of fact. I have only two big requirements for any tech or appliance I purchase. Does it work? And does it do what my previous version of the same item did? For example, if I purchase a new laptop, it has to have equal or better capabilities than my current one. Same for a camera or an e-reader, and especially for cell phones and earbuds.

Up until early 2020, I was avoiding the wireless earbuds game entirely, mainly because, up until that point, the only ones I saw were still connected via wires, either that weird neckpiece or just a wire connecting them that draped around the back of your head. To me, that was not what I wanted out of wireless earbuds, I wanted them to be two tiny buds that popped into my ears and connected to my phone. And I got my wish with the Raycon Everyday earbuds. That was exactly what I expected out of wireless earbuds, two distinct buds, connected to my phone, the case was small and convenient to carry, and they had buttons with which to operate them using tap combos instead of a switch or button on that aforementioned weird neckpiece.

And I really liked them, for many reasons, I got a good deal on them, because every YouTuber under the sun has Raycon as a sponsor (except me for some reason, Raycon please sponsor me! Although I suppose this article is shooting any chances of that in the foot... ) they worked, and were easy to connect to my phone. Sure, they had their downsides, recently I had been having issues with the buds remaining connected when they were inside the case, and even turning them off before placing them inside wasn't curtailing the issue, but I was happy with them and not intending on replacing them any time soon.

But everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked... I mean, when I accidentally dropped the open case onto the sidewalk while popping the buds into my ears, causing the case to split in half. It still worked, and the Gorilla Tape I used to secure it was working fine, but it was time for a change.

The aforementioned broken case held together by two strips of Gorilla Tape and hope.

And given that in the time since getting the Raycons, I had upgraded from an iPhone to a Google Pixel Pro, I figured it was time to give the Google Pixel Buds Pro a try.

Author John Scalzi had published a review of them a while back that I remember reading, and despite his gripes with them, I figured they were my best choice, given that they were designed to work best with my phone, so I ordered a pair. At $199.99, they were pricey, but I had a gift card that shaved about a quarter of the price, and while they weren't as cheap as the Raycons, they're still cheaper than the comparable Apple AirPods and I'm supporting a slightly less evil corporation by purchasing them!

And they’re shaped like a tiny robot friend!

Anyway, as I said earlier, I don't care much about the specs, I care about whether or not it does the job I need it to do, which is to let me listen to music or audiobooks during my commutes to work and while walking my dog. Does it do that? Admirably! And the fit is pretty good, I didn't even bother swapping into the other ear tips, because the default ones work fine for my ears.

Forgive my messy hair and unkempt beard. Also, jeez, I gotta clean my ears more often!

My only gripe would be that, much like most technology these days, we're foregoing typical buttons for gesture-based operation. The Raycons worked with button clicks, for example, a single click paused, a double click on either bud rewound or skipped ahead a song, and a triple click on either bud raised or lowered the volume. The Google Pixel Buds Pro do not do that, they utilize taps and swipes, with no physical button present, which is taking me a while to get used to. For one thing, my hair occasionally blocks the gesture from working properly. For another, I accidentally pause the music or audiobook when I'm trying to adjust the buds in my ears. And swiping the volume is a crapshoot either way. The only reliable click so far is the Active Noise Cancellation, which I'll get to a bit later. Speaking of, what about the extra features that are of note to techie people but not really relevant to me? Let's take a look. The site lists several bullet points of the features, including:

Charge wirelessly.
Pixel Buds Pro can charge wirelessly with Pixel Stand and other Qi-certified chargers.

This is a pretty big benefit for me, as I love the touch charger (although it's not a dealbreaker). Yes, I know it's not as fast or efficient as a USB-C charger (which it can also charge using) but it makes me feel like I'm in the future, okay? And in the event I don't have a working wire or open port, since some places are still using the USB-A connector, I like to always have a way to charge it.

Lost and found.
If you misplace your earbuds, Find My Device lets you hear them ring if they're nearby, or see their last known location on a map.

This is another big benefit that I wouldn't normally care about, but given that I occasionally lose the case for my Raycons in my pockets or leave it at home while wearing the buds, it's nice to know that I'll be able to keep track of it, even if the worst happens. And it would have been a boon to my brother a few years back if his Raycons could do the ringing, since he lost his Raycons for close to (maybe more) than a month when they fell out of his pocket into the couch, and it was only through happenstance that we happened to stumble upon them while repairing the couch's broken reclining seat.

A battery that keeps up with your life.
Get up to 11 hours of listening time – up to 31 hours with the charging case. And a 5-minute charge in the case gives you up to 1 hour of listening time.

Battery life is important, the Raycon charging case only seemed to get a few days without plugging it in to charge, and when the buds started to die, they needed a few hours in the charger to get back to full power. I took a few trips to Boston between 2020 and now, and in all of those trips, in which I would have to take a roughly 40-some odd minute trip to Penn Station, wait for my train and then take a four hour train ride up to South Station, Compare that, let's be generous and say six hour battery life to the purported specs of eleven whole hours on a single charge. That's enough to get me to Boston and them some! (Say, I should visit again sometime soon)

Not afraid of water.
Pixel Buds Pro are water resistant, so you can wear them during sweaty workouts or on rainy days.

Another one that's not important to me, I never had much issue with rainy days getting my earbuds wet, and I don't work out, but water-resistant technology is always good nowadays since you don't always have a bag of rice on hand.

Premium Active Noise Cancellation adapts to you.
Active Noise Cancellation uses Silent Seal™ to adapt to your ear and block outside sounds.

The noise cancellation feature is the craziest part, I turned it on accidentally while walking the dog and it is wild as all get out. I live in Brooklyn, so silence is not something I've ever been accustomed to. Visiting friends/relatives in non-urban areas, I always have trouble falling asleep because I'm so used to cars whizzing past in the night. But with noise cancellation on, it really does block nearly everything. I saw a bus pass by and it sounded like it was gliding as if it was the Disney World monorail. I've been playing with it a lot, using it on the train when it's crowded and loud so I don't miss a single minute of my book, or just sometimes to see what it'll sound like all quiet. It doesn't block out everything, which is good, because I like being aware of my surroundings, but it's an absolute trip to use, and well worth the price of admission in my book because of the novelty. Plus it means I don't need to pause the audiobook or music when a subway car pulls into the station!

I've yet to use the buds for a phone call, which I seldom used the Raycons for, but I imagine that they'll be decent enough quality. I also haven't used the Google Assistant features, since I also rarely use that while wearing the buds, I'm more apt to use it while holding my phone and activating it that way. It also seems to have a feature where it transmits sounds from outside of the earbuds into my ears, so while I'm wearing them, I can hear outside noise through the earbuds, which is admittedly, kind of cool.

So, to recap:

My threshold for good tech is whether or not it performs its core function well. The Google Pixel Buds Pro do that and then some, and the extra features make it well worth the hefty price tag (which of course the store I purchased them from is now having a sale for, but it's a little late for me) and thus far, I've been very satisfied with their performance, though should I find more gripes, I'll add a postscript to this article. Other than that, I give the Google Pixel Buds Pro five out of five stars and two thumbs up!

Early Cinema: The Sky’s the Limit

Note: This essay was originally written as a script for a video, which will be linked at the end of the article.

The definition of cinema has changed throughout the history of the medium. What was considered cinema in the early days is a far cry from the summer blockbusters released today. But in some ways, early cinema had an advantage over modern cinema. Nowadays, people have very strict expectations of what a movie is or what it should be and don't like it to be challenged. When Star Wars: The Last Jedi was released in theaters, featuring a scene where all audio is suspended for a short sequence, some theaters had to put up signs reassuring the audience that the film wasn't malfunctioning and that the silence was part of the film. Because if an action movie isn't barraging the viewer with rapid-fire sound for two hours, then obviously it must be a technical issue. For whatever advances have been brought to cinema by the march of progress, early cinema is fascinating and has always been fascinating to me, precisely because the filmmakers of that time had free reign to create, as they were not yet beholden to any rules or conventions of what constitutes a film. At that time, a film could be anything and everything!

Tom Gunning wrote in Cinema of Attractions, “Early filmmakers...have been studied primarily from the viewpoint of their contribution to film as a storytelling medium, particularly the evolution of narrative editing. Although such approaches are not totally misguided, they are one-sided and potentially distort both the work of these filmmakers and the actual forces shaping cinema before 1906.”

That's not to say that film isn't a storytelling medium, but back in the early days, not every film followed the now basic formulas, for better or for worse. Nowadays, movies are expected to have narratives and characters. Even ones portraying real-life events insert characters and situations that didn't exist for the sake of crafting a better story, Patch Adams springs to mind, having created a love interest for the main character who never really existed or other so-called "historical dramas" compositing characters together like in The Great Escape, compositing several real people into the characters depicted in the film, or how in Rudy, with the permission of the actual Dan Devine, (who was unaware of how antagonistic the screenwriter planned on making him) turned the football coach into a villain when he was actually the one who insisted on dressing Rudy in the final game. And that isn't even getting into how even documentaries have "narratives" and "characters", despite purportedly portraying actual events and people. Honestly, one of the things about studying film is that you learn to never fully trust anything you see put on a screen because you realize how easily the truth can be twisted and altered to suit a purportedly necessary narrative, and the idea of films becoming almost beholden to narrative elements would make an interesting study on its own, so I'll cut to the chase. This was summed up most succinctly by Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman in Milos Forman's Man on the Moon: "All the most important things in my life are changed around and mixed up for dramatic purposes."

Early cinema was unburdened by that necessity and had “actualities” that were just events filmed by a camera with no narrative to speak of like Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory.

Several years ago, before the COVID-19 Pandemic, I made two trips to The Museum of the Moving Image, down in Queens, mainly for their Jim Henson Exhibit, but I also took a good look at their Behind the Screen exhibit, which details the history of filmmaking, which was, in general, a great experience, and if you live in NYC or are visiting Queens for any reason and have time to kill, I highly suggest visiting it. From that visit, I would postulate that early filmmakers were attempting to use their newfound medium to the fullest. The tools on display at the museum show that while they were working with, by today's standards, primitive tools, such as the early animation tools and kinetoscopes, they were still crafting unique films and did a lot with the little they had. And they utilized every tool they had at their disposal to create unique and interesting films.

Gunning writes of the “cinema of attraction”, which in his words is, “a cinema that bases itself on the quality that Leger celebrated: its ability to show something.” And he takes note of how conventions have changed, especially through the formerly widespread act of simply acknowledging the camera’s existence. “This action, which is later perceived as spoiling the realistic illusion of the cinema, is here undertaken with brio, establishing contact with the audience.” In today's cinema, such an act, unless it is meant to be part of the narrative, like in fourth-wall-breaking films, like Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Deadpool, or any Mel Brooks film, would be unthinkable. While a live performance inherently acknowledges the spectators (such as in pausing for applause or a reaction), films take place in a bubble where spectators are not allowed inside. And that change could be resultant of the shift of what type of art, films are trying to be.

Panofsky mentions the distinction between “folk art” and “art”, as such, "as a rule, folk art derives from what is known as 'higher art'". This on its own does not preclude experimentation, but it does create limits. "It was soon realized that the imitation of a theater performance with a set stage, fixed entries and exits, and distinctly literary ambitions is the one thing the film must avoid." While this is far from definitive proof, it seems to be the start of constricting film into a box of what is and what isn't acceptable to be considered "art". Films must avoid the elements of theater, they must take place in that bubble.

The Museum of the Moving Image contains a lot of history on the development of film, and the development of how not only the people making the films interacted with each other, the creation of various departments and sections of filmmaking (Makeup, Costuming, Set Design, etc.) but also the development of how film interacted with its audience.

Even the experience of seeing a film has become a sort of ritual, divorced from the early days when one would see a film by standing and staring into a large box through eye holes or by spinning a zoescope. And the farther the audience got, the more everything became samey. I mean, it feels like every single movie trailer follows identical beats, even when one film is a high-octane action film and the other is a biopic! Experimentation still exists in film today, I'm not disputing that, but on the whole, the major studios tend to gravitate to safer waters, whereas the pioneers of early cinema, including Louis Lumiere, were intrepid explorers heading for the rough waters ahead to see what they could truly do with their new medium, much like Lumiere depicted in his Boat Leaving the Port.

Early cinema was unique because there were no limits as to what it could be. While the state of cinema today is far from terrible, despite the advances in technology, mainstream cinema isn't quite as experimental, as spontaneous, as it was in the early days when filmmakers were throwing stuff at the wall to see what stuck. Indie film continues this trend to be sure, but it's very rarely seen in major releases. Early filmmakers were visionaries, and through the history of film, some of that vision has been lost because of the shift in what is and isn't considered "cinema" or "art" and the introduction of rules and conventions for films. But I hope that one day soon, in the art of filmmaking, the sky will once again be the limit.

Paisan (1946) and the Subversion of Tradition aka There Are No Happy Endings in War

Note: This essay was originally written as the script for a video, which will be linked at the bottom of this post.

Tale as old as time, right? Boy meets girl, Girl doesn't like Boy initially, Boy persists, and at the end, the couple escapes the bad situation they're in to enjoy their love. Right? Wrong. Paisan is not your average film. It's rough, dirty, and most of all, sad. Just like the events that it depicts. Paisan is an Italian Neo-Realist film directed by Roberto Rossellini, released in 1946, as the middle of an unofficial trilogy, bookended by Rome: Open City, released the previous year, and Germany, Year Zero, later released in 1948. This one is set during the Italian campaign from World War II, while Italy is occupied by the Nazis, but the Allied forces are starting to gain footholds to liberate the country. Hawkeye Pierce once said, "War isn't hell. War is war and hell is hell, and of the two, war is a whole lot worse.”

Paisan takes a similar stance. Because there are small victories, but not the ones you expect. Italian Neo-Realism is all about the subversion of tradition, both by design and by limitations. 1946 in America gave us a lot of classics, but classics that followed the formula we've come to expect. The Big Sleep and It's a Wonderful Life, are two films that ultimately have the expected happy ending. The detective solves the case and George Bailey is the most loved man in all of Bedford Falls. You can see that coming from a mile away. Paisan is different.

Paisan is a film in six parts, featuring six episodes as the liberation moves from the bottom of the boot all the way to the top, featuring all facets of the forces, from the American soldiers to the Italian partisans, to the Nazis, the OSS and even the men of the cloth get in on the action. And as I said earlier, they all feature victories... just not the ones you'd expect.

The first episode finds us in Sicily where an American recon team makes their way through an Italian village, coming across the townspeople. Only one of their group can speak Italian, and the Italians are very mistrustful of the soldiers. One of the locals, Carmela, is willing to guide the Americans through a minefield since her family recently went through the area and she wants to find them. They end up taking refuge in a castle, and as the recon team goes on ahead to scout, they leave one of their men, Joe, a soldier from New Jersey, behind to stay with Carmela until they get back. Joe can't speak Italian, so he tries to teach Carmela to speak English, and as they seem to get closer and start to understand each other despite the language barrier, a German sniper sees the flame from a cigarette and shoots Joe. The rest soon follow and the Germans set up camp, with Carmela hiding Joe's body and attempting to placate the Germans, at least until she can get back to Joe's gun to try to take down the Nazis singlehandedly. They make quick work of her and dump her body off a cliff before they depart, and when Joe's unit returns to find his dead body, they assume that Carmela betrayed them and killed Joe. See what I mean? There was a small victory, Carmela fights back and takes revenge, ostensibly in Joe's name, but Joe's unit will never know her sacrifice and forever believe she turned on them.

The rest of the film continues along the same structure. The second episode moves slightly north, up to Naples, as a drunk MP named Joe (Common name, eh? Wonder if he's also from Jersey) and an Italian street urchin named Pasquale go on an adventure, where Joe reveals how embittered he is, cause of the whole fact that he was fighting in the war, but the major Civil Rights milestones hadn't yet been hit stateside, which ends with Pasquale stealing his boots when he passes out. The following day, Joe catches Pasquale stealing from a military supply vehicle and confronts him, demanding his boots be returned. Pasquale relents and leads Joe back to his house, but upon seeing the squalor that Pasquale lives in, Joe silently leaves without his boots. Joe finds the kid who stole his boots and is about to get them back, but he realizes that Pasquale needs them more than he does.

The third episode takes place in liberated Rome and is personally my favorite segment of the film. A drunk soldier named Fred stumbles around the streets while a woman named Francesca escapes from the cops after a raid on the bar she was drinking in, finds him, and takes him up to a room since drunk soldiers are always looking for a good time. Fred isn't, he's lovesick over a girl he met when the Americans arrived and liberated Rome six months earlier, that he hasn't seen since, and he ships out tomorrow. I like this one because it's not immediately apparent that Fred is talking about Francesca because it's framed as if she listens to his story and she imagines the scenario in her head, placing herself in the place of the girl, it's not until the story finishes and SHE realizes it that it's obvious. (At least that's how I interpreted it) She still has feelings for him, and so leaves an address with the woman who owns the room to give to Fred when he wakes up, so that they can be reunited, but the next morning, Fred ignores the address, assuming it was for a whorehouse, and leaves Rome, and Francesca, waiting outside her apartment. Fred DID find Francesca after all, but he leaves without knowing that he did.

The fourth segment is in Florence, which was half liberated and half-contested, with most of the bridges connecting the two halves destroyed, so the Allied advance is slow-going. An American nurse named Harriet is desperate to see a man she knows, a painter turned revolutionary Partisan leader, named Lupo. A man, Massimo, another partisan, desperately wants to return to his family and find out if they're still alive, so they agree to help each other cross into the contested part of Florence through a supposedly secret passage, to find their loved ones. They go through thick and thin, sneaking across rooftops, evading Nazi gunfire, and finally arrive, and Massimo rushes off to his family as Harriet tries to help a Partisan soldier who was fatally shot in a doorway. As she helps, he reveals to her that Lupo had been killed earlier that day, and her journey was all for not. They made it through against all odds, and Massimo presumably found his family (at least I hope he did) but Lupo was dead the whole time.

The fifth episode takes place at a Catholic monastery where three American chaplains arrive and ask to stay the night. Naturally, the monks are happy to oblige their American comrades in cloth, especially when one of them offers up a whole bunch of rations and food to share with the entire monastery. Similar to the earlier segments, communication is a problem and only one of the chaplains can speak Italian, so he translates for the other two. The monks are none too pleased to discover an important fact about their guests. Only Captain Martin, the one who can speak Italian, is a Catholic. The others are a Protestant and a Jew respectively. Martin doesn't understand their position because, in his eyes, they all believe that they're right, and it's not his place to try to convert his colleagues. They're invited to dinner, but when they arrive, Martin notes that the monks have no food on their plates, they're fasting to gain God's favor to convert the two non-Catholics. The chaplains find a place to stay and are welcomed, but Martin finds out they were only so hospitable because they thought all three of them were Catholic.

The final episode is in the delta of the Po River, where members of the OSS are working with the Italian partisans to rescue some British airmen and fight against the Nazis, but are eventually overwhelmed and captured. The American and British officers are treated as prisoners of war, given proper quarters, and are to be taken care of until a prisoner transfer, because of the Geneva Conventions. The Partisans, on the other hand, are not protected under those, and so are due to be executed the following day. Two of the POWs try to stop the unnecessary bloodshed but are shot for their troubles along with the Partisans. The OSS officers were treated nicely, but the Partisans are shot and dumped into the river.

World War II left Italy with no studios, limited professional actors, (in fact, a good chunk of the actors in this movie weren't professionals), just a ruined country, and filmmakers like Rosselini with stories to tell about the difficulty of living in Post-World War II Italy. The use of traditional archetypes with subversive endings truly displays Rosselini's talent and skill, and the talent and skill of the six writers that he employed to write the film. And I'm gonna say all their names because no one ever takes the time to talk about screenwriters, (and at the time of this writing, it's particularly important to speak about the importance of writers) and I'll be damned if I'm gonna follow suit, especially because I want to be a screenwriter and I'd like to give them the proper credit. Klaus Mann, Marcello Pagliero, Sergio Amidei, Federico Fellini, Alfred Hayes, and Vasco Pratolini, each wrote an episode and they were all brilliant. They were so in sync that I don't think I'd have been able to tell that six different writers wrote the film. It feels like a fluid story to me.

Paisan is a brilliant film. It subverts your expectations to give you realism. Happy endings don't always happen in real life and they sure as hell don't happen in a warzone or a country still reeling from a war. But you get small victories, maybe not the ones you wanted, but victories nonetheless. And I think that's an idea that we need right now. We're not going to get a big victory, or the expected victory all the time. But we've got small victories to keep us going, and if that's what we have, it sucks, but they're still victories. And if you work hard, getting all those small victories, eventually, things will get better. And I think that's a sentiment that we can all agree on right now.

All This For Some Parking Tickets?: A Review of Quantum Leap – A Decent Proposal

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!

Four episodes in and it's only getting better from here! We had some fun revelations in this episode that are going to be interesting going forward, but I will have to dock points for not including a gummy bear handlink in this episode. In fact we didn't see Janis at all, only heard of her actions, so that's interesting, considering she'd been in every episode thus far. But that's getting ahead of ourselves, let's start with a little recap.

Given the fashion of the ‘80s it took until the mirror shot to convince me this wasn’t just a gay bar

Ben has his first (as Ian referred to it) “gender-creative experience” and leaps into a woman for the first time! And he certainly has an easier time than Sam did, although I imagine it's because the '80s are slightly more progressive for women than the '60s. At the very least, Ben is allowed to wear pants. Ben is one half of a bounty hunter couple on the trail of a seemingly benign woman with a court date for outstanding parking tickets. His host's boyfriend also proposes to him, and Ben isn't quite sure how to respond, which causes some wrinkles in the leap since Ben has remembered that he left a girlfriend behind in 2022, although he doesn't remember who she is just yet. And back at the Project, Jenn is at work trying to figure out the story behind Ben and Janis' partnership and Magic confides his history with Quantum Leap to Ian, to the delight of likely all the fans of the original show who are watching. Not as much punching the air as from the gummy bear handlink on my end, but close.

I don’t know if this was the best plan, stage a break-in at your girlfriend’s dad’s place and leave her in the car doesn’t feel like the right vibe for a marriage proposal to me.

So, first things first, I absolutely loved this episode. I know I've liked every episode so far, but this feels like a big step in the right direction to me. The episode had some good comedy in it, even if it doesn't quite go as far as the original show when it comes to gender-bending humor, which is a double edged sword that I'll address a little bit later in this review. The guest cast was fantastic, with special notice having to go to both Justin Hartley and Sofia Pernas, who are both absolutely stellar in this. And what makes this episode great is that it feels like a classic episode, with the plot not being action-oriented, although there's plenty of fighting and running and chasing to go around. But the basic premise of the episode is about relationships, Ben having to take the reins for what might be a very important decision for his host and not knowing the right answer, but wanting love to prevail because he feels terrible about abandoning his girlfriend in the future. Little does he know that she's a lot closer than he thinks. I like it when the plots of the leap intertwine with the characters, even if I though that the “The answer is always right in front of you” was a little hackneyed in how obviously it was telegraphing the end of the episode cliffhanger being Ben realizing that he left Addison behind.

The sign of true love, matching gray jammies!

Speaking of Addison, we got to see some hologram stuff in the episode, first when Addison is run through by the drug dealer's goons and then again when Ben tries to grab her hand at the end. It's not much, but it certainly looks more convincing than when it happened to Al. (No disrespect to the old show but you always knew when hologram tricks were coming cause the shot looked different). And Caitlin Bassett really showed a full range of emotions when Ben was discussing the “woman he left behind” knowing full well that it was her but not being able to tell Ben that and it was so beautiful at the end when he realized it and they fully reunited. Now that Ben knows, how will that impact his leaps in the future? Part of why Al wasn't allowed to tell Sam about Donna (for those unaware, in the 2nd episode of the original show, Sam rewrote his own history and repaired the relationship between a former fiancee of his and her father, and in the revised timeline, their relationship eventually resulted in a marriage and Donna overseeing aspects of the Project. But until Sam returned briefly in Season 4's “The Leap Back”, he was unaware of it, because he typically ends up leaping into those involved with romantic entanglements and Sam's choir-boy mentality means that he would be hesitant to kiss someone or do whatever else it may take to ensure a leap's success. Ben and Addison seem more pragmatic, but it remains to be seen what toll that may take on their relationship.

Oh girl! (Sorry, I couldn’t resist)

Now, onto the “gender-creative experience”, the original show was a little shaky when it came to the episodes where Sam leaped into women, not only is it a lot of ground already tread by Scott Bakula back in the original show, but it can stray into uncomfortable territory in 2022. I'm not saying that what they did was necessarily sexist or offensive, but there was a lot of playing with gender roles in a way that I feel that comedy has perhaps moved on from since the original show. That is not to say that I don't think that Ben shouldn't find himself uncomfortable in the clothes, (of any leapee but especially women given the inherent differences in the design of the clothing) but I like that they're not taking the same approach as the original. The most we got was that Ben was wearing clothes where he wasn't used to wearing them, but it's not like he was in a dress and heels, he was an '80s bounty hunter, and not a '60s secretary so he wore pretty practical clothing. For the first cross-gender leap, maybe that was a tad boring, but hopefully we'll work up to it. With transphobia being a bit more front and center and being out of the '90s where crossdressing was the basis for a lot more humor than we remember, it's a safer way to go about it, although given that we've got Ian, I trust the writers to do that type of story correctly. Maybe he should be a bit more reactive to the situations, he hasn't really ever had time for an “Oh boy” moment because everything moves so quickly but I think we deserve one.

The dream of every Ghostbusters fan, to have coffee in the park with Ernie Hudson!

We finally heard Magic's backstory! Which I obviously already knew because I've seen the original show, but it was great to actually hear them say it and I like that we're always getting mentions of Sam and Al in the show. And it was so cool to finally hear what it was like for a leapee, that Magic felt a gentle nudge and allowed Sam to leap into him and then blacked out for a few days. Now, whether or not that feeling was the same for every leapee or just Magic (since he had some form of ESP prior to his experience) isn't clear, and definitely doesn't work when you consider when Sam leaped into bad people, who probably wouldn't allow their body to be taken over, but it's a neat explanation that the original show never gave us. And learning that Magic was the one who brought PQL out of mothballs because of his lingering recurring dreams of Sam Beckett was equally cool, although I'm wondering when we might get mention or appearance of Sam's wife Donna or his daughter Sammy Jo, given that they also worked for the original project and have a vested interest in bringing Sam home.

I guess this does explain why Ben started getting targeted Instagram ads for the Mount Wilson Observatory…

Jenn also has some impact on this week's episode, but it's mostly just telling Addison that Ben was off, presumably with Janis working on the new code, when he was supposed to be other places, which means that Addison has to recall every time Ben went off alone to do something, but also be prepared to find out that he was lying about where he was. Addison and Jenn get a good moment too, where Addison tells her that if Ben is doing this for a good reason, then he won't need to apologize and if it was for bad reasons, Addison won't need to forgive him. I also want to know when we're going to get a Jenn episode, because I'm very curious to know how she got onto the Project and what her deal is.

Like Batman, it only takes Ben ONE PUNCH!

I like that the episode is funnier and has a bit of a lighter tone, especially with that first bounty when the guy harasses Ben at the bar. Addison's crack about how that's about typical is also pretty funny. It wasn't quite a broad comedy, but it was definitely lighter than the all-action first two episodes and it was a lighter premise than the Vietnam PTSD boxing episode the week prior. A lot of these modern serialized shows (particularly Star Trek: Discovery) have every episode be about THE MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER and I like having a fun little goofy episode to balance that out, especially if we're going to have this overarching Janis plot line to contend with. Even the ending, which is ridiculous goofy and unbelievable, is still compelling to watch.

“You’re running an illegal drug cartel by yourself?” “What? Like it’s hard?”

If I had one complaint about the plot, is that the bounty plot is, perhaps not over-used, but certainly, nothing new, since I just watched an episode of the series Castle which had a very similar plot, detailing the death of a reporter who had stumbled onto a mythical cartel leader being killed for his troubles and the cartel leader's identity being revealed as a seemingly benign real-estate agent woman who Castle and Beckett had encountered earlier in the episode. And then in this episode, we've got Tammy Jean/Carla, seemingly being an unwitting pawn in a drug cartel's scheme, only to actually be the brains behind the operation. Although not too brainy, considering she allowed her car to get that many parking tickets while doing her illegal work. I'm not here to tell criminals how to do their job, but if you're gonna do something illegal, don't draw attention to yourself! That's not a bad thing that it's similar, but maybe I expect more out of an episode that they were clearly pushing very hard because of the inclusion of Justin Hartley and the revelations that the episode revealed about the characters. It certainly made more sense that Ben's leap was to stop a drug cartel rather than just ensure that a woman made it to her court date on time, but sometimes a simpler premise can be more fulfilling and I hope they don't fall back on stuff like this too much, because while it works for Castle, ironically, I want my time travel show to stay grounded in helping people rather than making large abstract changes. Ensuring the marriage of bounty hunters is more what I'm looking for rather than stopping a drug cartel.

Overall, the episode was great, I like how love prevailed and the revelations about Magic and this new Project were invaluable, as was Ben finally remembering the full breadth of his relationship with Addison. And it's very exciting, not only because we've got another episode coming next week, but because NBC has ordered an additional six episodes to make an even eighteen-episode order! This means that they've got more time to stretch out the story and hopefully it'll mean things will slow down and not rush as much.

As for the next episode...

So Is Every Third Quantum Leap Episode Gonna Be A Boxing Episode?: A Review of Quantum Leap – Somebody Up There Likes Ben

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!

It’s so beautiful in High Definition!

...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.

Float like an atom, sting like a quark!

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.

P.S. Seriously I love that classic-style handlink and my Lego replica just isn't cutting it anymore.

We Leap In Peace For All Mankind: A Review of Quantum Leap – Atlantis

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! (Does a series of review articles really need a saga sell? Well, if we had one for every episode of the show, I'm gonna put one for every review!)

As with last week and going into the future, Spoilers Ahead!

Well, it was better than the first one, right? I kid, we'll get into the nitty gritty of my feelings for this episode, and full disclosure, I am writing this after having seen the third episode because I was under the weather last week, but things are definitely heading in the right direction. The original show, for all my love, had a rough start too, and it boggles the mind that they chose such a heavy character-based theme for their second episode after their pilot, whereas this episode here is a much more action-oriented story, which is both good and bad. But let's start with a brief recap of the episode.

Ben in SPAAACE: Ben Song (Raymond Lee) & Addison Augustine (Caitlin Bassett) on the hull of the Space Shuttle Atlantis

This episode finds Ben leaping into the body (yes, in this show he occupies their body, the original show had them swap places, we don't have time to unpack that, they chose to get rid of the Waiting Room concept in this one which I personally disagree with) of astronaut David Tamara, who is part of an important mission to set up the, I hesitate to say groundwork, for the International Space Station. But the mission turns deadly because a debris storm will claim David's life unless Ben can prevent it. And back at the Project, Magic and Jenn are hot on the trail of Janis Calavicci while Addison and Ian debate whether or not they should give a flash drive recovered in Ben and Addison's apartment to the Project. It's a lot to work on in one episode, but it serves a purpose to show that everyone is reeling from Ben's absence and that he was the great uniter, able to get them all working to a common goal, a skill Ben brings to the Space Shuttle.

The Atlantis Crew L-R: Samantha Stratton (Carly Pope), Ben Song (Raymond Lee), Jim Reynolds (José Zúñiga), Max (Leith M. Burke)

When the promo images for the episode came out, I was punching the air because of the name of one of Daniel's fellow astronauts, Samantha Stratton. To a new fan, that name means nothing, and it probably means nothing to casual fans, but to me, it means a lot. In “Genesis”, aka the episode I talked about ad-nauseum in the last review, comparing it, you may remember that Sam leapt into Captain Tom Stratton. In that episode, he not only completed Tom's test, but also helped delay Tom's wife Peggy from going into premature labor and saving the life of their unborn daughter, who Peggy names Samantha, in honor of Sam, who had mentioned his own name while still amnesiac earlier in the episode. It stands to reason that the daughter of a test pilot would end up going to space, but there's an interesting wrinkle. They never mention that, not back at the Project, Samantha doesn't bring up her father flying the X-2, which is strange, because the name isn't one that they picked out of a hat. They chose that name on purpose. Were the scenes cut for time? Or does this indicate that the omission was intentional and may relate to the season-long arc, whatever it ends up being? These are the things that keep me up at night folks.

Beth Calavicci (Susan Diol)

But the second promo image that made me absolutely shit a brick was seeing that Susan Diol would be reprising her role as Beth Calavicci. Now, Diol was not a long-time cast member of the show, in fact she only appeared in one episode as a main character and one episode, the finale, in a cameo role at the very end, but with Dean Stockwell no longer with us, her presence is very important. She's the closest that we've got to having Al's presence on the show. It not only shows that the show cares about the legacy of the show, but that they're trying to bring the Janis plot into the fold with familiar elements to ground it, such as Beth. And she hasn't missed a beat, although I wish her role was larger, it was just fantastic to see her again and her talking about Al brought a tear to my eye. But maybe we'll see more of her in the future?

Janis Calavicci (Georgina Reilly)

As for the Janis plot, I'm warming onto it, if only because it seems that Janis isn't so much an antagonist, but more of a deuteragonist, even if her methods are the same as every stock hacker villain in every show with her blowing up her server room to prevent Magic and Jenn from recovering information. If Al was around, I think he'd agree with me that she's being quite the nozzle! But what we learned in this episode were interesting and I hope that seeing more of her next week will help reinforce her character's arc in a clearer way.

The Quantum Leap Project Team At Odds: Magic (Ernie Hudson), Jenn (Nanrisa Lee), Ian (Mason Alexander Park), Addison (Caitlin Bassett)

It was also interesting to see the team at odds without Ben around to unite them, they're all stressed and on edge, and they have different goals, particularly Addison, who is worried for Ben, but Magic and Jenn objectively realize that Ben had goals that were quite different than everyone else's and maybe should be kept in the dark. It's good that they decide to give him the benefit of the doubt and give Addison a chance to get the information from Ben as time goes on, though.

But what did I think of the episode as a whole? Well, I'm still not sold on the 50/50 split on Project vs Leap. The crux of the show, at least for me, is the leap, seeing Sam (and now Ben) back in the past, experiencing the life of someone else and fixing it. Marinating in that life, spending days or even weeks there as he tries to solve the problem. This episode is very action-oriented, as was the first episode, and it feels like we keep jumping back to the Project instead of spending time on the leap itself. I wanna see Ben and Addison solving problems in the past, I wanna see Addison whacking the handlink, I want to see Ben relating to people. And we got a little bit of that, but I want more of it, and I want the end of the episode to feel earned. This felt like a lot of standing around talking and then suddenly action! Hopefully this is just growing pains, though. The pacing is still problematic, but again, growing pains?

We didn't get much on Addison, but we did get some info about Ben, which helps because not even Ben himself knows who he is. We hear about Ben's personality from Jenn, who informs us that Ben was the glue for the project, which is a great thing to learn and then Ben uses that skill to bring the astronauts together and even turns Samantha Stratton in for a reckless plan, not as a snitch, but to convince the others to work together. Stratton will do what she wants anyway, at least this way we're all in this together. It's a neat dynamic and it's something that Sam might have done.

The time period was once again something that could have taken place in any time period, particularly because it was an episode that didn't take place on Earth, the only real plot point hinging on the time period was the reasoning for the mission and the placement of Mir. But at least the visuals were more interesting because we were IN SPAAACE! Honestly, a lot of the visuals felt like a budget version of “For All Mankind” a prestige streaming show that I absolutely adore, so that was a big plus.

I'm trying not to theorize so much, since they'll never make the show the way I imagine it, but I have hopes that we'll see more lore as we go forward. Gummy bear handlink, that's all I ask, Martin Gero! But in all seriousness, I hope that we'll figure out more of why the original Project was shuttered and why they decided to bring it back online so many years later. I also hope that, with Deborah Pratt around as a producer, that we get to hear Ziggy properly interacting with Ian, Jenn, Addison and Magic back at the Project. If there's one thing this show needs, it's a hybrid computer with the ego of Barbara Streisand.

Overall, I enjoyed this week's episode, even if it wasn't quite what I'd expected it to be, and I have high hopes for the next one, because in Quantum Leap tradition, the third episode is taking us back to the 1970's for a bout in the boxing ring, which is what Sam did back in his third episode, so if that episode is any indication, we're in for a treat. See you next time!

What did you think of the episode? Let me know in the comments!

Putting Right What Once Went Wrong: A Review of Quantum Leap - July 13th, 1985

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!

First off, there will be spoilers ahead, so go check out the episode, it aired on NBC on September 19th and should be streaming on Peacock as you read this, so watch that and come back here.

It's weird to see things like newsstands and turntables be considered part of “history”, right?

Did you watch it? Great! Let's begin. First off, I want to say that I definitely enjoyed the episode. It wasn't perfect by any stretch, but I've been a fan of Quantum Leap for about eleven years at this point, so having it return, in any form, makes me extremely happy. And unlike Star Trek and its return, the network is giving it a chance to make it on broadcast TV instead of relegating it to an exclusive streaming service. Which is already a plus for me! So, I'll start by giving a brief recap of the plot in the event you're reading this and haven't seen it.

Project Quantum Leap has been revived and Dr. Ben Song (Raymond Lee) is one of the leads working on the Project, alongside his fiancee, Addison (Caitlin Bassett), Ian (Mason Alexander Park) the lead programmer, Jenn (Nanrisa Lee) the head of security of the Project, and Herbert “Magic” Williams (Ernie Hudson) the head of the Project and a former leapee, with Sam having leapt into “Magic” back in Season 3's “The Leap Home” aka the one where Sam saved his brother from dying in Vietnam. During their engagement party, Ben gets a message from a mysterious figure who tells him that they have a brief window to work with and like Sam before him, Ben Song steps into the Quantum Leap Accelerator and vanishes. He awoke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that are not his own and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. This time around, Addison is the hologram and Ben is in Philadelphia in the eighties, working as an undercover cop on a jewel heist to steal the Hope Diamond, needing to save one of the members of the crew, only in it to get money to pay for his wife's medical treatment, from being killed.

The cast from L to R: Herbert “Magic” Williams, Jenn, Ian, Addison Augustine

As a pilot episode, they picked a very safe leap. Apparently the original pilot featured the San Francisco Earthquake, but the network ordered a new pilot and this is the one that they went with. A jewel heist isn't the most unique premise, and it's something that could have been slotted down into any time period, whereas the best leaps on the original show were dealing with situations that could only happen in that specific era, such as episodes dealing with racism in the pre-Civil Rights south, or when he leaped into Lee Harvey Oswald, which naturally can only happen in and around the Kennedy assassination. And the eighties, as a decade, unfortunately isn't very visually distinctive. Yes, there is an eighties that looks cool, the neon eighties, but in the original show, any time that Sam leaped into the eighties, it was used as a backdrop for a more interesting premise, like “Temptation Eyes: February 1, 1985” where Sam encountered a woman with psychic abilities who could perceive Sam as himself as opposed to the leapee, all the while Sam was supposed to figure out how to prevent her from becoming the next victim of a serial killer. A jewel heist is not nearly as interesting, even in the eighties, and that brings me to my next point.

The episode moves at a breakneck speed. We meet Ben and Addison and then Ben leaps and then Ben is tossed right into it, and he has to drive the car and then he has to deal with the crew and all that other stuff. In comparison, “Genesis: Part 1 – September 13, 1956” has the episode open with Al finding out that Sam is leaping, we get the visual shorthand for time travel and then Sam spends about ten minutes of the episode dealing with having total amnesia and a different reflection and then Al shows up for the first time, but Al doesn't talk to Sam for another ten minutes and Sam has to figure things out on his own, fumble around without direction. Not to mention that Al can't tell Sam anything about the future or himself because the rules of the Project prohibit giving information to the leaper that they don't already know. I'm not against the concept of those rules being loosened, but to just dump everything onto Ben in that short amount of time, it's just unrealistic that he accepts everything as fast as he does. There was a lot of time to breathe in the original pilot episode so that the viewer could adapt to the premise, but I suppose the network didn't want viewers to be confused during that first commercial break so they insisted on dumping everything out in the first ten minutes, not to mention the fact that the episode was shorter than a standard episode, I watched it on TV and it ended at like 10:55, early enough for them to play an extended season trailer at the end, so the episode was already shorter than it should've been, usually a show ends closer to the :58 mark if it's an hour-long show, it should've been a two-parter to allow for breathing room, and then they should have at least been full parts.

Pacing issues aside, I really like all of the characters. Ben and Addison are both really interesting thus far, and Ben especially, given that he has reasons to leap that neither he nor Addison know about at this time (because of the Swiss Cheese memory effect). It was a little weird, because we didn't really get to know the real Sam before he leaped, but we got to see the real Ben for a little bit and it seems at odds with the charming, dashing, knocking out bad guys Ben that was on the leap. Was that part of the host bleeding through or does Ben have layers that we don't know about? I'm excited to find out! And as for Addison, we don't know that much about her yet, apart from the fact that she loves Ben and will do whatever it takes to bring him home. I'm hoping we'll see more of her character as the show progresses.

The original Quantum Leap had some interesting characters back at the Project, but they never really got a chance to shine, most only showing up once or twice. I think Gooshie was the only one who appeared more than once, but the new show seems to be intending to split the focus 50/50 on both Ben and his leaps and the Project, which I like, because one of my favorite parts of Quantum Leap fanfic and the tie-in novels were parts that included asides to back at the Project with Donna, Tina, Gooshie and Dr. Beeks, so I'm curious to see where things will go. I'm also curious to see how things will go specifically with Magic, considering that he's the first character we've met thus far who has a tangible connection with both the Becketts (having been a member of Tom Beckett's platoon in Vietnam) and with the Project, since Sam had leaped into Magic, so he may possibly have residual memories of being in the Waiting Room. We also get an interesting twist in the episode, learning that the mysterious figure who triggered Ben's leap was none other than Janice Calavicci, aka the daughter of Al, whose actor Dean Stockwell passed away last year (the episode was also dedicated to him), which was a nice touch they didn't need to add, but I appreciate that they're trying their best to make this a true continuation, featuring connections to the original, but not just re-doing the same show, if the pictures we saw of Sam and Al during the episode are any indication. (Plus I've seen some promo images from next week's episode that further that idea, with a character on the leap and a character back at the Project both having a connection to the original show.)

Our new Quantum Leaper, Ben Song! Huh, a time traveling Dr. Song, where have I heard that before?

And now for the pedantic Quantum Leap fan nitpicking! My first one is that there's no time dilation at the Project. Addison tells Ben that it took them a few hours to locate him, which I found hilarious that she was so concerned, the original Project routinely lost Sam for days and weeks on end, where Sam's leaps were instantaneous to him, the Project suffered from time dilation. That's a minor point, but it was interesting to note. The second one is that everything looks too sleek and modern at the Project. I know that the original show was made in the nineties and that was just how it was back then, if Star Trek was any indication, but I miss the gummy bear control panels and Ziggy being a blue orb. I did however like the redesign of the accelerator chamber, that looked dope. And the third is that they did a way with the concept of the Waiting Room. For the uninitiated, the Waiting Room was the place where Sam's hosts went in between the leaps, since Sam was replacing them with only their aura causing him to appear to be the host to the people around them. The new show is taking the approach that Ben and his host are occupying the same space at the same time, something about the law of quantum superposition or something. I might be in the minority, but I liked the Waiting Room and thought it opened up unique opportunities for the show, particularly if this new one intends to spend a lot of time back at the Project. However, I'm not going to say that it doesn't fit into the canon or anything, it's clear that this is a new Project Quantum Leap based on the old one (since it takes place in L.A. and not the New Mexico desert), so it's not out of the realm of possibility that they changed the method by which the leaper interacts with the past.

But apart from those nitpicks, I really liked the episode and am definitely looking forward to seeing more of the show as the season goes on. And I certainly hope that it will run for at least as long as it's predecessor, but hopefully longer. At least long enough for them to wrangle a certain former Starfleet captain to make an appearance. (I'm holding out for the cliffhanger Season 1 finale being Ben running into Sam and triggering the biggest “Oh boy” in the show's history)

I Am Not A Theater Critic: Mr. Saturday Night Review

I am not a theater critic. Among the many hats that I wear, book reviewer, movie reviewer, bookseller, guy on the internet who talks about his dog too much, theater critic is not one of them. And there's a reason for that, I don't really see shows all that often. I think I can count the shows I've seen on one hand unless you count the Spider-Man, Scooby-Doo, and Barney the Dinosaur live shows at Radio City Music Hall. The reasoning is mainly the price, despite living in New York City, going to a Broadway show is reserved for a special occasion and usually I only get to go if the tickets were won in a contest or as a gift. I bring this up because for my birthday this year, my parents got tickets for my brother and me to go see Mr. Saturday Night at the Nederlander Theatre.
Let's get this out of the way first, Billy Crystal's still got it! It makes me wonder why the Academy Awards hasn't had him back in over a decade to host when he's still got both the timing and physical ability required to host the show, and considering he's only hosted nine times, having him back one final time to make an even ten hosting gigs seems like a no-brainer to me. Besides, how else am I going to hear funny songs about the Best Picture nominees set to old lounge singer standards?

Watch this and tell me you aren't charmed, I dare you!

But back to the show, I admit, despite being a huge fan of Billy Crystal since I was a kid, I haven't seen all of his movies, which means that before seeing the show, all I knew about Mr. Saturday Night was what I remembered from listening to the audiobook for “Still Foolin' 'Em”. It's not for lack of trying, it's just never been on any streaming service I own and I sort of wait for movies I wanna watch to come included. So I was going into this knowing that it was about an aging comedian and that was basically it, which I think might have been a good thing.

I won't spoil too much, but the premise of Mr. Saturday Night: The Musical is that Buddy Young Jr. (Billy Crystal), an aging comedian deals with the trials and tribulations of his waning comedy career, when he gets a unique opportunity to return to the limelight, but has to grapple with self-sabotage, lack of support from uncaring showbiz bigwigs and his fractured relationship with his daughter Susan (Shoshana Bean). The musical features a lot of names that I had heard of, or who had appeared in things I'd seen, Buddy's wife Elaine is played by Randy Graff who originated the Broadway role of Fantine in Les Miserables in 1987, Buddy's brother Stan is played by David Paymer, who played the same role in the 1992 film, which is an inspired piece of casting, and two of the actors in it, in addition to other credits, both appeared in recurring roles on the CBS Sherlock Holmes adaptation Elementary, Chasten Harmon who plays Annie Wells, Buddy's new agent (a role originally played by Helen Hunt in the film) and Jordan Gelber, who plays several roles across the show. Gelber also originated the role of Brian in Avenue Q which I always forget about because I saw him on Elementary before I ever saw Avenue Q.

Going into the show I knew that it was going like it, because I've never disliked any Billy Crystal project, and I absolutely adored it. The story was fantastic, touching and heartfelt in all the right places, I particularly love that it's very family-oriented, particularly the relationship between Buddy and Stan, and the music was phenomenal. So much so that I've been listening to the soundtrack nonstop since I saw the show back in July. And with the show only running until September 4th, (which has passed since I started writing this review) it might be the only way for most to experience it, which I highly recommend, because the music is great, I particularly like “A Little Joy”, “Timing”, “Unbelievable”, and “Stick Around”, but every song is a gem.

The entire soundtrack for your listening pleasure

Since seeing the show, I have now watched the original film and you know what? It makes me appreciate the musical even more. The original film performed poorly at the box office despite it being a great film, in my humble opinion, and I think the musical learned a few lessons from that experience. The musical and the movie end the same way, mostly, with Buddy reconciling with Susan, but because the musical puts more work into Susan's character, it resonates a lot more. And Buddy's acerbic tendencies play a lot better on stage than they do in the movie for some reason that I can't put my finger on. I still enjoyed the film, but I think I'm glad I saw the musical first, because I would've just been comparing it the whole time, whereas I had the reverse happen, but I'm able to appreciate the changes more.

If I had one critique, it's that they don't really pay off anything for Stan, Buddy's brother, in regards to the fact that they establish that Stan had originally asked out Elaine, Buddy's future wife, hours before she met Buddy, and she fell in love with Buddy instead. They mention it once in passing where Elaine off-handedly jokes to Stan that it was almost them together, but apart from that, it seems a strange plot element to include that sort of goes nowhere. In the original film, Stan is shown to have a crush on her from afar, but when Buddy sends Stan to bring Elaine backstage so that Buddy can meet her, she's obviously already interested in Buddy and Buddy alone, so any unresolved feelings are entirely on Stan's side, while Elaine in the musical had the experience of meeting Stan before seeing Buddy perform which was a strange addition to me.
The in-theater experience was also very interesting, like I said, I haven't been to many shows but this one felt very different, which I imagine is because it was Billy Crystal, who is a stand-up comedian before anything. Everyone clapped in between songs, which I thought was not the proper way to act at a show, but evidently it was different for this show, but the actors seemed okay with it, so I guess it was what they wanted. After all, a huge part of the show is that Buddy interacts with the audience during “Buddy's First Act” to do what he calls “Yiddish scat-singing” which would fall flat if the audience wasn't providing the “Oys” and “Veys”.

What's the difference between jazz scat singing and Yiddish scat singing? Flem!

My brother and I were also among the youngest people in the audience, the entire theater had a faint smell of ointment. (I kid, I kid) Which isn't surprising, because of course, Billy Crystal is an older comedian, but I think there's something for everyone in this show, particularly if you enjoy Billy Crystal's unique brand of comedy. Of course, you can't go see the show anymore because it's no longer playing, but I definitely recommend checking out the soundtrack and hopefully we'll see some sort of full release of the show in full so that everyone can experience this wonderful show. I don't think I'm the type of person to do ratings, but I'd give it five out of five stars and two thumbs up.