What an unfortunately appropriate title.

Quantum Leap returns! It picks up right where it left off (as usual) with Ben’s leap naturally not landing back home. Rather, he finds himself a member of a rag-tag military unit,  They are impersonating civilians and on a super-secret, super-important mission. What starts as good characterization of the soldiers swiftly devolves into pointless bickering that adversely affects the pacing. The whole episode takes too long and tries too hard. Twenty-five minutes of plot stretches over forty-five minutes of show. It falls below the bar it previously set so high.

The soldiers’ plane crashes in Russia—during the Cold War, naturally—causing their main dilemma. How do they escape? Do they try to take their important cargo with them or not? The nature of the cargo turns out to be a nice twist. How they escape, not so much.

As they flee, one of the soldiers steps on a landmine. It doesn’t explode. A major cliché, and one this episode doesn’t pull off particularly well. He keeps shifting his weight as he tells his heartfelt story about what made him an outcast in the military. The horrible directing of this major scene kept knocking me out of the story, as did the staging of their eventual solution to getting him off the mine.

The concept itself was clever. I have no clue how realistic it was, because I always thought mines exploded way more easily than that. Hence, the execution just didn’t convince. A munitions expert—definitely not a skill of mine—may explain it was totally plausible, but it continued knocking me out of the story regardless.

The guest cast here acquits itself quite well with what they have to work with, yet the rest of the series’ regulars are sorely missed. Ben solo, even with the flashbacks, comes off as a major callback to Sam. In this case that’s a bad thing. This iteration benefits from normally showing what everyone at Home Base is doing.

The episode does draw a nice parallel between Addison and the lieutenant in charge of this mission: both hardcore, smart, and dedicated to their duty. Alas the dialog is a bit too on the nose and doesn’t trust the viewers to see that for themselves. The arguing among the soldiers continues throughout the episode and remains just plain irritating. Not to mention, they are often awfully loud while attempting to evade capture. Yes, there is a line about all of the enemy being underground and unaware of the Americans’ presence. Regardless, that still stands out as incredibly careless of Ben and company.

At the end, Ian appears with his huge revelation, one I heartily disliked. However, the show deserves the benefit of the doubt (the writing normally far exceeds tonight’s in quality) so I’m reserving judgment and eager to be proven wrong. I anticipate far better from subsequent episodes and hope they end up doing a good job moving forward.

Verdict: Quantum Leap aims high but misses its target in this outing. This low score does not take into account the incredibly annoying and dismaying twist shown in the previews. 5/10

Rigel Ailur

http://www.BluetrixBooks.com