Quantum Leap (2022)
Season 1, Episode 3:
Somebody Up There Likes Ben
Written by Drew Lindo
Directed by Marcus Stokes
Original air date: 10/3/2022
October 2, 1977
Ben leaps into Danny "Youngblood" Hill, a middleweight boxer in Las Vegas, the day before he's set to participate in a big prize fight.
Tropes:
- The Alleged Computer: Played with; Addison experiences delays in retrieving data about the leap from Ziggy. Granted, Ziggy was prone to tantrums at the original Project, but in this case Ian narrows the delays down to a Trojan horse program that was accidentally uploaded to Ziggy from Janis's hard drive in the previous episode.
- The Boxing Episode: Ben leaps in with only a day to train before the most important match of Danny's life.
- Game Changer: This is the first leap since "The Leap Between the States" where a leaper leaps outside of his own lifetime. Ian handwaves this by explaining how Ben's new code somehow allows him to slingshot through the timeline to get to his end goal.
- Gender Bender: At the end of the episode, Ben leaps into bounty hunter Eva Sandoval. This is a lead-in for the next episode, "A Decent Proposal".
- I Am Not Left-Handed: Danny's a southpaw; Ben's a righty.
- In Love with the Gangster's Girl: Danny is secretly in a relationship with his boxing opponent's girlfriend.
- Internal Homage: The episode opens with Ben leaping into a boxing ring and taking a punch, just like the beginning of the original series' third episode, "The Right Hand of God".
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Ian's line about Ben's quest taking "no less than ten, but probably closer to twenty" leaps almost sounds like they really want to add the caveat, "...depending on if we get picked up for more episodes."note
- Oh, Crap!: Addison and Ben decide that the only way he can win the championship is by imitating the original fight exactly and then exploiting an opening that Danny missed. Ben lands the hit, only for his opponent to get back up.
- Our Time Travel Is Different: The episode establishes two major differences between Ben's leaps and Sam's.
- First, and most prominently, Ben's new code for the accelerator allows him to slingshot out of his own lifetime. By contrast, Sam's leaps — aside from two exceptions — only occurred at points during Sam's lifetime.
- Sam's leaps involved a temporal switcheroo with the leapee; Sam kept his own physicality while being disguised by the leaper's "aura," and the leapee back at the Project's waiting room would keep their own physicality within Sam's aura. Ben, on the other hand, is in the same place and time as the leapee due to quantum superposition, and retains the leapee's physicality and muscle memory.
- Phlebotinum Analogy: Ian compares the jump map from the previous episode to a gravity assist
. Ben is using his jumps to build up "temporal momentum" to get himself to his final destination. - The '70s: 1977. And funnily enough, this was one of the three yearsnote that the original Quantum Leap never focused on.
- Slipping a Mickey: Janis drugs Beth's tea, and steals Al's old Project Quantum Leap artifacts, including his old Ziggy handlink.
- The Vietnam Vet: Darryl, who is suffering from severe PTSD, and who takes his own life in the original timeline. Ben's goal gradually shifts from winning the prize fight to saving Darryl's life.
- Wham Shot: A twofer: in Janis's secret lab, the camera pans over to where Al's old handlink is hooked up to her computer. Then right after, we get a shot of a pod in the background, where Janis is likely setting up her own Imaging Chamber.
- Workaholic: It's established that Addison has been spending the past three leaps working herself to exhaustion to bring Ben home. This culminates with her fainting in the Imaging Chamber, and both Magic and Ben have to tell her to try and get some rest.
