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I really thought One Night in Koreatown was going to be the Let Them Play episode for season two of the current version of Quantum Leap starring Raymond Lee and Ernie Hudson.

I thought this because of how the showrunner and writers seriously spun the story, emphasizing only some aspects while ignoring the more important facts.

That episode, if you’ve read my blog or have seen the show, depicted the beginning of the 1992 Rodney King riots. I remember them well, because I lived only thirty miles or so from L.A. at the time.

Four white cops had been videoed brutally beating a black suspect named Rodney King. The officers were charged, arrested, and went to trial. All four were found not guilty. Outraged, the black community rioted and looted, but get this. The primary damage almost all in L.A.’s Koreatown.

This is one of the reasons, not mentioned in the episode, why Southern California’s Korean community still supports law enforcement.

One of the unrealistic elements of this show was that the leaper Ben Song (Lee) who is Korean-American (as is the actor) showing no concern for the danger to the Korean community around him. His sympathies were totally with how insulted and outraged the black community was at the verdict.

The other highly skewed element was that at no time in the episode were any black people shown to be rioting, looting, or committing any acts of violence at all. Sure, Ben and the other people trapped in a Korean-owned shoe store were shown pushing at a barrier set up against the storefront trying to keep rioters out, but we never actually saw the rioters.

We saw the results of the store being looted and the damage done to the surrounding neighborhood, but we never saw one black person breaking, burning, or stealing anything. In fact the only two blacks shown were Magic (Hudson) and Dwain (guest star Benjamin Flores Jr). They were depicted solely as victims of white (and Korean) racism.

The ONLY bad guys in the show were white cops.

Only that’s not how it all went down. There were plenty of innocent victims in 1992 just as there were in the more recent George Floyd/Black Lives Matter riots. But according to the QL writers and showrunners, those lives don’t matter.

This isn’t the only episode of QL that heavily tweaks the facts in order to create a particular illusion. The first season episode Salvation or Bust featured a western town in 1879 made up entirely of people of color. Everyone lived in a Nirvana-like peace, women could own businesses, and all was right with the world until evil white people tried to steal their land.

There’s no way in any version of reality where the town “Salvation” would be able to exist as shown in the 19th century American west. It was all a fantasy generated by the showrunner and writers to illustrate their political and social ideals, and it was blatantly anachronistic.

Which brings me to the point of this missive. I said I thought “One Night in Koreatown” was going to be the “Let Them Play” episode for season two. I was wrong…dead wrong.

Here’s what I saw a few days ago on twitter:

NOTE: The twitter/X accounts shown in these screenshots blocked me somewhere toward the end of season one when I told them what I really thought about how the show was being managed. Blocking isn’t an absolute, however (and no, I haven’t bothered to pester them since).

If you follow Shakina’s entire twitter/X timeline back to before the current QL show debuted, you will see that it was her and NBC’s intent all along to devote ALL of this franchise to trans promotion and representation.

As I mentioned in this blog post from a year ago, this is not the first time a franchise has been “queered” (not my word) by a showrunner.

If you’ve ever watched Star Trek: Discovery, you’ll have noticed a particularly strong emphasis in its characters and stories. As published in Out Magazine, the 2022 article Meet the Lesbian Co-Showrunner Queering Star Trek: Discovery illustrates the very same thing happening to the Star Trek franchise as is currently happening to Quantum Leap.

Let’s take a short detour into South Park: Joining the Panderverse. If you haven’t seen the animated telefilm, you’ve probably heard of it. Although mainly aimed at Kathleen Kennedy and the horrors she’s visited upon the (formerly) popular “Star Wars” franchise, I believe it can be applied to Star Trek, Quantum Leap, and really any form of modern entertainment genre (see the films “Barbie” or “The Marvels”).

According to Urban Dictionary, the panderverse is:

An “alternate” universe where favorite characters have been horribly mutilated via gender- and/or race-swapping, intended to pander to the “woke” crowd.
They replace the Tin Woodsman with Ms. Stainless Steel Woodswoman? This isn’t Oz, this is the PANDERVERSE!

I believe “panderverse” can be what Donald Bellisario, NBC, and company have done to the entire QL franchise, “updating it for modern audiences.” In this case the update has a highly specific gender identity related focus designed to “pander” to the the audience of the show, or rather, what they want to convert the audience into.

QL is not nearly as big or popular as “Star Trek and “Star Wars.” Nevertheless, QL is being “panderversed” and “queered” in its own fashion by showrunner Martin Gero and executive story editor Shakina.

Look, I “get” that science fiction in general (books, magazines, TV, movies, comic books) have always or nearly always been progressive (which is not necessarily the same as “woke”) relative to the era in which they were produced.

In the original “Star Trek” in the 1960s, creator Gene Roddenberry had a multi-racial crew on the bridge of the Enterprise. No one thought that a black communications officer and an Asian helmsman would be accepted, especially in the Bible belt. Surprise, no one complained. It was just assumed that in the future, racial differences and tensions would have been “solved.”

However, Kirk was still a womanizer, Scotty was still prone to use the ship’s phasers to solve a problem, and the women were still all attractive and wore mini-skirts.

Sure, entertainment in general tends to move in certain political and social directions in response to general cultural trends and the needs/requirements of the audience.

Is it possible to go too far?

Yes and no.

The “no” is that by now, we should expect a lot of stories involving LGBTQ+ people and situations. This is understandable and reflects the world around us. Science fiction is famous for commenting about the world around us, usually disguising it as “aliens,” “the future,” “other planets,” and even “time travel.”

The “yes” is when you hire a writing, editorial, acting, and production team whose sole purpose is to push one single ideal above all others, and an ideal that applies to less than one percent of the general, worldwide population.

The “yes” is when you create stories that are not only fiction, but completely cemented in fantasy. In the previously mentioned “Let Them Play” the scene in which the trans teenage girl character (who possessed male sexual organs) was seen in the girl’s locker room with them all disrobing before a basketball game and NONE OF THE ACTUAL TEENAGE GIRLS showing any discomfort whatsoever was totally out of “LaLa Land.”

When this was pointed out by reviewers or in social media, it was either totally glossed over or turned into some insult about the critic’s sexual and moral leanings.

I can see a landmark episode exploring trans issues in the world, but it works better if the reality of the situation shows the bumps and warts of the people on both sides of the debate.

QL didn’t do that in “Salvation,” it didn’t do that in “Let Them Play,” and it didn’t do that in “Koreatown” (and didn’t do that in any episode that I’ve watched, and up through “Koreatown,” I’ve watched them all).

It won’t do that in S2E10 with the character “Gene”.

In the images above, I didn’t understand half of the terms used and had to look them up. The episode is supposed to take place in the 1950s where a girl/woman generally regarded as a “tomboy” is in actuality trans/gender fluid and who eventually reveals themselves by showing off their binder (used to suppress their breasts since no one is doing “top jobs” in the 1950s).

Shakina is looking for an actor who can play Gene as someone who:

“…lives for adventure and runs toward danger. A rebel, defiant and witty, but with a loyal heart.”

In other words, a rebellious but likeable hero who is “AFAB trans-masc nonbinary before any of those words existed” who will emerge as the hero of the episode, probably achieving heights of acceptance that would never have been possible in the 1950s.

If there’s a season three for QL, I wonder how far back Ben will have to leap to find another such heroic trans character, establishing that such people have always existed among us and have always been good, noble, heroic, kind, gentle, and uplifting people with no flaws whatsoever.

A trans Mary Sue on (proverbial or literal) steroids.

No one cares about having diverse characters in entertainment. They care about representation and the panderverse being used as a blunt instrument to beat up the audience and demand (not ask, not suggest) that we either wholeheartedly love and accept said-panderverse or admit that we’re horrible [fill-in-the-blanks] types of bigots.

Young people who don’t know any better than to ask for good writing and credible characters and situations will blithely accept this junk as normal and even “good,” which is a tragedy. Hopefully a few or even a lot will wake up or consult those of us who’ve been around a while and demand of the creators to either generate good content or lose their audience and their income. That’s the only way these activist hacks and the studios pandering to them will get the message.

I checked and so far Season 2 actually has an 83% audience score with no “Tomatometer.” That is a surprise. By comparison, all of Season 1 had an audience score of 67% with a critics’ score of 57%

The episode Let Them Play had no score and only one review.

I suppose as long as this show continues to get acceptable ratings and makes money, it will continue to be a one-trick pony of TV shows.

I’ve said this before, but there’s a reason why the show includes a series of mysteries to be solved across the span of the season. But I don’t care anymore. That’s how I was tricked convinced to watch and review all of season 1. I watched the first several episodes of season 2 both to find out why Ben didn’t leap home and to look at what mysteries are being presented now.

But I don’t care about how Ben keeps encountering Hannah Carson (Eliza Taylor) across multiple leaps. I don’t care how Ian (Mason Alexander Park) found Ben after three years. I don’t care about Magic’s relationship with Beth (Susan Diol), and I don’t care about Addison’s (Caitlin Bassett) sleazy douche boyfriend Tom (Peter Gadiot).

I’m done. Ben Song has taken one leap too far and the show has become lost in the panderverse and always will be. At least when Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) on the original show became lost in time, he did it on a high note. I will always return to those shows and review selected episodes on this blog just because they’re so much fun.

But the current series has taken its final leap as far as I’m concerned. It ends with “Koreatown.” What happens after that will happen without me watching. Good-bye.