Quantum Leap – Deliver Us from Evil [5.7]

Sam leaps back into Jimmy LaMotta, the mentally disabled young man that he previously became in Jimmy. On this occasion, his mission seems to be to prevent the marital breakdown between Jimmy’s brother Frank and Frank’s wife Connie. However, things take a strange turn when Connie revealed to actually be another leaper, a woman named Alia who has her own holographic handler, Zoey. Sam assumes that Alia’s mission is similar to his own, but is shocked to realize that she is really there to help destroy the LaMotta’s lives. Alia succeeds in this, but then she is further ordered to murder Sam. When Sam is able to convince her not to do this, whatever force is leaping Alia through time violently seizes her back to her own time, and the whole situation resets.

Written by Robin Jill Bernheim and Tommy Thompson & Deborah Pratt. Directed by Tommy Thompson.

Previous Episode: Star Light, Star Bright • Next Episode: Trilogy Part 1 – One Little Heart

Comments:
Deliver Us from Evil is on that long list of shows, episodes and stories that have great twist reveals that I never got to experience unspoiled. I’m pretty sure, in fact, that this is the first time that I’ve seen this entire episode all the way through, but I do know that I’d already seen the sequel, and thus I’ve seen a “Previously on…” recap of this story. But even in that format, the image of Alia clawing at her own face in order to frame Jimmy of attempted rape is pretty shocking…perhaps the most horrifying image that the series ever gave us.

By then, it’s possible that a first-time viewer would know, or be suspicious of, Alia’s true intentions. Certainly there were hints, but it’s possible that the audience would be taken in as Sam was. Sam never stops to even consider if Alia has darker motivations than he does–he’s just so overwhelmed by the reveal that she exists at all to think about things critically. But his response does makes sense–a beautiful woman who understands his situation in a way that nobody else does, coming onto him when he is in such a vulnerable place…no wonder he makes such a mess of the situation.

In addition to the confirming moment that Alia is evil, the episode should also be applauded for how well it does in revealing the existence of Alia at all. There are lots of hints, but all of them are really things that would only be appreciated after the truth is out. There is that one strange scene where “Connie” and Zoey (a character we’ve never seen before) are talking before Frank comes home. There is Corey’s laments about how his mother doesn’t seem to care about him anymore. There is all the talk about how history seems to be changing in spite of anything Sam is doing. Actually, it’s all spelled out pretty strongly, but because the show had never shown or even hinted at anything like this before, it’s a huge twist when Sam and Connie first touch and the truth is put on display.

Up until that point it feels like a pretty standard episode, where we’re dealing with what looks like pretty standard stuff. There’s a marriage that is on the rocks, a family in trouble, there are concerns with how well Jimmy is going to continue to manage, and there is Sam talking about women’s lib from the perspective of a guy from the 1990s. There’s the unusual fact that we’re back with Jimmy and Frank at all, but aside from that it’s just another normal weekly adventure for Sam. And then suddenly…bam! Another leaper! What a game-changing moment.

Or it would have been, one presumes, if the show had gone on a bit longer. Fortunately, given that this was the last season, it’s nice that we do get to actually revisit the whole thing with Alia and Zoey at all (in a two-parter that is coming in a little while). But though I’m sure there are things from that episode that I don’t remember properly, I know that we never get around to fully unpacking what is going on with those two. There are some intriguing hints in this episode that I’m interested to see how play out, but it remains murky, and one can only presume the series would have continued to lean more heavily into this concept if we’d had another season or two.

Another thing that is murky about Deliver Us from Evil is just what exactly is going on at the end. When Alia disobeys her orders, she is pulled away in what looks like a torturous experience, and Sam and Al find themselves popped back a couple of days. The whole episode had, up until that point, only taken place over two days, March 19 & 20, so it’s unclear whether that means they are back on the 19th, or even earlier on the 18th. Either way, they have arrived at a point earlier than Sam’s initial leap-in, as it’s at least the morning before work. Frank seems to be in a particularly happy mood, and Connie is said to be off at her sister’s place, which is not something that was referenced before. So does this mean that Alia never leapt into Connie now, and all that she was doing has been undone? The show seems to vaguely imply that things are different now, but it never gets explicit about it. Are things with the LaMotta’s are back on track, or is there still marital issues, the temptation toward adultery, and so on? One presumes not simply because otherwise it feels like it would defeat the purpose of the episode, but it’s never specifically articulated.

Ultimately, even with this ambiguity, it’s a strong episode that packs a punch. More than any other so far, it’s an episode that makes me look forward to revisiting the rest of the season, and makes me wish it wasn’t the last.

Cast Notes:
• Carolyn Seymour (Zoey) had previously appeared in A Portrait for Troian in season 2, and will reappear as Zoey a couple more times later this season. She also appeared in Star Trek in three episodes of Next Generation (including twice as a couple of different Romulans) and in a couple of episodes of Voyager as Mrs. Templeton, a holographic character. She also appeared in a bunch of other TV shows, such as Remington Steele, Cagney & Lacey, the 1980’s version of The Twilight Zone and the 1990s version of The Flash) and a bunch of Big Finish Doctor Who audios.

• Reneé Coleman (Alia) also reappears as the same character in a two-parter later in the season.

• John D’Aquino (Frank LaMotta) was a regular on SeaQuest DSV for a season, and also appeared both previously and subsequently on Quantum Leap as the same character (or in the case of the series finale, as someone who at least looks the same). The same is true of Brad Silverman (Jimmy).

• Laura Harrington (Connie LaMotta) was in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai as Mrs. Johnson, an archivist at the Banzai Institute) and along with Ryan McWhorter (Corey) also appeared in the same prior episode of Quantum Leap that introduced Jimmy and Frank LaMotta.

• Kristen Cloke (Shirley Constantine) was a recurring or regular character on Millennium and Space: Above and Beyond, two science fiction shows that I never really watched.

• Richard Partlow made the first of five appearances in Quantum Leap in this episode, each time as an uncredited voice of a reporter. I’m not sure how these appearances worked and whether it is somehow supposed to be the same character. I’m curious to find out.

Who and Where is Dr. Sam Beckett?
Sam is Jimmy LaMotta (again) in Oakland, California, from March 19-20, 1966. At the end, he briefly leaps back into Jimmy, and Al says they have lost a couple of days. It’s unclear whether this is on the morning of the 18th or the 19th.

What does Sam have to do?
Sam believes he is there to save Frank and Connie LaMotta’s marriage from breaking down. As things proceed, it appears that this is true, but more specifically he is there to prevent Alia and Zoey from fulfilling their evil mission, which appears to include both destroying the marriage and manipulating things so that Jimmy is re-institutionalized. Once Alia is out of the picture, Sam’s leap comes to a quick end.

What do we learn about Sam Beckett?
Nothing in particular this time around.

What do we know about Al?
Al doesn’t like being mothered by his wife. His fourth wife used to cut his steak when they went out for dinner, and as a consequence he apparently doesn’t eat meat anymore.

Al confesses to being more worried on this leap than normal because he’s never really cared about anyone that Sam leapt into as much as he does Jimmy. This is apparently because Jimmy reminds him of his sister Trudy, whom he never saw after she got pneumonia and left the orphanage they were in and was put into a mental hospital.

What about the experiment?
Al references that Sam has had over 80 leaps at this point, which comes pretty close to matching what we’ve seen on TV (although the show has occasionally implied that there were more leaps that we haven’t seen).

Ziggy is having such problems on this leap that Dr. Beaks, the Project’s psychiatrist. In her confusion, Ziggy even gives Beaks a massive shock that sends her across the room.

Ziggy’s freaking out is apparently caused by the presence of Alia, also traveling in time to this time. According to Al, Ziggy surmises that when Sam and Al (as Jimmy and Connie) touched each other, it “set up some kind of magnetic convergence or something so that you could see each other for who you really are.” When Sam and Alia become able to see each other properly, Al and Zoey are able to see Sam and Alia properly as well.

Sam believes that he might leap out even if he has failed in his mission, and he thinks if he does it would allow Alia to continue in her work with Jimmy.

“Driven by an unknown force…” (God or Time or Something)
In trying to understand Alia and her motivations, Sam tries to get his head around the idea that “God or time or–or whatever” has brought him together with her to confront each other.

“Oh Boy”
As we heard at the end of the prior episode, there is an “Oh boy,” at the end of the teaser, but it’s said by Frank rather than Sam. At the end, there is another “Oh boy!” from Sam as he heads into the next episode.

Sam’s Complicated Love Life
Alia kisses Sam passionately, and they nearly sleep together. She’s obviously bad news, but it’s an understandable temptation for Sam.

The Many Loves of Al Calavicci
Al Lears at Shirley and dwells on the idea that she was a gymnastics champion.

He mentions that his fourth wife used to mother him all the time, and cut his steak when they went out for dinner.

And what about this Evil Leaper?
Alia is a leaper, similar to Sam, accompanied by an observer named Zoey. She mentions being part of an experiment, although the details of this are foggy. However, it seems just as likely that she is lying to Sam about this, although the description of her memory problems that she starts to give do sound similar what Sam regularly experiences.

Instead of Ziggy, Alia makes reference to Lothos, whom Alia describes as the artificial intelligence unit that controls her assignments. Alia also says that Lothos is “very efficient” and “doesn’t make mistakes.” Lothos apparently gives Alia information about the people she’s interacting with in the same way that Ziggy does for Sam. However, with all of this, it’s hard to know how much one can fully believe everything Alia says, since she is actively deceiving Sam at the moment.

Unlike Ziggy, Lothos seems to order Alia to do things, including kill Sam at the end of the episode. Loathes is able to do a scan which reveals the presence of the gun in the LaMotta household, and in general seems to actually control Alia’s leaping rather than just to monitor it. Alia says that she has no control over where she leaps to or who she becomes, which could still be true even if Lothos is controlling things. Before she gets the order to kill Sam, she wonders why she hasn’t leaped already, since her mission seems to have been a success.

As Zoey tries to convince Alia to go through with the murder, she threatens that Lothos could send her back to worst nightmare. It’s not clear what this means precisely. It could mean that Lothos would send her to some place she has leapt to before, but perhaps more likely means that Lothos could send her back to where she came from, which Zoey refers to as “hell” and “the horror we’ve lived through before.”

However, conversely to this, Alia seems desperate to stop leaping and return home, and Zoey tries to entice her to kill Sam with the hope that this could be the act that takes her home. She also says that this could be “the ticket out.”

Zoey comes across as much a victim as Alia does. She talks about their past by saying, “Alia, we clawed our way out of hell to land simple assignments like home wrecking and adultery….You don’t want to go back to the horror we’ve lived through before!” These comments also make it sound like there might be other evil leapers out there, in addition to Alia, who tend to have more serious assignments.

Beyond this, what exactly Lothos is, what Lothos’ motivations are, and even whether Lothos is the being who actually set Alia’s leaping in motion, is not clear. When Sam says that he doesn’t believe there is some force leaping Alia around, ruining people’s lives for the pleasure of it, Zoey says, “How deliciously naive.” And later, when Sam speculates that God has put him and Alia together to confront each other, Zoey quips, “Not God.”

Alia appears to have been leaping for some time. She says that Same is not the first person she’s killed. At one point, during the final confrontation, she says, almost to herself, “No, I can’t kill all those people again.” Precisely what she is talking about is not clear–at that moment she’s trying to decide whether she will shoot Sam or not, but there is no obvious reason why either choice would result in her having to kill a whole bunch of people again.

Unless maybe the “horror that she’s lived through before” involved having to kill people on a regular basis, and she’s saying she doesn’t want to return to that job? No idea. But I’m curious to see what the later appearances of the Evil Leaper reveal!

Other Observations
• As commented on last time, Sam leaps into a near fatal accident on a fork lift, which is potentially a pretty disastrous workplace accident. At first it seems like something that everyone laughs out, but later Frank’s comments make it clear this is pretty serious.

• Sam has some nice narration, “Quantum leaping is a lonesome business. Just when you start to feel comfortable somewhere, to fit in, you’re gone. But today, I found myself back with people I knew and cared about.”

• There are lots of callbacks to the episode Jimmy, not just recurring characters, but also references to many of the story points.

• There are some funny lines of dialogue. When Al is talking about the confusing ways that history is changing, he says, “So whatever you’re doing, you better stop it,” and Sam replies, “I ate a TV dinner. Is that changing history?”

• And then, Al tells Sam, as he is carrying boxes up the stairs, “That heavy? Bend your knees now when you pick it up. It takes pressure off the brain.”

• And then, as Al is trying to figure out how history have changed, he says, “Four airline crashes, an outbreak of Rangoon flu, three earthquakes and 17 floods,” and Sam replies, “All because I didn’t bend my knees?”

• There’s a nice moment when Sam and Al vow to not let what happened to Trudy (Al’s sister) happen to Jimmy.

• At the revelation of Alia, Sam just gets so excited that he forgets to be critical at all about what she is telling him. But it’s such an unusual event, it makes sense.

• I like the little bit where Sam tries to convince Frank to not cheat on his wife: “Don’t throw it all away. You may never find it again.”

• Sam tries to tell Frank the truth, but of course he doesn’t believe him.

• Zoey is just the worst, just laughing at what Alia has done.

• The confrontation with Sam and Alia at the end, with both Al and Zoey spurring on their leaper, is pretty gripping. In the course of this, Sam argues that he and Alia only exist because of each other–that good only exists because of evil and vice-versa. I think that’s nonsense, and I don’t that it’s very consistent with what we’ve seen from Sam before, but I’m happy to believe that he’s just blathering because the situation is so desperate.

• Typical Al line when Alia says she is killing Sam because she has her orders: “Where have I heard that one before?”

• All through Sam confrontation with Alia at the end, there is some great stuff as Sam struggles to understand why she does what she does. Al says, “Sam, she’s your counterpart. You’re good, and she’s evil. That’s what she does,” to which Sam replies, “No, I don’t believe that there’s some force…leaping her around, ruining people’s lives for the pleasure of it.” As the situation escalates, Sam says, “You’re not evil, Alia. Whatever trapped you in time is.”

• There is a deleted scene that one can find on Youtube (or part of a deleted scene, anyway), which comes right after Alia chooses not to shoot Sam. Al reports that Ziggy says the only way to stop Alia is for Sam to kill her. Sam is reluctant, but he points the gun at Alia. She accuses him of lying and tries to grab the gun. They wrestle for a moment before Alia is suddenly pulled away from the location (as seen in the episode). On the whole, I’ve got to say the episode as aired was stronger.

• At the end of the episode, when Al says she’s gone, Sam simply replies, “She’s not gone, Al. Alia is not gone.” I’m glad they had the chance to follow this up and I’m looking forward to seeing it.

• Great ending to the episode (beginning to the next one) with Sam apparently having just killed a guy!

Sam Leaps To
Trilogy Part 1 – One Little Heart

Favorite Dialogue
There is a decent amount of good dialogue in this episode, but maybe the most poignant bit comes from Sam’s final confrontation with Alia, as he says…

You can’t kill me, Alia. Because I know that somewhere inside of you, there’s a woman who feels the same things I do. The same loneliness, the same fear. I felt it the first time we touched. You felt it too.

It’s a little hooky, but it’s justified by the situation.

Special thanks, by the way, to this site for the episode transcriptions.

The Best Moment
There are two main contenders. The first is the moment when Sam first discovers Alia, because it is just so baffling to see. But the moment that has it beat is the coldness in Alia’s eyes when Sam is desperately trying to put his clothes back on to avoid being seen by Frank, followed by the image of Alia scratching her face and screaming. It’s just so unbelievably chilling.

Previous Episode: Star Light, Star Bright • Next Episode: Trilogy Part 1 – One Little Heart