Recap / Quantum Leap S 5 E 08 Trilogy Part 1 One Little Heart

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Quantum Leap
Season 5, Episode 8:

Trilogy, Part 1: One Little Heart

Sam: Al, do you think that Abigail, a little girl like Abigail, could be capable of murder?

Written by Donald P. Bellisario

Directed by James Whitmore Jr.

Airdate: November 17, 1992.

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August 8, 1955

Sam leaps into the sheriff of a small Louisiana town and must deal with the death of a once-proud man, the mystery surrounding the man’s missing daughter and how both cases tie into the sheriff’s ten-year-old daughter.

Note: This episode did not have a "leap out" to the next episode. Sam remained in the Sheriff for part of the next episode before leaping.

Tropes:

• Ambiguous Situation:
  • Sam keeps seeing what looks like the spirit of Sheriff Fuller's wife, Laura... even though Laura isn't dead.
  • It is not made outright clear if Abigail did in fact kill Violet and Bart Aider. All we see and know is that she beat up Violet because she was teasing her about the locket, and that when Bart confronted her about the locket:
    Abigail: He was gonna hit me, and I pulled away. When I looked back, he was lyin' in the water.
    • What adds to the uncertainty is that when explaining to Sam what happened with Bart, the house keeper Marie is rightly confused, as she was told a different series of events:
      Abigail: He was yellin' at me, and he was following me, and I tried to hide, but he wouldn't go away.
      Marie: (shocked) Abigail Fuller, you told me he was dead when you come on him.
• Bolivian Army Ending: Variation: After getting getting Abigail out of the house as it burns down, Sam gets distracted long enough by seeing Laura in the house that part of the ceiling collapses and falls on him. The variation is that Sam leapt out before it could hit him... but there's still the matter of Sheriff Fuller after Sam leaves...
• Contrived Coincidence: It's not acknowledged in the slightest, but the date Sam leapt in, August 8th, 1955, is the same date he leapt into Jesse Tyler.^note And as we'd later learn from "Mirror Image," it's also Sam's second birthday.
• Creator Cameo: The episode’s director, James Whitmore Jr. appears as Sheriff Fuller (in the mirror).
• Creepy Child: Abigail is slightly creepy, mostly due to how quickly she can go from sweet and loving to violently angry.
• Enfant Terrible: Leta (and a few others in town) see Abigail as this.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Abigail asking her "father" to never leave her is this two-fold: it not only alludes to the Bolivian Army Ending of this part, but the way Sam makes his promise to Abigail sets in stone the rest of the trilogy:
    Sam: I promise I will be here as long as you need me.
  • While the camera does a panning establishing shot of Potterville the day after Sam leapt in, the camera holds on a shot of a nearby well before cutting away.
  • When Leta verbally abuses Abigail at the police station, the only two that immediately come to her defense are Will Kinman and Larry Stanton. These are the people Sam will leap into in the following parts of the trilogy.
• For Want Of A Nail: It can be assumed that, had Sam not been delayed because of accidentally hitting Marie with his car, he would've been able to make it back to his house before Leta decided to start the fire.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Even if Leta believes Abigail killed her daughter and husband, tricking her into going to her house alone (under the pretense that her dad was hurt) and then attacking her just to get back a locket counts as this even if she didn't also wind up starting a fire.
• Kill It with Fire: As the episode progresses, Al learns that Abigail and Sheriff Fuller wind up dying in a house fire. ...and it is then further revealed that Leta started it.
• Locked Out of the Loop: It's harder than normal for Ziggy to provide Al and Sam information for this leap because a flood wound up destroying the town records in 1971.
• Parents in Distress: Leta uses this ploy to draw Abigail back to her house.
• Southern Gothic: Sam jumps right into a swamp; a stifling, ominous atmosphere pervades, all the main characters have suffered tragic losses, a mysterious lady in white appears and disappears, and when we see a crumbling mansion... it turns out it's now a private lunatic asylum.
• Tragic Villain: Leta could qualify following the disappearance of her daughter and the death of her husband, though when she takes her anger out on a ten-year-old girl, she loses sympathy.
• Wham Line: At the end of the episode, after Sam leaps out of the house fire, we see him leap into the middle of a very intimate moment with an unknown woman... when Marie enters the room to yell at the two:
  Marie: You two rabbits ought to be ashamed! The weddin' is tomorrow! Now cover yourself. (to Sam) And you, Will Kinman, if you don't get outta here, I'm gonna... Well, I don't know what I'm gonna do, but get out!
  • And in case you were wondering who Sam was in bed with:
    Marie: (from outside the room) Now, you got five minutes to get dressed and get out of this house, or I'm throwin' you out buck naked! You get him out of here! You hear me, Abigail Fuller?!
• Would Hurt a Child: Leta Aider goes berserk on Abigail more than once, culminating in tense encounter that leads to a house fire.
• You Can See Me?: Implied: When Sam and Al go to the private asylum Laura Fuller is staying at, they are unable to get her to respond or notice they are there. Once Sam and Al leave, however, we see Laura reach out towards the area Al was standing in before looking out the window as Sam drives off.

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Sam: I never like it when a leap starts out at the bottom and goes downhill from there.