From: billones@grebyn.com (Jeremy Billones)
Subject: QL: Two-Faced Reviews: Deliver Us From Evil
Summary: You just read it.
Keywords: Evil Leaper From Hell
Organization: Grebyn Timesharing
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 02:33:08 GMT


This post contains spoilers for the 11/10 episode of Quantum Leap





















Well now, that was... HUH?

I HATE split-plot stories!  My worst fear going into this episode was
that they were going to short-shrift the real episode in order to put
emphasis on the "evil leaper."  And, unfortunately, I was right.

The idea of re-leaping was interesting, and they even recognized that
under normal circumstances it ought never happen.  And using that as
the pretense for the appearance of a counterbalancing time traveler
serves well as a contrast and explanation.  We can see how altering
Connie can cause the reactions in Frankie and Cory, and what Sam needs
to do to fix things.

But then what do they do?  They pull a Boogieman, turning the clock
back so none of it ever happened.  That means Sam never fixed anything.
In fact, we saw him fail to stop Frankie from cheating on Connie.  The
end result is a complete loss for the good guys, that is only rescued
by the literal execution of a deux ex machina.  So that's half the episode
right down the tubes.

As for the evil leaper: whenever you see three writers on the credits,
you're asking for trouble.  You can see the seams in the script - the
shift from technobabble to the supernatural was occasionally line to
line.  Their final lines cast in stone that they were escapees from
Hell (like The Leap Back cast *censored* in stone, I hope), but then
why do they have the trappings of a Quantum Leap-like setup?  Very,
very poorly executed.

The question running through the entire episode was WHY?  Why is Alia
doing this?  Is she really a demon from Hell?  If so, why the letup at
the end?  If she's like Sam, kinda sorta, why is Zoe pretending to be
a demon from Hell?  And why the implosion at the end?  And if they're
from a future, where did they get the theory that they have to ruin
people's lives to get her back?  If they had established any kind of
track record for knowing what they were doing more than 2 weeks in
advance, I might cut them some slack.  I know Babvylon 5 is going to
pull this kind of stuff all the time... but I also know they've got this
thing plotted out for the next 5 years.  QL, on the other hand, has
proven they don't know what they're going to do with this.

I did like Zoe's first appearance, looking like one of Connie's
neighbors.  And the mis-direction, making us think the "other woman"
was going to be the "bad guy" was a nice touch.  But this episode needed
another few weeks of cleaning up before going into production.

I won't grade it for the same reason I didn't grade The Boogieman - it
was such an abnormal episode of QL that most of the standards QL ought
to meet should be suspended.  But if you put it along side The Boogieman
itself - as that ending forces you to - there just isn't any contest.
The next three weeks had better be really good, or this season might
be taking an express train right down the chute.

Next week: Sam leaps into another smoking-gun, and the silly NBC commercials
are no help whatsoever.

Jeremy Billones				billones@grebyn.com
"We bust through the door, surprise 'em, and blow their brains out."