Quantum Leap
Season 1, Episode 9:
Play it again, Seymour
Sam: Sometimes when I'm quantum leaping, I have really good days. Days when I win the race, stop the bad guy, and kiss the girl. And then there are the bad days...
Written by Donald P Bellisario, Tom Blomquist, Scott Shepherd
Directed by Aaron Lipstadt
Airdate: May 17, 1989
April 14, 1953
Sam leaps into a New York City area private detective with an uncanny resemblance to the Hollywood screen legend, Humphrey Bogart. He must not only find the killer of his detective partner but also avoid becoming the killer's next victim.
Tropes:
- Acceptable Breaks from Reality: The believability of two men having a shootout at La Guardia airport in the 1950s without attracting police attention lessens the further from the action the viewer is pulled. Maybe in the 1950s before electronic surveillance and all night businesses. Very unlikely in the late 80s when the episode was aired. Laughably unbelievable to the modern viewer.
- The Big Damn Kiss: Allison and Sam as Nick after Sam saves her life.
- Bottomless Magazines: Downplayed; the antagonist does stop to reload, but fires about twice as many shots as the weapon he carries would be able to hold.
- Catchphrase: Sam mutters his oft-used phrase "Oh, boy..." as he realizes he has no idea how to explain the situation to the cops.
- Continuity Snarl: The episode's original airing ended with Sam leaping into Samantha Stormer from "What Price Gloria?", the fourth episode of the second season, rather than into the season 2 opener "Honeymoon Express" or another leap.
- Darkened Building Shootout: The final act includes Lionel kidnapping Seymour, shooting at Sam as Nick as they duck and dodge between parked planes.
- Déjà Vu: For the first third of the story, Sam keeps saying he feels like he's experiencing Deja Vu. Finally, he realizes that he read the novelization of the events that are currently happening to Nick. Unfortunately, the novel was written as one of the then-popular Guess The Ending stories, so it's no help.
- Elevator Failure: Walking backwards to get away from Seymour, Sam as Nick almost falls to his death when the elevator doors open but the elevator car is several floors down. This is not supposed to be possible but the safety latch that prevents the doors from opening if the car is not present has been broken, possibly intentionally.
- Females Are More Innocent: Played with throughout the story. Sam doesn't want to be that Allison could have possibly killed Phil or is trying to kill Nick. Al repeatedly reminds him that females are capable of murder and that it's possible that the murder was never solved because the 1950s cops fail for this trope. Played straight in that Allison does turnout to be innocent.
- Gender Bender: At the end of the episode during its original airing, Sam leaps into secretary Samantha Stormer. This was an error, as this was the lead-in for "What Price Gloria?", which wouldn't happen for another four episodes.
- The Ghost: The hitman Klapper is mentioned several times as a suspect for Phil's murder. Sam even follows this lead for much of the episode. Klapper is so mysterious in New York underworld circles that no one knows what he looks like and some rumors persist that Klapper is actually a woman (which could explain why the cops are having such a hard time finding Klapper; not many would suspect a women to be a hitman in 1953).
- Got Me Doing It: The longer Sam is Nick the more he finds himself speaking entire sentences of euphemistic 50s pulp detective slang.
- Hardboiled Detective: Sam as Nick is a detective who is working to solve the murder of his partner and prevent his own murder.
- Head-Turning Beauty: Allison. Every man we meet in the storyline who has met Allison wants Allison.
- Implausible Deniability: Post leap Sam realizes he's holding a gun, standing over a dead body riddled with bullets, just as the police burst in to arrest him for murder.
- Motive Rant: Lionel claims that he killed Phil to free Allison so they could be together. Now he needs to kill Nick so he and Allison can escape to be together forever. However, the camera pans over to show Allison crying, bound and gagged in the plane.
- Noir Episode: Surprisingly enough, this is the only example of this in the show's run.
- Resemblance Reveal: A look in the mirror reveals that Nick looks so much like Humphrey Bogart that Sam thinks that he may have leaped into the actor's body. However, Al sets him straight and tells him that Bogart is in Long Island shooting Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn.
- Sexophone: Every scene with Allison and Sam as Nick together starts with a sultry saxophone riff. The saxophone swells every time they kiss as well.
- Shout-Out: The cops who arrest Sam as Nick tell him he's going to miss the Dodgers' opening day. The camera then pans over to a picture of Jackie Robinson and several of his teammates on the front page of the newspaper.
- Sam tells detective fanboy Seymour that he will never be like Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe or Thomas Magnumnote .
- Stalker with a Crush: Lionel towards Allison. He is willing to kill all the other men in her life to have her and it's implied that without Sam's intervention, he was successful, as in the pre-leap outcome, she disappears and is never heard from again.
- Young Future Famous People: The teenager who mistakes Sam as Nick for Humphrey Bogart and then begins ranting about being a neurotic is a young Woody Allen.
