Quantum Leap - continued

Well season 3 was off to a great start with the two parter "The Leap Home," especially the second part which had Sam in Vietnam trying to save his brother Tom from an ambush.  It fit nicely with the finale to season 2, M.I.A, in which we learn that Al was held by the Vietcong for five years.  The next episode is a blatant anti-drug episode in which Sam has to stop a model from overdosing on amphetamines.  The funniest part of the episode is Sam's line "drugs are no laughing matter" which he says earnestly as he does everything else.  This is in character for straight-laced white boy Sam Beckett, but not for a 60s fashion photographer, as another character even points out.  Apparently no one notices when otherwise very flawed characters suddenly turn into the embodiment of all that is good and noble when Sam takes over.

The whole idea of leaping into different people in time is never explained logically, nor does it have to be, although there are some things that raise eyebrows, like Sam's build-up of urine apparently leaping from person to person through time, as when he finds himself in the body of a kid named "Butchie" (apparently dog names are popular in America) on a road trip and suddenly has to pee while his parents point out that he just did.  This is no accident, the way it's written suggests they actually had time travelling pee in mind.  It's not a great episode which resolves things by having the character who needs help suddenly dangle off a cliff in order to be saved, end of episode.  Sometimes the conclusions are a bit tacked on.  There are many episodes in which Sam leaps into a woman, and it makes sense that he would, but Scott Bakula in drag isn't as funny as they thought, although when he acts serious it is pretty funny.

The episode "The Boogieman" is one of my favourites, not necessarily because it's good.  In fact it's very bad, hilariously so.  He leaps into a horror novelist and tries to solve a mystery in a small town that seems to have a population of five.  Many cheap scares later and Sam finds himself face to face with the devil, in the form of Al, who taunts Sam about his leaping around putting right what he put wrong.  Dean Stockwell is hilarious as "the devil" and has to be seen to be believed.  Before long, in quite possibly the silliest looking scene ever, they grab each other and start spinning around, faster and faster, Al turning into various characters from the episode, and then into a goat.  In one final kick to the face Sam wakes up and it was all a dream.  Then it turns out his assistant is Stephen King.  Seeing as Sam is apparently being leaped around by God, I thought they were actually going to go with the devil thing.  

There are a few other good episodes, like Black on White on Fire, a tense episode about the Watts race riots, and Rebel Without A Clue.  I don't know if I like the more serious episodes or the dumber ones more.