After years of watching Bruce McGill on MacGyver as Jack and Dalton, it was so refreshing to see him in this amazing performance here. Biggest reason I rewatch this episode so many times.
I STILL well up with tears when watching this episode. I know people don’t like the ending… Sam never getting home… but to me, it’s a perfect end to the character. He either died mid-leap, thus selflessly helping others, or he gave his life by changing Al’s history knowing it would cause a paradox and erase himself from existence. It’s one of the things I really liked about the new series. They didn’t try to retcon it and have Ben and co “save” Sam
The way I’ve always explained it (and I know they uncovered a bit of footage from what would’ve been the start of season 6, with Al talking to Beth, a few years back), is that because Beth never remarried and she and Al were together, Al never joined the Quantum Leap project, never met Sam, etc. This irrevocably changed history, and all those times where Al saved Sam’s life just by being there, could’ve gone very differently… At some point, he lost his life during a leap in this new timeline.
In the lost ending Al is still with the Project and with Beth. They and the team are trying to find out where he is in the past. Sam can’t accept that he is subconsciously controlling his leaps. That is why he never returns home.
@@biguy617 I always read it that Sam was dead. He could stop leaping but home would be heaven...and he decides to keep leaping to help the living. The whole episode is about the dead coming back to help the living and I think thats what the bartender was trying to tell him with straight out saying it.
The theories are all over the place on reddit, of course. One that I like is that the destination Ben Song is trying to reach on the map they found, is Al's Place.
0:43 I remember watching this the night it aired, and that moment, that look on Sam's face, his trembling voice, and that tear, damn near broke my heart. 😢
So, basically on of his missions is yo leap Al back home? Its a bit confusing for me as time travel always has been 😂 Im sorry this does not give a happy ending for Sam, but it does for Al. Looks like Sam's job is to not go home but continue helping others
I feel like the bartender tricked.him. he apparently had yo acceot he controls his own destiny to leap home. Then the bartender managed to convince him to take a new assignment
the bartender said nothing to trick sam he told him the truth that he was controlling the leaps threw time. sam was a part of project quantum leap in order to save lives in the past he may not have intended to do them one at a time but that is how it has to be.
I think he did leap. He changed quite a bit of stuff that would change him. I think the sabbatical was in his current time. His parents were dead. We don’t know what happened with his brother. We know he lived through that, but maybe something else happened later down the road to car wreck who knows and for him home was the farm.. so maybe he had to back into himself as a younger boy to make sure he still went to MIT to still make sure and that’s why he was such a boy genius because he was actually a 30 something year-old man in a little boys body and he got to relive all that time with his family
