Quantum Doppelgängers
Theorizing that one could time travel within their own lifetimes, guest editors Kate Racculia and Kathryn VanArendonk stepped into the Two Bossy Dames newsletter...and vanished.
It’s Doppelgänger Week here at Two Bossy Dames with Kate and Kathryn!
Haha jk we’re right here. And very happy to be!
Kate: But seriously, and this is Kate talking here now, I am RIPPING EXCITED to be not only A Bossy Dame (™) this week, but to be CO-BOSSING with Kathryn, who, I am sure many of you know but do you? Do you really know? Is just as magnificent a person as you think she is, as intelligent and insightful a writer (about television at Vulture, but also just like in general) as I’ve ever known. Kathryn and I met through mutual friend and OG Dame Margaret, who I first knew from Twitter even though we were both living in Boston at the time. One thing led to another and now we all are, as the kids say, IRL friends. It is a good thing.
Kathryn: It is a good thing! If you don’t know anything about Kate, I (Kathryn) am here to tell you what a treat you’re about to have! Because Kate is a fantastic and lauded author of novels, including Bellweather Rhapsody which blew my brain wide open, and her new book Tuesday Mooney Talks To Ghosts which you should go out and purchase immediately (Editor’s note: This message is DOUBLE Dames Approved). It is so fun and smart and satisfying and it’s a perfect October read, but never mind that now because what we’re here to do is talk about QUANTUM LEAP. Kate, why are we talking about Quantum Leap?
That’s an… unexpected direction!
Kate: We are talking about QUANTUM LEAP because it is a foundational television text not only for me personally, but because it is— under the radar? It’s hard to say which is more improbable— that this show, this weird, wonderful show that was on actually had a decent viewership when it originally aired on NBC, or that it has somehow never been the nostalgic show on everyone’s lips. I feel like its lack of popularity now may have something to do with how the show actually approaches the past; there’s a dash of nostalgia— look at that 1950s washing machine!— but it does not operate under the assumption that the past was some rosy, mythic time we wish we were all still living in. Quite the opposite: the show is about individuals who are frequently in trouble because they are living in the (less enlightened, more restrictive, with fewer legal protections) past. And today you and I are talking about it because— look, it was made in the late 80s/early 90s, it’s a little creaky in places— but its essential premise is deeply humane and pretty radical in retrospect. I grew up with it, but you came to it later, so you’ve got more critical context— does that track for you, Kathryn?
Kathryn: It does. I had no experience with this series growing up, and I started watching because a fellow TV critic (Alan Sepinwall!) started bugging me to watch it. Then lots of people started bugging me about it. I think I’d held off because I thought it’d be … clunky? Or too campy or that it’d have aged poorly, and there are definitely moments like that. But I was pretty quickly drawn in by the premise which is so weird and appealing?
Let me break it down for Quantum Leap newbies:
(Cue drumroll and dramatic musical flourish)
Okay so there’s a guy named Dr Sam Beckett (played by an almost unconscionably attractive young Scott Bakula, which has not nothing to do with the show’s appeal).
He is a real beauty queen, ol’ Scottula.
He is stuck in the past thanks to a time travel experiment that went a bit haywire, and he’s being ported throughout history hoping to eventually make his way back to his own time. Whenever he arrives in a new time, he has to fix something so that he can move along to the next leap. But the really wacky twist is this: although we, the television viewers, see Scott Bakula doing all his fun time traveling shenanigans, everyone around him sees a different body, a person they already knew whose brain has been taken over by Dr Beckett. The goofy catchphrase of the show happens at the end of each episode, when Dr Beckett leaps into a new time, looks into a mirror to discover that he’s actually a [Rabbi! Woman! Gangster! DJ! Black man in the deep South!] and sighs, “oh boy.” (Except in the case of the rabbi, where he sighs, “oy vey!”) It seems so silly, but it’s NOT, somehow?!
Kate: It’s deeply, deeply sincere! And also silly— it’s an anthology show that’s always playing around with different tones and genres (some more successfully than others). The showrunner, Donald P. Bellisario, is on record as saying that he wanted to do an anthology series but faced pressure from the networks— sort of the TV version of “short stories don’t sell”— so he created this convoluted but, once your belief is fully suspended, absolutely wonderful weekly exercise in point of view and empathy. Sam Beckett (dear lord, Bakula is a snack (lol Snackula)), a straight, white, well-intentioned but imperfect man, spends the whole show trying to see the world from other points of view, and changing history, STRIVING TO PUT RIGHT WHAT ONCE WENT WRONG, one life at a time. As a kid, I learned— in addition to a not-inconsiderable amount about the back half of the 20th century— that history is full of humans making small choices, falling down and getting back up, and that real change can be effected with kindnesses big and small one person at a time. ::feelings::
Kathryn: Yeah, watching Quantum Leap for the first time as an adult person in 2018, I had all these moments where I was expecting to die of horrible cringe-worthy awkwardness. I was sure there was no way Sam Beckett could jump into the body of a chimp going to space and find it anything other than painful to watch? But the show is so remarkably good at finding the compassion and humor in those scenarios, so unexpectedly humane. Where I did have some more trouble with though, is Al.
Kate: Ah yes, Al. We do have to talk about Al.
Al: he’s always letting you down.
Kathryn: Al (played by Dean Stockwell) is Sam Beckett’s partner from the future who often shows up to help Sam make his way through whatever his current predicament is. Al is … look, his shirts are amazing. His sense of humor is often hilarious. And there’s at least one long-recurring arc about Al’s past that’s one of the more moving things the show has ever done. But Al is also what would’ve been gently called a “horndog” in the past, and would now be more commonly called a “rampant sexual harasser.” When Sam jumps into a woman’s body and Al can barely even handle himself, it’s not great. Not great! And yet it’s a testament to this show that Al can be such a huge part of the series and I still like it?
Kate: SAME. Al functions more like a device— he’s there to tell Sam where and when he’s leaped, and into whom he’s leaped, and help him figure out what he’s supposed to accomplish before he can leap out. They do develop a friendship— and that arc about Al, other than Sam trying to leap home, is really the only other through-line of the five seasons— but Al is more functional than fully developed, and you can tell the show wants you to focus on Sam and what he’s going through. Al’s full-on creeper mode, as an adult, feels like lowest common denominator lazy joke-making. It’s not a great look! But it’s not the heart of the show.
So what I’m saying, when you remake this, make Al a woman, make their friendship amazing and platonic, and keep all the shirts.
SUCH PATTERNS! SUCH COLORS!
Kathryn: I need all the shirts. I need them!
I had the true, overwhelming honor of talking with Scott Bakula about the 30th anniversary of this show, and one of the things he told me (that also helped me mentally deal with the Al situation), was that Dean Stockwell, the actor who played Al, was often responsible for Quantum Leap’s dives into social issues. Stockwell cared a lot about environmentalism, about gay rights, and about racism, and he was constantly needling Bellisario to let the episodes dive into those topics. So on the one hand, Al. But on the other hand, all the goodness this show became! It’s a fair trade for me.
Are there a few episodes you want to call out in particular, as good ones for a Quantum Leap newcomer to check out? I should note that many of them are streaming on Prime, although it’s very annoying that you have to watch them with some commercial breaks.
Kate: But it is an authentic Quantum Leap viewing experience; the show has ebbs and flows that lead into commercials! Ah, pre-streaming TV rhythms. Sometimes I miss you.
But anyway, yes: the 2-hour pilot, “Genesis,” is tremendous, because it introduces all the things that the show will ultimately end up doing so well: throwing Sam into an intense situation in media res (he’s a test pilot and his wife is about to give birth), plus an emotional mini-leap coda where Sam speaks with his own father, who has died in Sam’s current timeline, on the phone. I am ALSO a huge fan of the 2-part Lee Harvey Oswald leap (“Leaping on a String,” “Leaping to Judgement”), which I definitely (gently) forced Andrew to watch for Appointment Television, Kathryn and Margaret’s television podcast, of which I am sure Dames are WELL aware but on the odd chance you are not, get thee to a podcatcher! Any favorites of your own, Kathryn?
We cannot stress enough how accurate the moniker “Snackula” is.
Kathryn: I love “What Price Gloria,” the episode where Bakula jumps into the body of a sexually harassed secretary and has to put up with all the subsequent indignities. I love “Catch a Falling Star,” the episode where Sam leaps into the body of an actor who’s performing the lead role in Man of La Mancha. Quantum Leap can be roughly divided into the goofy episodes and the serious episodes, and I admit my preference is for the goofy ones? (In season five he leaps into Dr Ruth?!), but it’s definitely worth watching at least a few of the serious ones, including “The Color of Truth” and “Shock Theater.”
Kate: In other words, Quantum Leap, Dames Nation, is well worth your time and attention, your feels and your thoughts. And its anthology structure means it’s easy to dip in and out of, if you’re feeling pressed by the current multi-episode commitments of this, our Greatest Age of Television. (But is it? Is it our greatest age? Let’s do a little Leaping Ourselves before we make that call.)
Forever mood.
Links by Kathryn!
Truly, Film Twitter’s mind, it is lost.
You know what movie I really want to see? Parasite. I know almost nothing about it, which I have been told is the ideal way to experience this movie (Editor’s note: Scaredy Cat Dame M. has also been reliably informed that it’s no scarier than Get Out). But I have watched all of Film Twitter and several of my colleagues gradually lose their damn minds about this movie since it premiered at Cannes, and now it has opened in New York so soon it will be MY turn to lose my damn mind. Hilariously, every single screening in New York this weekend is now sold out. In the meantime, I am dealing with my Parasite FOMO by reading this fucking incredible profile of the director Bong Joon-ho by my amazing coworker Alex Jung.
Speaking of fucking incredible profiles, this profile of John Updike by Patricia Lockwood?!?!!?!?!? This lede alone is like, legendary, put-it-in-an-anthology-right-now status writing: “I was hired as an assassin. You don’t bring in a 37-year-old woman to review John Updike in the year of our Lord 2019 unless you’re hoping to see blood on the ceiling.”
Because I am thinking about the process of Writing Profiles this week, for reasons that will be clear later this month on Vulture dot com, I have also been revisiting this marvelous profile of Rihanna written in 2015. No, not the one that just came out where the writer admits in the profile that she did not have a list of questions prepared. This one, from 2015, by someone who treated the job with the respect it deserved.
So, I was in London last week on a reporting trip (see above) and I had one chunk of a few hours where I needed to cast about in search of presents to bring home to my children. Jet-lagged, I wandered around one of London’s ridiculous gorgeous department stores and happened across these, the cutest most adorable high quality perfect tiny toy mice that are also, of course, a billion dollars. My defenses were down. My children were far away. I bought some. Specifically these, tiny baby twin mice in a box for my child who is obsessed with all baby things, and I have to say, they are somehow grow even more charming the more we play with them. I want … more? I want all of them. I want this mum and dad mouse in a cigar box with tiny sleeping masks. I want this Princess and the Pea mouse who comes with several mattresses and one over-large pea. I am desperately in need of this tiny mouse camper with its perfect waxed canvas tent. If you have any idea where I can get these in the US without spending a billion dollars, please drop me a line, preferably by way of a tiny perfect toy mouse messenger.
Links by Kate!
TFW your book is finally out, and also its main character is a goth-y, wry brunette.
ACK MY BOOK CAME OUT THIS WEEK, which is an incredible feeling. I spend actual years invested deeply in the inner lives of imaginary people and suddenly they’re up and running around and it is Simply the Most. I am so grateful that I get to do this (i.e., write books), and for all the wonderful people who make it possible and who I’ve met along the way (HI MARGARET), and that my books are finding their way to their readers. It’s amazing.
It’s also kind of overwhelming, because, like...I spent years being deeply invested in imaginary people, and WOW it sure makes you feel vulnerable to know that they’re up and running around! Plus, it’s been a freaking crazy day/week/month/year/decade/century, and we could all use the online equivalent of a hug. These links give me joy and comfort. I hope they give you joy and comfort too.
Flatbush Cats. Who amongst us could remain unmoved by nice people nursing street kittehs back to health, fostering them until they can find homes? Did I mention the gentle jazzy soundtracks in their videos. It’s trap-neuter-release in Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.
Tuna Noodle Casserole is the Best and so is Samantha Irby. (For a truly cathartic ugly laugh-cry, I cannot recommend “Feelings Are a Mistake,” her ode to her deceased cat in We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, highly enough. RIP Helen Keller.)
I make this Smitten tomato pasta chickpea dish all the damn time, it’s basically grown up spaghettios, pls enjoy.
If I am having a hard day, this is a blast of giddy goofy perfection straight into my veins: Seth & Ina Go Day Drinking
Did you catch Ready or Not when it was in theaters? SEE IT, it is just TERRIFIC. I guess this is not a specific link (tho Angelica Jade Bastien’s review is excellent), so much as a general recommendation and an excuse to post this gif, which has a thousand uses.
And you thought I was going to end my Bossy Dame tenure without introducing my live-in assistants. This is Gomez.
And this is Ramona.
They run my Instagram.
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Scott Bakula in his flight suit
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