Sam leaps into a kids' TV show character known as Future Boy, learning his mission is to prevent the death of his co-star, Moe Stein, who plays Captain Galaxy on the series titled Time Patrol. Being in October 1957, the series is quite hokey, but the story is about the mental health of the star. His daughter believes-with reason-that her forgetful father may injure himself if he isn't put into a mental institution. He has left things on the stove and gotten in a car accident that could have been serious, and other things.
Sam, as the actor Kenny Sharp (Future Boy) tries to help his partner and learns that in his basement Moe is seriously working on a machine he believes will let him go back in time. When he explains his theory on how it could work, he uses an example of a piece of string to represent one's life, causing Sam and Al's chins to drop open as his theory sounds much like the way Sam explains his Quantum Leap operations.
Now Moe's machine seems to be electrically dangerous when he tries to demonstrate it, giving us all reason to believe the daughter might be right. Moe winds up at a hearing with a judge to determine his mental health. Sam acts as Moe's Fred Gailey and presents hundreds of letters from fans of Time Patrol from people who believe Moe can travel through time, to convince the judge that Moe is not crazy for believing, for dreaming, that time travel is possible. Unfortunately, this judge doesn't have Fred Mertz on hand to convince him to rule in favor of the accused and he orders him to a 6-month evaluation at a hospital.
Moe leaps away-not through time, but through a window-and rushes home to try to see if he can get his basement machine to actually take him back, but when the machine fizzles out, he realizes it just won't work. With Sam and the man's daughter on hand to see his disappointment, she learns that his big goal was to go back to become the kind of husband and father he wished he had been. She now pledges to help once he gets out of the hospital, and in the closing scene-back at the TV studio-we hear from Al that Moe went on to live with his adult daughter and her husband and everything turns out well.
We close with one more letter from a Time Patrol fan that Captain Galaxy reads, from a "Little Sam Beckett of Elkridge, Indiana" asking about the captain's theory on time travel, as a shocked Sam and Al hear him start to explain to the 4-year-old Sam, the wadded-up ball of string theory that Sam later uses in his work, it's time to leap.
To me, this episode truly stands out as one of the series' most memorable. That "Swiss cheese" bit affecting Sam's memory we often hear about can explain why throughout the episode Sam never remembered that he watched this series as a young boy. We can even infer that young Sam began his dreaming about time travel because he watched this show. It does a nice job of presenting an old man who has some problems but isn't really crazy, and shows that love of a family member means everything to him.
We get several funny bits-key in this series to me-including looks from people on the street seeing Sam in costume as Future Boy when he first talks to Moe's daughter, and Sam in a different goofy costume doing a commercial spot for the TV station, as well as a few scenes with Sam playing Future Boy on TV and in a live personal appearance before fans, where he awkwardly tries to play the role.
Since this show is clearly among the funniest in the series, AND has a link between what happens here with our hero as a youth, and includes a touching dramatic story, I think it solidly deserves a 10.
Sam, as the actor Kenny Sharp (Future Boy) tries to help his partner and learns that in his basement Moe is seriously working on a machine he believes will let him go back in time. When he explains his theory on how it could work, he uses an example of a piece of string to represent one's life, causing Sam and Al's chins to drop open as his theory sounds much like the way Sam explains his Quantum Leap operations.
Now Moe's machine seems to be electrically dangerous when he tries to demonstrate it, giving us all reason to believe the daughter might be right. Moe winds up at a hearing with a judge to determine his mental health. Sam acts as Moe's Fred Gailey and presents hundreds of letters from fans of Time Patrol from people who believe Moe can travel through time, to convince the judge that Moe is not crazy for believing, for dreaming, that time travel is possible. Unfortunately, this judge doesn't have Fred Mertz on hand to convince him to rule in favor of the accused and he orders him to a 6-month evaluation at a hospital.
Moe leaps away-not through time, but through a window-and rushes home to try to see if he can get his basement machine to actually take him back, but when the machine fizzles out, he realizes it just won't work. With Sam and the man's daughter on hand to see his disappointment, she learns that his big goal was to go back to become the kind of husband and father he wished he had been. She now pledges to help once he gets out of the hospital, and in the closing scene-back at the TV studio-we hear from Al that Moe went on to live with his adult daughter and her husband and everything turns out well.
We close with one more letter from a Time Patrol fan that Captain Galaxy reads, from a "Little Sam Beckett of Elkridge, Indiana" asking about the captain's theory on time travel, as a shocked Sam and Al hear him start to explain to the 4-year-old Sam, the wadded-up ball of string theory that Sam later uses in his work, it's time to leap.
To me, this episode truly stands out as one of the series' most memorable. That "Swiss cheese" bit affecting Sam's memory we often hear about can explain why throughout the episode Sam never remembered that he watched this series as a young boy. We can even infer that young Sam began his dreaming about time travel because he watched this show. It does a nice job of presenting an old man who has some problems but isn't really crazy, and shows that love of a family member means everything to him.
We get several funny bits-key in this series to me-including looks from people on the street seeing Sam in costume as Future Boy when he first talks to Moe's daughter, and Sam in a different goofy costume doing a commercial spot for the TV station, as well as a few scenes with Sam playing Future Boy on TV and in a live personal appearance before fans, where he awkwardly tries to play the role.
Since this show is clearly among the funniest in the series, AND has a link between what happens here with our hero as a youth, and includes a touching dramatic story, I think it solidly deserves a 10.
