Yeah so I really like this series, and it's a great series, but Sam Beckett might as well be Jesus. He's so inherently good, so full of virtue, so boyishly innocent and without corruption that it's at times hilarious. In one episode, the second episode to deal with racism in the the deep south in the 50s might I add, Sam leaps into a lawyer defending a young black woman named Lyla accused of murdering the son of some...wealthy southern gentleman who apparently owns a a whole town. Without any prior knowledge of who he's leaped into, he pleads not guilty on her behalf, causing an uproar in the racist town. When he hears the dreaded n-bomb he takes it personally in the funniest way, shuddering, seizing up and lifting his finger and telling Captain Cod to never ever use that word again in his presence. As if Sam has any reason to take it so personally, unless I'm missing something and Sam spent some of his childhood in the ghetto. So far Sam's only weakness has been towards his old piano teacher, whom he finds himself drawn to while performing a play in another episode.
The show has plenty of lame moments, and plenty of great moments. Some episodes are very bland, some are great fun. So far the highlights have been the ghost episode, in which he leaps into a parapsychologist who has to help a grieving woman find out if her husband is haunting her. This episode has a few hysterical moments involving Al. So far my favourite episode is Good Morning, Peoria, which has Sam play a radio DJ fighting to keep rock n roll on the air against the local stuffed shirts who think it's contaminating the youth. It's helped by the great music and setting. Another highlight is a pretty daring episode in which he leaps into the body of Jimmy, a young man with down's syndrome who has to be accepted by co-workers at a new job and by his brother's wife. To himself and Al, Sam (Jimmy) is coherent and understands all that is asked of him, and yet he still makes mistakes anyway and finds himself bullied and berated by his co-workers. It's as if Jimmy is like Sam, a normal, smart person trapped within a system, and it's a thought-provoking episode.
As I said the show isn't meant to be taken seriously but there are some episodes in which Sam and Al should be causing more harm than good to the timelines of others. Throwing aside the fact that even getting in somebody's way in the street could drastically alter the lives of random people, one little girl who for some stupid reason, something about being "pure of heart" can see both Al and Sam, and the memory of a strange man impersonating her mother and claiming to be an angel who has come to help them might well confuse her mind with unanswerable questions for a long time for better or worse. But of course the writers have an excuse, because apparently the only explanation for Sam leaping into specific people and only being able to leap out when he's solved a problem is some kind of higher intelligence; basically god I guess. I guess it conveniently fills in all the plot holes, not that it matters anyway, since it's not serious and the pseudo-scientific time travel plot basically serves to have Sam and Al leap into various situations and nostalgic times in the 20th century.
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