Quantum Leap
Season 4, Episode 4:
Justice
Gene: You know how I've always liked you, and respected you. Maybe some time I didn't show it. My daughter and my grandson, they love you a great deal. Damn it, I just tried to show you what I was doin' to protect my part of the world and my family! That's all I did.
Sam: If you love your family, don't do this to them.
Gene: I'm not doing it to them.
Sam: You bomb the church, they'll put you away for that. And if you kill me, who's gonna take care of your daughter, raise your grandson?
Gene: I'm not gonna kill you. You don't know me at all, do you?
Sam: I don't know any man who'd dynamite a church.
Gene: I'm not just any man.
Sam: If you love your family, don't do this to them.
Gene: I'm not doing it to them.
Sam: You bomb the church, they'll put you away for that. And if you kill me, who's gonna take care of your daughter, raise your grandson?
Gene: I'm not gonna kill you. You don't know me at all, do you?
Sam: I don't know any man who'd dynamite a church.
Gene: I'm not just any man.
Written by Toni Graphi
Directed by Rob Bowman
Airdate: October 9, 1991.
May 11, 1965
Sam leaps into a small Alabama town as a newly-inducted member of the Ku Klux Klan where he must defend the life of a passionate civil rights advocate without incurring the wrath of his Klan brethren.
Tropes:
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Sam leaps into the Civil Rights Era, in 1960s Alabama, as a Klan member. Part of the conflict of the episode stems from the fact that Sam has to pretend to be okay with the injustices going on, even though it's killing him to go against what his parents taught him, himself a child of the '60s. In fact, Sam keeps fighting with Al over this, practically furious with the circumstances of the leap.
- Distaff Counterpart: Lily sees the KKK as the white community’s equivalent of the NAACP.
- Even Evil Has Standards: It’s a stretch to call Lily evil, but her support for the Klan vanishes when they blow up a black church, nearly killing several children. When they then try to string up her husband...
- Heroic Sacrifice: Attempted: When the Klansmen prepare to hang Nathaniel at the end of the episode, Sam decides that he should be hung as well, pointedly placing the noose around his own neck. And while one of the members is willing to lynch the both of them, the leapee's father-in-law makes him stand down.
- Lethal Chef: Lily states that Clyde’s mother was one of these.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Sam sees some similarities between his own parents and the Klansmen because they are farmers and willing to help their neighbors in tough times. However, everything else about the Klansmen fills Sam with utter disgust.
- Oh, Crap!: Sam is absolutely terrified when he leaps in, given that he's down on his knees in front of a flaming cross, surrounded by Klansmen, and being advanced upon by the Grand Dragon armed with a sword. It's possible Sam thought there was the possibility that he might have leaped into a black man again, although what happens next is, in his eyes, much much worse.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Clyde, who was pressured into joining The Klan, and while it's treated with all the ominousness it deserves, the next scene has them, out of costume, talking about their mundane lives and offering to help each other out with projects unrelated to their racism. Sam isn't suckered into it for a second, and all it does is underscore their insidious nature. Although it does help him appeal to his father-in-law's humanity when he tries to stop a lynching (and succeeds).
- Prejudice Aesop: A given since the plot revolves around members of the KKK and the people they are targeting.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech / Shaming the Mob: With a noose around his neck, Sam delivers a verbal slap to the collective face of the Klansmen.Sam: I don't want to live in a world where fear and hate hide behind a call for justice. Where men, women and children, born as free as you and me, are denied, among other things, the right to vote. And if they try to do anything about it, you hang 'em... or you blow 'em up in a church. They're so proud of what they're doing, these dispensers of justice, that they have to hide behind masks to do it. Cody. Cody, you look at me, son. This is not justice. This is merely a desperate attempt to hang on to the past, a shameful past, that can never and should never be restored. So go ahead. You hang us now. But you cannot stop the future. Because you cannot kill everyone who was here tonight. And they will never forget what they saw.
- They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Immediately after the Klan induction ceremony, we're shown the Klansmen hosting a barbecue out of costume, trading jokes and offering to help each other out with difficult home improvement projects.
