Analyzing Quantum Leap (2022): S1E3: Somebody Up There Likes Ben*
My original plan was to review one episode of the Quantum Leap sequel every week, at least until I felt like my analyses touched on all of the show’s major flaws. I’m now a couple of weeks behind, despite being only three episodes in.
I underestimated just how bad this show is, and how much of a toll the analysis takes on my brain. Each episode I’ve reviewed so far has taken almost two days to tackle. Multiple watchthroughs, note taking, screen grabs, editing…it all adds up more than I thought it would.
When I got to this episode, I’d already lost a lot of steam. I couldn’t even make it through the first watchthrough without getting so bored I had to shelve the project temporarily. Thankfully, I have novels I’m working on (two I’m writing, and one I’m about to publish), so they gave me an excuse to step away from Ben Song’s Cavalcade of Crap.
Now, I’m going to take another swing at S1E3: Somebody Up There Likes Ben.
Episode three stood out in my memory because it tackles a subject that hits close to home for me: PTSD. I also remember that they handled it fairly well.
The story of this episode isn’t that bad overall. As I was rewatching it, I was a little concerned that I wouldn’t have very many opportunities to make sarcastic remarks about the storytelling.
Then it started to fall apart at the seams, allowing me to breathe a sigh of frustrated relief.
Most of the problems come about in the Leap HQ scenes back (forward?) in 2022. So this analysis might be a slow burn until we get to those.
We open on Ben getting his face smashed in by another boxer. He takes a couple of punches in the nose, reels, and then acts confused.
Okay, so I do have something to complain about already. This is an example of how the writers of this show refuse to have their characters act like real human beings.
I get that he just leaped into the life of a sparring boxer and took a couple of jabs to the chin. That’s probably a little disorienting. But then he proceeds to act completely confused about how he got there, and holds his hands down so he can get a few more times.
At this point, he knows what leaping is. He’s already lept into a damn astronaut, so he must know that he needs to be prepared for anything. Why is he acting like he has no idea what just happened?
And even if someone doesn’t know they’re in the body of a boxer, they wouldn’t drop their hands down so they can take a few more punches to the face. Normal people try to protect themselves…that has nothing to do with leaping. That’s a reflex.
To make it worse, Ben clearly sees that he’s standing in a boxing ring and wearing boxing gloves, but he keeps his arms down and says, “there must be some misunderstanding!”
Again, is this guy supposed to be a genius or not? Does he think that street fights usually involve gloves and mouth guards and coaches screaming at you from the ropes?
Ugh. Like I said before, I remember this really annoying trend of Ben leaping into a new person and acting like a complete muppet every time.
At least we get to see him get his block knocked off. His coach runs over and tells him to hit the showers.
Cut to the locker room and Ben sees his sexy self in the mirror. I’m not sure if the Mike Tyson-esque gapped teeth were an intentional decision on this casting, but it stood out.
Enter holographic Addison who makes a joke about Ben getting aroused by his own mirror image. Ben then surmises that he’s a Vegas boxer named Danny Hill, and that he’s in the 1970s based on a nearby poster. Addison comments that he’s “getting the hang of this”.
Obviously, she can’t see his brain hemorrhaging from the uncontested combination he just took to the face.
Ben/Danny now realizes that the biggest match of his life is scheduled for the following day, and Addison explains that Original Danny loses the fight and blows his whole career. According to reports, Original Danny fought sloppily, as if he were distracted, which immediately made me think this was going to be one of those “he threw the fight because of mobsters” episodes.
In a flash of self-awareness, Ben wonders why he would be sent to help someone win a fight, and Addison says that maybe he’s there to “find the distraction”.
Honestly, I expected Rigatoni Two-Times and Frankie Da Bull to walk in right on cue and remind him how he agreed to throw the fight.
Surprise! Ben/Danny’s attractive love interest enters the locker room instead, and sucks on his face. Addison doesn’t like it much, and concludes that this woman must be the distraction. Meh, it’s quite a leap (ha ha) to assume that his girlfriend is the distraction, but I can almost see how Addison’s jealous instincts might send her down that road.
After all, the new girl is technically not tongue wrestling Ben right in front of her, but to Addison, she pretty much is.
Now, the coach comes into the locker room, chides the girl, Angela, for distracting Ben/Danny, and tells her that if she really loves him, she’d go away.
Before Angela leaves, Ben makes this romantic face, which is still more than he’s ever given his fiance, so I can see why Addison is getting jealous:
We learn here that the coach is named Daryl, and is Danny’s big brother, and that he also thinks Angela is distracting enough to cost him the fight.
I guess it depends on what she’s doing to distract him, but so far she’s just been nice and gave him some laces for his gloves. The coach/brother does have a point, though — Ben/Danny did just get his face hammered flat by his sparring partner, so something must be wrong.
Ben now remembers that he, Ben Prime, is an only child. Addison asks him if he remembers anything else, which I’m not sure qualifies as helping him remember things (which we all agreed was bad) or just probing for intel.
Doesn’t matter, because he doesn’t remember anything else.
Cut to Daryl, Addison, and Ben/Danny heading to the weigh-in for the upcoming title fight. This is where we get the obligatory info dump that is actually kind of integral to the Quantum Leap ethos.
We learn that Daryl raised Danny from a young age, taught him to box, and was quite the prize fighter himself before he was drafted into the Vietnam conflict. Daryl also has a wife named Penny, and no children.
Daryl gives Ben/Danny a pep talk outside of the weigh-in, and wins the award for best dressed character on the show so far. I would wear that shirt and jacket combo in a heartbeat.
At the weigh-in, we meet Ben/Danny’s opponent, Roy Gordon — ostensibly the first antagonist we’ve seen in the episode (beyond the loose notion that Angela distracts Danny far too much by giving him laces).
Of course, he is just Danny’s opponent at the fight. From the boxing context of the story, Roy is an antagonist. But…writers have a tendency to take it further than that. How many times have you seen a sports story where the opponent or opposing team isn’t also evil in some way?
Just goes to show you that sports are inherently boring and require tacked-on social conflict to keep people interested. Right? Hm.
Anyway, we also see Daryl flinching from the media’s camera flashes. He also says, “I hate those damn flashes,” to remove any hint of subtlety.
Then…
Oh God.
We get the big reveal where the storytelling shits the bed:
OH SNAP. That’s Angela. So, Danny has been running around with his opponent’s girlfriend. (Cue Jerry Springer noises.)
Fuck me. The writers are now three for three on slapping some lame, contrived beat into every episode just to manufacture conflict.
And yeah, we’ve now established that Roy isn’t just his boxing opponent, but there’s some personal stake here. As expected. Meh.
So, we see Angela staring at Roy like he’s holding her hostage, even going so far as to try wrestling her hand away from him. Which immediately begs the question…
…why is she with him? Uhm, she probably wouldn’t be. For numerous reasons. The first that comes to mind is that she’s already running around with Danny, so she could probably just leave Roy altogether, instead of…I guess waiting for someone to “win her” in a title fight?
Ugh.
But that’s the big conflict of the episode, because we cut from that to the title card.
From there, we see Addison in Leap HQ:
She’s telling Ian that she has 24 hours to teach Ben how to box well enough to beat a world champion fighter.
So, yeah, that shit ain’t gonna happen, but we’ll go ahead and suspend disbelief because Ian is in the scene, and provides enough human-like characterization to keep me from shutting the TV off.
As usual, Ian is concerned about the technology, and about Ben, but also about Addison’s self-care and the fact that she hasn’t slept or eaten in like a week.
There’s some clumsy dialogue where Addison says “even the days of the week remind me of Ben”, setting up the opportunity to talk about how they used to get take out and watch Real Housewives on Wednesdays.
It’s clearly an attempt at characterizing Ben, making him “relatable” because the genius scientist watches trash TV, but man…the way this show’s writers set up these lines is effing painful.
It’s also a missed opportunity to characterize the woman who is actually talking, Addison. Even her emotional ties are used to further explore Ben’s personality, not hers. This again cements her character as nothing but “the woman obsessed with Ben”, which means she’s still not a character at all.
Is it possible this show has a writer’s room full of people who don’t know how to write for female roles? Considering they seem to be struggling with everything else, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Let’s see. So far we have seen:
And of minor female characters, like Ryan’s wife in episode one, I can only remember them as women in need of rescue, usually through Ben’s actions.
Yeah, I’m inclined to think that these writers don’t really know how to write for women. That’s got to be my biggest issue with the ongoing “culture war” around entertainment. You know…the fights about “DEI characters” and “forced diversity”. Not the fact that it’s present, but that’s usually executed terribly. I mean, this is definitely a very progressive show. It’s got all the hallmarks — the bad guys are always white men, for example — but they can’t write a woman with agency to save their lives.
It’s checkbox diversity. It’s crap. And a decent writer could have made this show quite good while still getting all the representation in.
Anyway, moving along. Jenn enters the scene to tell Ian and Addison that Magic wants them all in his office, thus fulfilling her appearance requirement for this episode.
When you write cardboard characters, they eventually get relegated to doing things like standing in for a text message or intercom announcement. Just saying.
In Magic’s office, we learn that the Pentagon is aware that power usage is up at Leap HQ, and they’re curious as to what zany nonsense might be going down. Magic says he can hold them off, but he needs to know whether to come up with a short- or long-term lie.
Ian responds by saying that he’s finished going through Ben’s mystery code, and can now confirm that Ben is trying to reach a specific place and time.
Sadly, this devolves into the only character that I like, Ian, having to bullshit his way through dismantling the show’s own logic.
Somehow, they all just realized that Ben’s current leap took him beyond his lifespan. (I feel like Addison should have known this, but hey, maybe it was only a difference of a few months or something.)
For those who don’t know, the premise of Quantum Leap is that the Leap technology can only take someone back to a time “within their own lifetime”. Meaning that if you were born in 1980, you could only leap between the present and 1980. Simple enough, right?*
Well, Ben broke that. And Ian’s explanation is that Ben disabled their safety protocols before he leapt. So we’re supposed to believe that the “within your lifetime” part was a safety feature, not a limitation of the technology?
Seriously, people?
This is what I’m talking about when I say that making Quantum Leap (2022) a sequel rather than a reboot was probably a mistake. They willingly and aggressively inherited the logic and narrative of the first show, and they’re already tearing it apart by episode three.
Why even accept those constraints in the first place if you can’t work within them? Why not start over with your own science, your own internal logic, so you don’t have to come up with clumsy, half-assed excuses for doing whatever you damn well please?
Anyway, Ian finishes his explanation about safety protocols by saying, “Nothing’s impossible now.”
Yup, that pretty much sums up the writers saying, “Fuck it. We just want time travel without any rules.” Then why even make it a Quantum Leap show, assholes?!
That’s like being given creative control of a Sliders reboot (which I would love to write, Hollywood people. Hit me up) and two episodes in, saying that the dimensional portals now travel through time, and can also take you to other planets.
It’s tossing away the entire premise because you’re too lazy to come up with stories that fit within the logic of your own damn show.
Garbage. Again, they’re doing everything they possibly can to make the writing easy, and they’re still writing terrible shows.
Back to it, Ian tells Addison that it will take Ben at least 20 more leaps before he reaches his destination. She immediately storms off to tell Ben, reprising her role from the last episode as the loose cannon who doesn’t give a shit about anyone or anything but her own obsession.
Tell me again why she wasn’t hauled out of Leap HQ? Why is her danger to this project not only being tolerated, but enabled?
Back in 1977 Vegas, Ben/Danny tries to talk Daryl into postponing the fight. He learns that there’s an out in his contract — he either fights, or they lose their shot at the title. Daryl also implies that if he doesn’t fight, they’re going to lose the gym.
Yeah, that was telegraphed. It must be a required TV trope that the big title fight must also determine the fate of the gym where the protagonist trains. It’s Hollywood economics that usually doesn’t make sense in reality, but whatever.
Ben/Danny is outside the casino waiting for Daryl to pull the car around, when opponent Roy and his posse storm out behind him.
Roy calls Ben/Danny out for running around with his girl, and the funny thing is that I’m not entirely sure who is wrong here. I guess we’re just supposed to take it on faith that Roy must be a horrible boyfriend, but all I’ve seen so far is that Ben/Danny is sliding into Angela’s DMs while she’s supposed to be with Roy.
Fuck. Couldn’t it just be enough that he had to win the fight? Did this dumbshit “she’s my girl” thing really have to be added in? And does it have to be done at the expense of Angela’s dignity?
It’s a pretty big championship bout. His career is at stake. Daryl’s gym is at stake. Isn’t that enough to drive the story along? Damn.
Anyway, Daryl pulls the car around and tries to drive off with Danny before a fight breaks out. Unfortunately, Roy has to Cobra Kai the whole thing up by yelling out something antagonistic.
He calls Daryl a “baby killer”, and ratchets himself up the asshole scale. Naturally, Daryl jumps out of the car and punches a couple of Roy’s entourage into the dirt. Ben/Danny pulls him out of the tussle and they haul ass back to the gym.
Daryl explains that the gym has been out of money for eight months. Banks wouldn’t give him a loan, so he went to sharks. (The mobsters make an appearance, in spirit, after all.)
Addison then explains that Ziggy, being the piece of crap supercomputer that it is, just figured out that when Daryl loses the gym in the original timeline, he also kills himself.
So yeah, they’re still piling on the stakes. Do viewing audiences really need all this to stay interested? So, now Ben has to win the fight to be a champion, save his career, get the girl, save the gym, fend off loan sharks, and save his brother’s life?
Fuck sakes, no wonder Original Danny was distracted. Oh wait…Original Danny didn’t know half of this stuff because he didn’t have Addison feeding him all this exposition. So now, Ben is more distracted than Danny would have been, and he’s not a boxer.
Good thing they have about 12 hours left to train! That’s how long it takes to become a title fighter, right? Seems legit.
But oh no…gotta pack in some more conflict! The stakes aren’t high enough!!!
We’ll get to that. First, we cut to Ian explaining the most unscientific horseshit imaginable to Magic, and further annoying me that they even bothered calling this series “Quantum Leap”.
Get this. You ready?
Ian compares time travel to Voyager 2’s flight path to explain how Ben is traveling back in time further than the technology should allow. (“Gravity assisted navigation”, Ian calls it, but you’ll usually hear this slingshot technique called “gravity assist”. Because it’s not navigation, it’s propulsion. Words.)
Ian’s theory is that Ben is using the same maneuver to “speed up” his time travel, essentially using momentum from leap to leap to go further back in time than should be possible.
There are so many things wrong with this, even from a soft sci-fi perspective. It killed me when I saw this, because it’s such a blundering clusterfuck of bullshit that could have been explained away simply by writing a different time travel show.
We can’t even assume Ian just used the Voyager analogy to make a point, because they clearly put an overlay on the Voyager flight path showing how Ben’s “time path” is almost identical.
Here are the problems:
It assumes that a lot of different things have mass. A time traveling consciousness. Various points in time. They would all need to have independent mass for this to make any sense. There’s really no logical way to compare points in time to planetary bodies, and the show doesn’t try. It just says they are.
Ian specifically uses the term “momentum”. Ben stops every time he leaps. He does not have momentum. If the Voyager probe stopped at every planet, it would not be using gravity assist, because it would not be gaining momentum.
Finally, this is just dumb. It’s a dumb explanation that doesn’t work within the show’s internal logic, nor does it work with the logic of known science. If anything, I wish they would have just handwaved it with their original “safety measures” excuse and left it there.
They could have even tied it in with Quantum Leap Classic’s lightning strike and said that Ben’s code is drawing more power, at unsafe levels, to send him further back in time. This could have compounded the conflict with the Pentagon, who is already concerned with their power usage.
But no. We get “slingshotting through time”. Lazy writing, and it assumes the worst of the audience’s intelligence.
The scene pisses me off even more when Addison storms in and tells Ian, “she needs him downstairs working, not up here playing genius” in the most condescending, angry way possible.
Seriously, who the fuck does she think she is? Ian is up there problem solving, doing the hard work of spewing the writers’ faux-science bullshit, and she’s giving them crap about it? Isn’t she the one who keeps jeopardizing the whole Leap project?
What the hell is she actually contributing? What is her mission-critical specialization that makes her such a force to be reckoned with around the office? Ohhhh…she can stand around being a hologram! Woohoo!
That’s not hard. They could send the night janitor into the imaging chamber to relay information from Ziggy. At least the janitor might follow orders, and not be a dick to everyone.
It’s like they just want me to hate her character.
Anyway, Ian finds out something is slowing Ziggy down, and starts diagnostics to figure it out. Addison apologizes for snapping at him, and I still don’t like her. She’s already becoming one of those characters that’s self-absorbed and obsessive, then just apologizes for being that way and everyone thinks they’re wonderful.
Ian should tell her to watch her shit, and focus on getting her own job right, but instead tells her that being a hologram might not be all bad because she can do things like shadowbox.
Yup. Ben has…what…a few hours to train (unless he decides not to sleep or eat) himself up to prizefighter status? Shadowboxing should do it.
Addison returns to Ben/Danny just in time for Daryl’s wife to show up. She doesn’t do much to alleviate my concerns about the female characters in the show, essentially crying and asking for Ben/Danny to help her save her husband.
Anyway, I suppose it raises the stakes again. We needed more of that.
The wife leaves, and Addison says something that nearly makes me toss my keyboard out the window.
She tells Ben that he has leapt into the body of a professional fighter, and has all of his strength and speed.
Dammit! This is another huge departure from everything that was established in Quantum Leap Classic™. As I mentioned in another review, Sam did not leap into bodies. He swapped with them completely. His body was always his body.
He leapt into a pregnant woman and was not pregnant.
He leapt into a blind man and was not blind.
He leapt into a paraplegic and was not paralyzed.
But Ben leaps into a boxer, and retains the boxer’s body. Horseshit.
Again…why even make this Quantum Leap if you’re just going to ignore the rules of the game? And why make it a sequel, for the love of god, when you aren’t honoring the logic of its predecessor?
Because of lazy writers and half-assed storytelling. Man, writing is so easy when you can just make everything up on the fly and ignore the rules, isn’t it?
Speaking of, remember how Ben has a photographic memory? I don’t remember that coming up before, but shit…it’s sure important now! Because Addison is going to show him the fight from the original timeline so he can memorize exactly how it went down.
The plan is to recreate every move exactly, so that he doesn’t actually have to learn how to fight.
This is complete nonsense, and I’m getting tired of explaining why things don’t make sense in this episode, so I’m just going to move along.
Cut to Magic’s office, where Jenn gets a few lines. The first is to establish that she’s really good at computer stuff, in case we forgot her one and only trait.
Then she tells Magic about the holes in Ben’s story that she’s dug up, including a time he lied about going to a physics symposium — presumably because he didn’t want to miss a Real Housewives marathon.
Jenn says she has to interview Addison about the lies, and that it’s going to suck for Addison, and everyone looks sad even though I can’t comprehend why everyone is so worried about this obnoxious, self-indulgent woman’s feelings while she runs around insulting everyone else.
The next scene is where everything really starts flying apart, and the dam of stupidity breaks wide open.
So, the plan is that Ben has to perfectly reenact the fight so that the exact opening to hit Roy presents itself in the second round. As shown, that even means taking punches the exact same way that Original Danny did. We’re talking about things that Ben has no actual control over, and he has to make them “perfect” using his amazing photographic memory.
Forget that the butterfly effect makes that im-fucking-possible in any way.
Let’s look at how Addison plans on training him to do this.
See that hologram behind them in the above screengrab? That’s the recording of the original timeline fight playing out. That’s what Ben needs to memorize.
So tell me.
Why in the hell is he shadow boxing with Addison?
Ah! Because the writers needed to manufacture a problem! They’re so good at making stupid things happen to nudge their story along, it’s scary.
Look, I am 100% certain that their plan is stupid. I am also 100% certain that if Ben is supposed to be memorizing the fight, he would be 10000% better off shadow boxing the hologram of his opponent rather than Addison.
In fact, the only thing he should be doing is shadow boxing that hologram and learning its moves. Why? Because Addison doesn’t know the fight. She hasn’t memorized it. So how are they standing outside of the ring, with her perfectly recreating what Roy did?
She couldn’t. This is moronic.
But the writers needed it to happen because Addison needs to get all worked up. She needs to push herself too hard. She needs to have a hissy fit over how she can’t take a break because Ben needs her there all the time.
This woman has gone from being annoying and selfish to outright delusional.
None of this makes sense. She could have easily sat on a stool and helped Ben/Danny fight the hologram. There was no need for her to run herself down to do a worse job of training him.
But I guess we’re supposed to believe that Addison is some amazing gung-ho soldier that’s in it for the cause. But I call bullshit. She’s selfish. She doesn’t follow orders. She’s a dick to her team. She puts the project in jeopardy at least once per episode.
She’s dangerous, and the fact that she needlessly works out with Ben until she collapses on the floor does NOT make me concerned for her safety in any other way than a desire to lock her in a padded room.
Anyway, she wakes up in a hospital bed with Magic reassuring her and being way too understanding of her inability to work with the damn program. That includes telling her that she can ignore the doctor’s rest orders so she can go back in and finish the leap.
Why? Again, what is she doing that couldn’t be done by anyone else in the building?
Moving on, we get some of that mock-CTU action in the next scene. Ian discovered that someone opened a remote link to Ziggy. Everyone assumes it’s Janis Callavici, and somehow that leads Jenn to surmise that Ben is being used without his knowledge.
Not sure how she leaps to that conclusion, but hey.
Cut to Janis paying a visit to her mom.
And holy shit, I was going to make a joke earlier in that article about how the only tired female trope they haven’t used is “mom and daughter don’t get along” — a favorite among writers who don’t know anything about female characters.
Fuck if they didn’t cram it right here. Nice work!
Turns out Janis’ mom stopped her from joining the Quantum Leap program, not Magic. Mom did it because she didn’t want her daughter to waste her life on a project that wasn’t going to work. Janis, of course, feels like that was a lack of faith and support, rather than an act of protection.
A textbook “mom, you just don’t get me” scene, played out right here. And it ends with Janis poisoning Mother Callavici. At least we get a small twist on a tired favorite.
Cut back to 1977, and Ben is relieved to see Addison back on her feet. The theme of the episode is spelled out with all the nuance of driving a lawnmower into a gong when Ben talks about how much it sucked not being able to help her when she collapsed.
Ben starts beating on the heavy bag, and asks Addison if he’s got the moves right. Then Daryl enters and asks why he’s fighting right-handed…
Which means that Ben couldn’t possibly be duplicating the fight “perfectly”. He’s not even using the correct stance! Let me reiterate: this entire thing has been about Ben recreating the fight exactly, and he’s doing it with a different dominant hand than the original guy!!!
Jeez, did the writers not bother to think about their own narrative here, or what?
Then Daryl notices something his wife left behind on the desk, and asks why she didn’t want to talk to him. He then launches into a rage about how his wife has been running around to all his friends talking about how she’s worried about him.
Addison identifies his behavior as PTSD. She reveals that she saw the same behavior in people she served with in Afghanistan, which we assume means that she was in the armed forces. Have we finally revealed something about her character other than that she’s Ben’s worried fiance?
Maybe. Although I’m still left wondering what purpose she serves in the Leap Project, and if that military background has anything to do with it.
The way these writers are going, I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t just toss a military background onto her so she’d have something to say about PTSD. That’s kind of how they’ve been working it so far.
Anyway, Barney Fife (pictured left) shows up to arrest Daryl for laying a beatdown on Roy’s posse outside of the weigh-in. Daryl doesn’t react to it well, but Ben/Danny manages to talk him down.
The stupidity escalates to unthinkable levels.
Addison tells Ben that Daryl gets into a fight in jail and is locked up for 72 hours. That means he misses the fight. Ben thinks that was the distraction that caused Original Danny to lose the match.
Awesome. Great. SO WHAT? You’re not Danny! You know Daryl’s going to get out of jail in a few days, and the only important thing is winning the fight. You, Ben the time traveler, don’t need to be distracted by this.
Not that it matters anyway…considering the fifteen other distractions this episode has already piled on. They’ve done everything short of running him down with a car and telling him that Danny had to fight while in full-body traction.
There’s one thing we know for sure. ONE THING. Ben/Danny has to fight, and he has to win.
But for some moronic reason, Ben decides he needs to do something about Daryl going to jail, and that means risking his own ability to be at the fight. In other words, he does something completely fucking boneheaded that makes no sense at all.
He calls Barney Fife a pig, and gets dragged away to jail with Daryl.
Are you kidding me? This guy is supposed to be a genius?
He introduces infinite possible cockups into their plan by doing this. There are dozens of things that could go wrong, preventing him from being at the fight, too. Especially since he’s going along to, presumably, stop a jailhouse fight. Does he think that’s going to be easy to do without also getting locked up for three days?
It’s just…so bad. So stupidly bad. The only way the writers can explain any of this is if they hang a lantern on the idea that the Quantum Leap Project only recruited impulsive, self-centered lunatics.
Anyway, they get bonded out of jail without anything happening around the jail fight thing, so I’m not sure what happened there. There aren’t even other people in their holding cell. Maybe the writers forgot their own setup? Again?
Then Ben does this annoying ass TV thing where, as the cops are trying to release them, he sits there in the jail cell having this long conversation with Daryl. Do writers really think that the cops have nothing better to do but sit there holding a door while people sort out their personal drama? It’s fucking irritating.
Anyway, he tells Daryl he won’t fight unless he sees a doctor. Daryl explains that doctors won’t help the fact that he sees dead people every time he closes his eyes, and that he goes off on people when he doesn’t want to.
It’s pretty good, and plays well. Probably the first thing in the entire episode that actually got me invested (31 minutes in).
What ruins it for me is Raymond Lee’s performance. He finally shows some emotion, but there’s a quick edit where he goes from completely emotionless to looking like someone tear gassed him. It’s weird. And he does that god awful thing that child actors do where they, ya know, hiss-whisper things that are supposed to be dramatic.
The Sixth Sense kid did it. Delivering all his lines like he’s trying to blow up a balloon at the same time. I can’t stand it.
I want to point out that Daryl is played by Jon Chaffin, and give credit for one of the best overall performances I’ve seen in this show. No mean feat with Lee chewing up the scenery opposite. I hope to see him in a better series in the future.
Anyway, they finally leave the jail, and find out that Angela posted bail for both of the brothers. What she asks for in return is…weird: “Knock that ugly sumbitch out.” By that, she of course means her…boyfriend, Roy?
I’m still confused about the dynamic of this whole girlfriend thing. Why is she even with Roy? What is the point of any of this being added on? They could have cut the two-second scene where Angela was sitting with Roy, eliminated this flimsy thread, and lost nothing at all.
Argh.
Cut to the fight.
Ben/Danny miraculously follows the original fight, then knocks Roy down in the second round.
But…oh noes…Roy gets back up, and knocks Ben/Danny’s ass cold.
But, Ben recovers before the bell, and goes back to his corner.
Addison suggests that he switch stances, fighting from Ben’s true dominant side, not Danny’s. Daryl thinks this is a good idea, too, although in reality he would never go along with that without knowing that his brother was possessed by a right-handed time traveler.
Switch-hitting is something boxers train for, barring naturally ambidextrous fighters. It can take a lot of training to make stance switching an effective tactic, because reflexes, strength, and muscle memory all have to be “relearned” and mirrored.
Now, they’ve committed to the idea that Ben is in Danny’s body, and Danny fights from an unorthodox stance. That means his body is only trained to do so, and switching to Ben’s natural stance would still be disadvantageous from a physiological standpoint.
In other words, Ben is swapping one disadvantage for another. Considering that trained fighters aren’t easily duped by switch-hitting even from pros who have trained for it, it shouldn’t matter much if the untrained, uncoordinated Ben does it.
But yeah. Of course it fucking works.
And not even a little. It basically makes Ben/Danny dominate the middleweight champ of the world. Give me a break.
So, everyone wins, except for the actual world champ who was beaten by a time-traveling cheater, while also being two-timed by his girlfriend. Again, for all the effort made to raise the stakes over and over again, I’m surprised they didn’t do more to make this seem like less of a dick move.
I mean, what if Roy goes home and kills himself now? Or Roy’s brother? Does their timeline not matter compared to Danny’s? Or are we supposed to think that because Roy said one shithead comment to Daryl, it’s totally okay to take that victory from him by manipulating the timeline?
I don’t know. I get a little on the fence about episodes where someone gets obviously and violently screwed by the “good deeds” of a leap.
At least Daryl doesn’t kill himself. Instead, he starts one of the first PTSD support groups in the country. I guess that’s supposed to explain why screwing Roy over was worth it?
As with most of the show, it all seems very manufactured. Why couldn’t they just sell the gym, pay off the loans, and get Daryl the help he needed?
And did Angela need him to win that fight before she would leave Roy? If so, she sounds like a real piece of work.
Ben says something about needing Addison and then he leaps. Then we cut to Addison at home watching trash TV, and the core members of Leap HQ arrive to keep her company. Magic gets a phone call from Mother Callavici who apparently was not poisoned to death.
She tells Magic that Janis ran off with some of Al’s old things from the project, including this bad boy:
Woot! It’s Al’s handlink! And it looks like Janis is building her own Quantum Leap Accelerator™©
Screw it. It all sucks. This episode was worse than I remember it.
See you next time!
* It’s not me.
* In the episode of Quantum Leap Classic, “The Leap Between the States”, Sam traveled back to the Civil War. This was explained as the result of a lightning strike — a singular, anomalous incident. The explanation for extra-lifetime leaping presented in “Somebody Up There Likes Ben” is not consistent with this event (nor reality, nor common sense).
