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So finally, after the airing of Quantum Leap season 2, episode four (which is currently locked), NBC unlocks last week’s episode 3 Closure Encounters. I’m sure this is meant to summon visions of both UFOs and Ben (Raymond Lee) and Addison (Caitlin Bassett) trying to bring closure to their relationship. After all, she now has a new boyfriend (Tom Westfall played by Peter Gadiot), so Ben is out.

Ben leaps into a government agent named Cook who works for Project Sign (also called “Project Saucer”). After looking at his host’s ID, he knows this means he’s an UFO investigator.

How did he know that? I’ll buy Ian (Mason Alexander Park) knowing that piece of obscure trivia since they are a super nerd, but just because Ben’s a physicist, doesn’t mean he’s knows about it, even if all his memory has returned. Heck, I didn’t even know about it until I looked it up.

He’s with a farmer at night on his land. Supposedly three of the farmer’s cows went missing and he tells Ben “they (the aliens) hide in the trees.” Turns out they’re a bunch of kids playing games with lawn gnomes.

Yes, it’s this year’s “Halloween episode.” My guess is that Ben will have less trouble producing proof of little green men than he did the existence of God.

Addison shows up and Ben is less than pleased. He also finds written orders in his car saying he needs to proceed to New Mexico. A supposed UFO forced a car with two teenage girls off the road. Both are in the hospital and one is in a coma.

Back at the Project, it’s like the three years didn’t pass at all. The team is doing what they usually do, with Ian trying to get from Ziggy what Ben’s leap is supposed to be about. Ian is thrilled at the prospect of UFOs. They also find out that Carrie Baker (Alison Thornton) was the driver and suffered a broken arm (why is she inpatient with just a broken arm?) while her passenger Melanie Hunt (Ashlee Grubbs) is in a coma.

In the original history, Melanie dies after a few days and Carrie is convicted of manslaughter.

Normally, it takes Addison a little time to find Ben after a leap but this time, she locates him right away. Now, they’re on a “road trip” together for hours on end with awkward silences and even more awkward conversation. That’s so odd. Why wouldn’t Ben leap into Cook at a point closer to encountering the real subjects of his leap? Why were Ben and Addison forced to spend so much time together with nothing going on?

This was written to fit the needs of the plot, not the actual logic of the leap. Ben and Addison have to again hash over that she’s been with Tom for eight months, that Ben was “lost” for three years, and that for Ben, no time has passed at all. After three episodes, does everyone have that? Good, let’s move on.

Ben gets to the town in question and at the hospital, Carrie consents to being interviewed without her Grandfather being present (her Mom died of cancer the year before and no mention is made of her Dad).

In a flashback she describes how the car radio went wacky on all stations and then a bright light appeared in the sky and overflew them. It came back and hovered. Carrie panicked and drove off the road, hitting a tree. Afterward, she and Melanie left the car. Carrie’s arm was broken but Melanie was fine. They were separated. The next thing she knew, she and Melanie were in the hospital and she has no idea why Melanie was back in the car and in a coma.

Carrie thought it was a tornado at first. I looked it up and New Mexico does get tornadoes. Since 1950, they’ve had 656, not a huge number, but it’s reasonable that she could believe such a thing, that is except that tornadoes don’t emit a blinding white light.

Right then, Carrie’s grandfather and the county Sheriff Woodrow Morgan (Louis Herthum) shows up and he’s not happy. Carrie’s already been charged in the car accident. In the hall, Morgan tells Ben that the accident scene shows no evidence supporting Carrie’s story, but the backseat did have a bottle of whiskey sitting on it. The Sheriff has hidden it for now, but he’s got less than 24 hours to sign it in as evidence.

Next, we encounter the trope of the small town and county owned by the evil, white rich land baron, in this case Russell Hunt (David Grant Wright), the dad of the girl in a coma. He wants Carrie in jail, even though she hasn’t been released from the hospital yet (what a guy) and he wants blood. Except for this, we have no indication that he’s a loving father, or that he has any other personality whatsoever besides being the two-dimensional, cardboard cutout bad guy.

It’s Tuesday now. On Friday, the circuit judge arrives, and apparently Carrie’s conviction will be instantaneous. Really, don’t these people believe in a trial, that the girl have a defense attorney, delays, continuances, and if convicted, appeals? Oh, I know. Hunt has all the money and Morgan has none, plus it serves the plot of needing a short deadline.

So Ben has to prove that Carrie’s story is true somehow in less than three days.

Ben goes into the local diner and orders a cup of coffee from the waitress Hannah Carson (Eliza Taylor). For a small town waitress, she knows a lot about “centrifugal force” and “angular momentum” (she’s describing how baffling a yo-yo would be to a person from 1850, “inadvertently” summoning a time travel trope, again for the convenience of the plot). This figures into the episode later on, so stay tuned.

The Sheriff and Ben drive to the accident site but they’re being followed by a couple of Hunt’s guys, either to plant evidence that Carrie is a liar or to prevent the Sheriff from making evidence to clear her.

Morgan is pissed because he was supposed to keep Carrie out of trouble after her Mom died, but the opposite is happening. Again, we see obvious parallels between Morgan’s deteriorating relationship with Carrie and Ben and Addison. Could this be anymore annoying and obvious?

Morgan plays “chicken” with Hunt’s goons scaring the daylights out of Ben. Score one for the good guys. Hunt’s minions are run off the road and the Sheriff’s car is fine. Never mind that they could press charges with the state police about Morgan’s reckless driving.

At the accident site, we don’t see any footprints indicating Melanie left the car but Addison does find a partial print of a man walking toward the car. Someone else was there and brushed away all the other prints. Addison thinks this is pretty thin, but Ben runs with it. He’s also really dismissive of Addison’s objections.

At the project, they guess that the object Carrie saw was a helicopter. In 1949, they were pretty new and she might not know what it was. There are two problems. The first is that helicopters make a distinctive sound in flight. Even if Carrie didn’t know what it was, the audience would, and we didn’t hear that sound. The second problem is that on two occasions, Ian reads newspaper accounts of Carrie’s conviction from 1940, nine years earlier when there were no helicopters.

This is a critical error for a TV show about time travel and someone made a big boo boo. Project Sign was established in 1948. If this were 1940, Ben’s host wouldn’t have a job there.

Let’s say the leap is happening in 1949 and the 1940 references were a mistake that somehow no one caught.

Ben re-interviews Carrie about what he found and she adds that she saw something crazy, a big thing with three round, green glowing eyes.

It actually did look like a person with some sort of device on their face, but I’ll get to that.

Outside, Ben sees two of Hunt’s thugs hanging around watching him. In spite of Addison’s protests, Ben confronts them and they start beating him up. This is something Ben would never have done before, but it is explained as his being angry about his break up with Addison.

The Sheriff breaks things up with his shotgun, chasing these goons off. Yes, they did assault a federal officer, which probably all the money in the world wouldn’t get them out of, but it’s explained why they didn’t have to worry later in the show.

At the Project, they can’t figure out where Hunt’s money is coming from. He made it big in oil but that wasn’t until years later (it was unclear if he got into oil in 1949 or later). They surmise that he could have been running drugs and using a helicopter to transport them.

Ben asks the Sheriff if Hunt has a helicopter. It might be at his ranch. Ben convinces Morgan to drive out there in the middle of the night, a move that Addison complains about. Talk about nagging ex-girlfriend.

They’re chased down and run off the road by the light in the sky which, from the Sheriff’s perspective, is no helicopter or plane. When the radio starts acting up, Addison’s hologram is disrupted and she’s kicked out, so she can’t witness the rest. Morgan shoots at it with his shotgun while Ben runs for cover. He trips, looks up, and sees the three green eyes, then passes out.

I should say that as a federal agent, Ben probably carries a handgun. Even when Morgan is firing at the UFO, Ben doesn’t do likewise. We could say this is because Ben hates guns, which was established in the first season, but in the season 2 opener as an Air Force sergeant, he handled guns just fine. Oh well, more convenient writing to serve the plot.

It is revealed that whatever messed up Addison’s hologram wasn’t at the Project. She first suspects Janis (or Janice) Calavicci (Georgina Reilly), but Magic (Ernie Hudson) says she’s in Hawaii.

Ben wakes up in his hotel room. Addison is there freaking out because Ben could have died. She lost him once and can’t stand the thought of him doing it again, especially due to his own careless behavior.

Ben finds out from Hannah that early in the morning, the Sheriff brought him back unconscious and took him into the hotel. She notices what looks like a spider bite on Ben’s neck but concludes (because she’s smart) that it’s not a spider bite.

At the hospital, Ben discovers that both he and Melanie have identical dual-puncture wounds on their necks. They’ve been drugged. If it’s narcotics, then Hunt is transporting drugs. If it’s something more complicated, then look at the military.

Ben has a blood test done on both him and Melanie. Ian pulls up the test results in the present. The drug is a complex synthetic compound developed by the military in the late 1940s and early 50s. Too strong a dosage could have put Melanie into a coma but not Ben because he’s larger.

While there’s no military base within 500 miles of Ben’s location, Ian guesses that it could be a black box program, the military leasing land from Hunt for a secret research project.

Would the government really trust a rich civilian to know about their dirty dealings? I guess so if they paid him enough money.

The Sheriff says that two years previously, Hunt had a lot of construction work done at an old, played out mine on his property, but it made no sense to him.

As an aside, at least there’s an explanation for the “secret base trope” in this episode. Usually massive, secret government bases (think Irwin Allen’s The Time Tunnel) are just “there” with no discussion about how everyone missed it when this thing was built and how no one notices it now.

Ben ripped off a syringe of adrenaline from the hospital (such lax medication security) in case he’s drugged again. Once more, Addison yells that he’s being reckless. At the Project, they say an OD on adrenaline could kill him, but on the low side, he could go into a coma like Melanie.

With the location pinpointed by the Sheriff, Ben drives out to the secret base alone.

Okay, let’s say he discovers the base, gets inside, and finds out what’s going on (real UFOs?). He will have no evidence. No other witnesses will be there. What good will it do?

But he goes out anyway. Addison is really pissed but Ben accuses her of giving up on him again, just like when she “buried” him. So Addison is shamed into going along with his scheme, which includes injecting himself with the syringe.

Then he’s on a gurney, no shirt on, vague images of guys with three green glowing eyes, and what looks like a flying saucer (I already know where all this is heading). Later, an Army truck drives into the wilderness, dumps Ben’s body on the ground, and drives off. The Sheriff, who supposedly followed him, shows up a minute later.

I guess the adrenaline sort of worked in that Ben didn’t go into a coma, but he did eventually pass out.

The good news is, Addison saw everything.

Okay, about hologram interference. Supposedly, something about the UFO puts out radio interference which is why car radios go wacky and supposedly why Addison’s hologram was disrupted.

But in the original show, it was established that the hologram is a neural interface between the imaging chamber and the leaper. It connects directly with the leaper’s brain which is why no one can see the hologram except the leaper (in the original show, kids under five and animals can also see the hologram because of their “innocence,” but that’s beside the point). How did whatever the 1949 military was using disrupt brain waves?

Oh, well.

In the next scene, Morgan and a newly recovered and fully dressed Ben meet the head of the military operation General Austin Murray (William deVry) who is dressed in civilian clothing. It’s in a secluded setting. Armed with the information Addison provided plus the photos Morgan says he shot of Ben being kidnapped by soldiers and then dumped off again, the General agrees to give them the antidote to the drug keeping Melanie in a coma. He’ll move the project, promise never to kidnap anyone or run them off the road again, give Carrie a nice car and a scholarship to whatever school she wants to attend.

He agrees. You’re kidding, right?

First of all, Ben’s host works for the federal government. One phone call from Murray and his bosses call Cook off the investigation. They can even frame him with some crime to get him out of the way.

Morgan and Carrie were already about to run off because the judge was coming sooner than expected and Hunt had Morgan suspended for interfering with an investigation (whose investigation, since only Ben and the Sheriff were the investigators?). Making these people go away, even to the point of murder, would have been an easier and more realistic solution. But then again, the writing must give way to the needs of the plot.

The green eye thing was a night vision device (why were people wearing them indoors at the base where the rooms were fully lit?) and the only other unexplained element was this real life 1950s supersonic flying saucer.

The only reason Ben was assigned to the case was that the Sheriff phoned an anonymous tip to Project Sign. Even then, you’d think Ben would never have ended up there in the first place since, if you’re running a secret project testing a flying saucer, you don’t want the government’s official UFO chasers sticking their nose in it. Just tell Project Sign to NOT send investigators to where they are working.

A number of times in the episode, the issues Grandpa and Carrie are having parallel the ones between Ben and Addison. I already mentioned one instance, but the writers couldn’t let it go, so they worked it to death.

Ben suggests that the General move his project to Groom Lake, Nevada and Area 51. I looked it up, and that wasn’t developed as a testing site for the Lockheed U-2 spy aircraft until 1955. As a run-of-the-mill federal employee, even if that area was being scouted for such a purpose in 1949, Ben’s host wouldn’t have known about it.

The whole incident involving Carrie and Melanie is explained as a helicopter flying too low and running the car off the road and we’ll just forget about Melanie’s coma, the three-eye guys, and the rest of it.

At the Project, Magic is back in his office again. Tom is in DC but expected back in a few hours. Addison wants to quit being a hologram because Ben is so angry at her but Magic tells her to hang in there. He suggests spending time with Tom and letting Mr. Perfect Supportive Boyfriend be perfect and supportive. After she leaves his office, he gets on the phone with someone to discuss the leap, but we don’t know if it’s his girlfriend or someone else.

Wouldn’t it be a hoot if his girlfriend is Janis (or Janice) and that’s how Magic knew she was in Hawaii? After all, he’s retired from the military and I guess the team only have their old jobs back because of Tom. He’s got to do something with his time.

That reminds me, Ian and Jenn (Nanrisa Lee) still haven’t revealed, or even further discussed the secret behind how Ian really found Ben. The secrets are stacking up in an effort to keep viewers engaged as long as possible.

Ben hasn’t leapt yet and he should have since Melanie recovers while Carrie isn’t charged for manslaughter or anything else (nothing is mentioned about them having an open container of booze in the car). How is this a “happily ever after” story? Hunt is still a jerk, even though he gets his daughter back. Maybe the General puts in a good word and a lot of money to keep him quiet and to leave Morgan and Carrie alone. As long as everyone keeps their mouths shut, it’s all good.

Agent Cook will wake up with no idea how his investigation turned out, but at least he won’t know anything about the General’s project. If questioned, he’ll say he doesn’t remember and it will be assumed that he’s keeping his mouth shut as previously arranged.

Ben walks into the diner again and meets with Hannah, who has been keeping Carrie safe while all this was going on (she’d been released from the hospital earlier). You’d think Hunt would have paid off the hospital staff to tell him when Carrie got out, especially if he owns everything in the whole county.

Hannah tells Ben she worked in World War Two as a programmer. What she probably means is that she was a computer otherwise known as a Top Secret Rosie.

Some of them did go on to work in the nascent computing industry in the 1950s but just like their “Rosie the Riveter” counterparts who worked “men’s jobs” during the war, they were made to return to more “traditional” roles once men came back.

Ben suggests she look up a certain professor at Princeton who, in 1949, was opening a physics program for women. How Ben knew this, I don’t know. Again, he’s a scientist, but how could he remember such specifics of the history of his profession? In the first season, he couldn’t even remember his home phone number from when he was a kid (of course, he had swiss-cheese memory, then).

The point is, while he might easily “Google” it in the present, it’s unlikely he would have committed it to memory. It’s a Ziggy/Ian thing, but they weren’t involved.

Ben says “Goodbye” but there seems to be a “vibe” between them. Hannah suggests just “See you later.” Then Ben leaps.

I’ll forego what he leaps into (and it’s the first time this season that we see a glimpse of the next episode) because it doesn’t matter at the moment. I did read something suggesting we’ll see Hannah again in future Quantum Leap episodes. Given an expertise in physics, we don’t know if she ends up having some connection to Sam Beckett’s QL Project or if Ben leaps into a host who will “hook up” with her in her future (will he be able to reasonably explain to Hannah that he’s a time traveler?).

This week, they kept the representation and the progressivisms down to a bare minimum. In fact, it was the least progressive, most “this is a regular adventure story with shipper overtones” episode thus far in the season. Hannah was the one exception and even her situation was, in this case plausible, if a little contrived. Except for the spider bite though, she played no real role in the episode or in advancing the plot. The story could have been written with a “tough-an-nails” older nurse at the hospital taking Carrie in to keep her safe. Hannah wasn’t needed for that either.

Her only purpose in the episode, and why Ben didn’t leap until pointing her at Princeton (maybe that was the real reason for the leap after all), was to be advanced into a lifestyle more suited to her intelligence.

What about other reviews of the episode?

Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 3.5 out of five tomatoes and said:

“Closure Encounters” is a slight step down from last week’s propulsive, action-packed episode, as far as the leap is concerned. However, the character dynamics, the inner workings that drive the story forward, are fun to explore.

Tell-Tale TV wrote:

The outing zeroes in on Ben’s coping mechanism, which seems to be uncharacteristic risk-taking. Raymond Lee navigates Ben’s convoluted feelings with ease, showcasing his frustration with Addison’s new relationship without voicing it. We’ve never genuinely seen Ben and Addison at odds with each other, even when Ben was bereft of his memories.

They also say:

I’m curious to discover how Hannah leaves her timeline in the 1940s. We know Eliza Taylor and Peter Gadiot are series regulars for Season 2.

And…

Is anyone getting vibes between Ben and Hannah? Just me? I don’t want a love triangle between Ben, Addison, and Hannah, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that were in the cards for this season.

Fangirlish (which is becoming one of my favorite QL reviewers) says:

You know an episode is going to be good when you have to pause it before even 5 minutes has passed to process all your feelings. Quantum Leap 2×03 “Closure Encounters” was exactly that kind of episode. I doubt I was even five minutes in when I had to text my fellow Fangirlish editors about the fact that this season is not playing around.

Jade certainly wears her proverbial heart on her sleeve for these reviews.

Further…

With an episode as good as “Closure Encounters,” where do you even begin? Quantum Leap‘s take on little green men was the most fun I’ve had watching an alien investigation since The X-Files at its best. And, believe me, that is a high compliment. Also? Ben (Raymond Lee) being responsible for Area 51? That is exactly the right amount of cheese to make my little heart happy. Ben, honey, you’re doing an excellent job. Keep up the good work.

And…

While my inner alien conspiracist geeked out over this week’s Leap, my shipper heart continued to be battered and bruised. Addison (Caitlin Bassett) broke my heart last week when she processed her conflicting emotions over Ben’s return. Ben apparently looked at that and said “Hold my beer.” Because he destroyed me.

The QL writing is just made for Jade.

Price of Reason’s YouTube reviews are always fun. POR makes no bones about the show’s quality generally being poor, but you can find out all about it here.

He generally blames QL showrunner Martin Gero for all of the show’s flaws.

Personally, I think many of the problems can be laid at the feet of trans writer/editor Shakina (who blocked me on twitter/X for “reasons”) who I discovered, by reading all of her tweets back to before the show even debuted, said “Quantum Leap” would be dedicated almost exclusively to representation, and specifically trans representation.

While this isn’t true of each and every episode (at least not in the extreme), with that knowledge, when I start to watch a new show, it’s like looking at a bomb. Will it be a dud or blow up in my face?

It wasn’t a bad episode as such. It’s clear the writers did at least some research, in spite of the errors. There were stereotypes aplenty including the aforementioned, evil greedy landowner, the equally evil military officer, the gruff but true Grandpa Sheriff, plus the really annoying shipper problems between Ben and Addison. Yes, they have a lot to process, but does every other relationship during the leap have to mirror it?

On the positive side, Ben is being less of a weenie and more of a time traveler of action. It’s atypical, but I’m glad he’s not just waving his arms around helplessly waiting for Ian and Ziggy to rescue his ass while whining his true love for Addison. Maybe this should be an enduring quality in Ben. Less pep talk, more doing shit.

Here’s the promo for episode four, which many people have probably already seen:

Addendum: I just re-read the IMDb page for this episode and, in part, this is what the featured review said:

This is actually quite an earthy episode centering on relationships and how a grandfather’s loss compares to Ben’s situation.

Again there is a message about how men should open up about their feelings and how women should go for what they want from life.

Let’s hope there is an episode encouraging heterosexual white men to do the same to offer the series a sense of balance.

“Men opening up about their feelings” and “how women should go for what they want” and encouraging “heterosexual white men to do the same.” I completely missed these progressivisms. I can sort of see how the reviewer arrived at the first two, but what part of their rear anatomy did they pull the “heterosexual white man” thing? The Sheriff was a heterosexual white man and men to talk do each other about their internal processes. We just don’t make a giant, dramatic deal about it to the rest of the world. I retract my statement. There were more “wokeisms” in this episode, they just flew below my radar.