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So, against my better judgment, I decided to watch the season 2 opener of the current Quantum Leap television show titled This Took Too Long!

For S1, I tended to “soft soap” my reviews, giving the show the benefit of the doubt, even though I knew it’s stated intent was to completely highlight representation as it’s top priority, even above entertaining the broadest possible audience.

All of those episodes piled on top of each other had pretty much convinced me to abandon the show at the end of season one’s run. It wouldn’t be the first time. I watched the first seasons of Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (and boy am I glad I missed season 2).

For “Quantum Leap” I think I was just curious about why Ben didn’t leap home when Ziggy’s programming said he really should. Of course the real reason is that the show won a second season so Ben (Raymond Lee) needs to keep leaping.

I was also curious after the nature and character of S1 plus the recent writer’s strike, if the tone and content of the show might try to be more egalitarian. That is, would the showrunners stop trying to alienate large numbers of old school television viewers, science fiction fans, and time travel buffs like me. Never mind that I’m too old, too male, and too white to come anywhere near their target demographic.

Okay, that’s probably too much to ask for, but I thought at least the season opener should be pretty safe. After all, you want to re-engage the audience and pull them in again before blasting them with controversial content. Right? Am I right?

Let’s find out.

Oh, it goes without saying that this is a Spoiler Alert so if you haven’t seen the episode and don’t want to know all about it beforehand, stop reading now.

Starting at the beginning, I clicked on the NBC link for the show. I usually watch these the day after they’re initially streamed so I don’t have to pay for a service. That means I have to put up with commercials, but those are okay. I take notes live during the episode and commercials give me a chance to catch up on my typing.

However, this time, I got a message saying I used up one of two allotted credits. No commercials today. It actually was kind of nice.

The intro presentation and graphics were updated and in part it said that Ben is driven by an “unknown force” to leap into other people’s lives. The original show made it fairly plain that it was “God” or time personified that was the force and depicted a number of Christian based supernatural events. As I previously wrote in S1 reviews, for obvious reasons, the current show shuns all that.

Ben leaps into a guy in the cargo hold of an aircraft in flight. He’s pretty freaked out that he didn’t leap home but is trying to keep it together. There’s a big crate in the plane and two brothers Ronny Abrams (Aaron Abrams) and Enock (Enoch?) Abrams (P.J. Byrne) are arguing about what’s in the crate. A third person, Curtis Bailey (Francois Arnaud) tells them to knock it off and stop speculating. The Abrams brothers are played pretty much for comedy and they’re very likeable.

A fourth person, Ellen Grier (Melissa Roxburgh) comes in from the cockpit and tells them to leave the crate alone. Everyone, including Ben’s character, is in the Air Force and they are delivering the top secret cargo in the crate to New Delhi. They are in a commercial aircraft flown by the military over Soviet airspace in 1978.

Except for Grier, who graduated top of her class from the Academy, they are all smugglers, screw ups, and losers. They’ve been together, all of them, for five years running this and possibly other ops. That includes the pilot flying the aircraft. This is to be their last mission. Then they can go home or do whatever they have been planning to do.

That’s cut short when they are hit by a surface-to-air missile (SAM) and drop out of the sky like a rock.

Ben wakes up and the plane is broken into pieces and on fire. Everyone but Enock and the pilot seems okay except for scrapes and bruises. The pilot is dead. They have to free Enock’s leg which is pinned under the landing gear. Ben goes into the burning fuselage for the medical kit and is ordered by Grier to help her drag the crate out of the soon-to-explode aircraft. Sure, why not?

They succeed and the plane blows up. Grier tries to use a field radio to call for help, but it’s not working.

Ben keeps trying to talk to Addison (Caitlin Bassett) but no one from the project has shown up so far.

They bury the Captain and in spite of having worked with each other for five years, they know practically nothing about him including whether he was from Iowa or Idaho (since it’s all “flyover country” for the showrunners, maybe they don’t know the difference either).

Bailey keeps the Captain’s wedding ring planning to give it to his widow when or if they get out of there. He confesses to Ben that he also lost someone he loved very much and he knows how she’d feel. Ben has the same sort of longing for Addison.

Ben has the first of three flashbacks to the time before he leaped. He’s talking to Magic (Ernie Hudson) while Addison is being fitted in a Fermi Suit (what both Sam Beckett, played by Scott Bakula, and Ben wore when they entered the acceleration chamber and first leapt through time). Ben hadn’t begun his relationship with Addison yet but is still worried about her. Magic says that he thinks it would be harder for the people left behind than for the time traveler. There’s no “adventure” for the crew running the project.

Ben can fix the radio, it’s just a broken antenna. He says it’s like the old radios he used to tinker with as a kid. But this is 1978 so Grier says it’s brand new and top of the line military grade. Ben carelessly says he’ll MacGyver the radio, but that television show wouldn’t exist for another seven years.

You’d think a whole year of leaping would have taught Ben something about trying to blend in during a leap. But when Bailey catches him talking to himself when he’s really trying to communicate with Addison, he says he’s praying. Bailey reminds him that he’s an atheist. Ben also mentions his fiancée, meaning Addison, but the person hosting him isn’t engaged. Although he shows some useful skills in this leap, he still hasn’t figured out how to not to say stupid stuff.

The flashbacks in the episode are to show that Ben has got all of his memories back. Not sure why, but we do know from S1 that other leapers from Ben’s future all had intact memories, so maybe that just kicked in or something. There’s no explanation, and during this episode there really can’t be (stick with me for why).

One of them spots a small truck with Soviet insignia on it heading for the crash site. Our heroes, including Enock who has a bum leg, hide on top of one of a wing which is above line-of-sight for the three soldiers in the truck. The soldiers find the crate, apparently expecting to do so. Our heroes get the drop on the Soviets including Ben who seems to have gotten over his aversion to handling firearms (a plot point in at least one S1 episode).

Grier questions the soldiers in English but it’s obvious they speak only Russian. Someone tries to contact the soldiers on their radio. Ben uses Russian to answer them saying that everyone died in the crash and there’s no sign of the crate (but apparently his host didn’t know Russian). That should buy them some time, but they argue among themselves about whether or not to leave.

The soldiers’ map shows a nearby radio relay station where they can boost their field radio’s signal and call for help. Grier is against it and says that they must stay with the crate and wait for rescue.

We encounter “wokeism” number one. Grier says the rest of them pulled this duty because they’re all Air Force mess ups. She’s their commanding officer and the only serious military person among them. Her only problem was being born a woman. The Abram brothers (rightfully in my opinion) call her out on her feminism rant.

I was humming pretty well along in the story until this hit me in the face like a baseball bat. There was absolutely nothing added to the episode by this reveal, but it gets worse.

Flashback number two. Both Ian (Mason Alexander Park) and Jenn (Nanrisa Lee) figure out that Ben has a crush on Addison. This is still before their first date (we can also pinpoint the time by the fact that Ian has dark hair). Ian says they entered data about Ben and Addison into Ziggy and asked the AI what the chances are of the two becoming a couple. Mysteriously, Ziggy answers 50/50 which Ian did not expect. Ziggy is supposed to be able to provide much closer estimates of probabilities, which is how Ben and Sam before him knew what they were supposed to do in any given leap.

Okay, here’s my take. Once Ben gets in contact with the project, he’ll find out that he and Addison never got together and that Addison is with another man. I made this prediction before having any knowledge of the end of the episode, but I think I’m right here.

Back in the leap, Ben opens the crate against Grier’s objections and finds it is loaded with nothing but bricks. They were just decoys to divert the Soviets from the real crate and whatever is in it.

Now everyone’s depressed, especially Grier. She thought she had a real mission for the first time in her career. But she was cut loose along with the rest of the losers. Ben gives one of his standard and annoying pep talks which were his main “superpower” in S1. I guess that tradition will sadly continue.

Grier tells Ben that she’s from a long line of military family members. She just wanted her shot to prove herself. She says that if they had told her this was a decoy and even a suicide mission, she’d have gone along with it anyway. Both she and Ben seem to think this is noble, but it only makes her a regular military clown being used by a system that sees her as a disposable part.

Again, rifting off of Addison, Ben tells her there will be a generation of female military officers who would love to thank her for being their role model. Grier can’t understand how Ben could know about women from the future. This is an extension of the aforementioned first “wokeism” and it was terribly, painfully obvious.

Martin Gero has the primary writing credit for the episode (of course, the show has an entire team of writers) and Shakina is listed as Executive Story Editor. Given what I’ve written regarding Shakina’s philosophy toward the show, I suppose this was to be expected, even in the season opener.

With the crate useless, and pep talks given, they decide not to give up on themselves and drive toward the relay station. They might get rescued yet.

Still no Addison or other contact with the project and Ben is really puzzled. This is the longest during a leap that he’s been out of contact.

They stop the truck when they find a tripwire across the road. I don’t know if this would be a thing as opposed to an anti-personnel mine under the road, but whatever. Unfortunately, Bailey decided not to watch where he was walking (even though the tripwire should have been a big, big clue) and ends up standing on the mine. He’s okay as long as he stands there, but the minute he moves and releases the pressure plate, boom.

He decides to sacrifice himself because he’s the only person with no one to go back to. Here comes “wokeism” number two.

He’s gay. The person he told Ben he lost was a male Lieutenant named Tom. Tom was killed but his family went through his diary which revealed to them he was gay and that Bailey was his lover. In 1978, being gay in the military was not allowed (this was even before Bill Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell) and this disclosure should have ended his career. He wasn’t discharged because his Dad is a General, but that’s how he ended up on the loser team with the Abram brothers. He’s the only competent person besides Grier (and supposedly Ben’s host).

Bailey says their love was good and pure, really pouring on the schmaltz. Now he’s going to heroically end his life, telling everyone to get back. Another needless baseball bat in the face. Ouch.

Ben again to the rescue. They can’t just substitute another weight for Bailey like filling a duffle with sand, the weight difference would be too much. However, Ben, who knows nothing about Soviet mines, believes they could, each in turn, substitute themselves for Bailey, heaviest to lightest, until the lightest person, Grier, would be close enough to their weighted pack so that everyone could get clear.

It works and somehow it becomes safe to take the mine with them. I have no idea what role the tripwire played except to warn them that there was a mine ahead, to stop, to have Bailey get in a jam, and for Ben to save everyone.

Would that have even worked?

They travel on and as night falls they get to their destination. It’s not a radio relay station, it’s a SAM launching platform, probably the one that shot them down. The map wouldn’t have correctly identified it in case an enemy (like them) got their hands on it.

All of the guards are in the bunker fifty feet down, so there are no sentries and apparently, no perimeter security. Pretty sloppy of the Soviets. Ben says he can still use the radar dish to direct a signal to the aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea (I think…Grier mentioned it earlier in the episode) for a pickup.

Again, amazingly, it works. There’s no argument and no one ignores the decoy group. Help is on the way. But then Ben hears something else. Another signal in Russian says that after the original three soldiers didn’t subsequently report in, others were sent out. I guess our heroes left these guys at the plane tied up or something. The Soviets discovered that the crate was a decoy and the escort got away. Now the Soviets have three other target aircraft, one of which is carrying the real cargo, they want brought down (we never learn what the cargo really is).

They have to stop those planes from being shot down. Ben says if they disable the radar dish, the SAMs won’t have any guidance. They only need to destroy the controls Ben used, not the whole dish. They have the mine but it can’t be detonated remotely. Ben to the rescue again. Mount the mine to the front of the truck and drive the truck into the SAM site. Never mind that the controls are on or near the dish which might not be accessible by a ground delivered explosive.

Grier gets in the truck with Ben and I’m surprised Ben decided to drive it. After all, it’s something Grier was more likely to volunteer to do and order everyone else to back off. I also noticed that neither Bailey (who was so willing to die not that many hours before) or Ronny didn’t breathe a word about wanting to help (Enock is injured so he has an automatic out).

Flashback number three is Ben and Addison talking about the project. He’s upset that Addison as the time traveler, is supposed to risk her life. “What if I lose you?” he asks. Her answer is, “Then you’ll come and find me.”

I did read a prediction that as the season progresses, Addison goes all in and leaps after Ben to bring him home. We’ll have to wait and see about that one as well.

The interaction leads to Ben and Addison’s first date (which at the culmination of S1, Ben leaps into himself to save Addison’s life). Addison’s willingness to sacrifice herself in the service of duty and honor is what convinces Ben to try the risky maneuver with the truck and the mine.

As Ben and Grier drive toward the site, one of the SAMs launches. It’s still not too late. If they knock out the radar being used to track the target, the missile will become a heat seeker and home in on the hottest thing around, which once the explosion happens, will be the radar dish.

Sure enough, Ben and Grier jump out of the moving vehicle in time (I didn’t see what Ben used to jam the accelerator pedal to the floor), the mine goes off, and the missile returns finishing off the job.

During all of this, no one from inside the launch site detects these actions or if they do, they don’t respond. In spite of all the big booms, no one is hurt. No more missiles will be launched (assuming that this is the only SAM site tracking the three airborne targets) and whatever secret cargo is being transported will arrive safely.

Then Ian shows up but he looks different than Ben expected. Why didn’t anyone come to find Ben before? Here’s the big shocker. It’s been three years since the project had any contact with Ben. They thought he was lost like Sam. Project Quantum Leap was shut down (what Martinez or “Leaper X” tried to do all through S1) and now everything’s different.

Ben leaps. Roll credits.

We know from news sources that in S2, the project acquires additional personnel and Magic leaves at least temporarily. So it won’t be “business as usual” at the project. But if everything was shut down, why is Ian there? I guess that’s something we hope will be revealed in the next episode.

According to Fate’s Wide Wheel:

#QuantumLeap was up in audience (2.9 million) last night over last season’s average (2.3 million) and steady in the demo (0.3). Great news and reviews and audience response has been overwhelmingly positive. Love seeing this and can’t wait to see where things go from here.

Someone also tweeted:

I just finished watching it on peacock, I also finish watching the promo for episode 2 and I’m not very happy with the news about Addison that needs to end very quickly

I’m betting I was right about Addison.

Someone else commented:

Love the new format of the show. Gonna be a wild 2nd season. The guest stars were amazingly great and the writing was spectacular.

I think the target audience was engaged.

So I looked up the S2E2 promo:

“Have you thought how you’re going to tell him about us?”

Oops. I was wrong. Addison and Ben did get together as in the original history, but in Ben’s three year absence, Addison moved on with someone else. That’s got to hurt, or it will when Ben finds out.

Looking at a few other reviews (I can’t read them all) now that I’ve written my own, Fangirlish.com was pretty upset, but really because the usual format was drastically changed and of course THREE YEARS?

TVFanatic.com also mentioned Ben’s solo leap but wondered if Ben being able to leap while the project was shut down has implications for Sam Beckett’s leaps.

SciFi Pulse had the shortest review of the three, calling it:

A fairly solid start to the second season with a bit of a cliffhanger that is pretty much telegraphed throughout the episode and obvious given that Ben is very much left to his own devices.

S2 is taking an interesting direction so far. Like the mystery of Janis (or Janice) Calavicci, it is likely devised to bind all of the season’s episodes together. This is probably in the hopes (again) of bringing the audience along, not so much to see how Ben will solve the “leap of the week,” but to see how the season will resolve losing Ben for three years while Ben has experienced no time at all passing.

Time travel is a funny thing. We don’t know why Ben didn’t leap home when he should have. Whatever happened to change Ziggy’s programming is likely the same thing that caused the project not to be able to detect Ben for a three year period. Ben didn’t keep leaping for three years because his experience of the passing of time and the present’s became discontinuous. They stopped mapping on a one-on-one, day-by-day timeline between the two. That’s my guess.

Yes, I’m being hard on the “wokeisms” and this episode is hardly the largest stumbling block of the series.

It’s not that I dislike diverse characters and situations, but I do have an issue with representation for it’s own sake. Again, as I’ve previously pointed out, that’s the thrust of the show before any other consideration.

At any time I may stop watching altogether because of this, for but the time being, I’ll continue to give “Quantum Leap” a whirl.

But no more Mister Nice Guy. I calls ’em as I sees ’em.