In Review: Quantum Leap (S1 – EP1) July 13th, 1985

Synopsis: A new team assembles to restart the Quantum Leap project. Lead physicist Ben Song takes an unauthorized leap into 1985 as the team scrambles to figure out what happened and how to get him back.

The Story

Having successfully relaunched Project Quantum Leap. The projects lead physicist Ben Song is celebrating his engagement to Addison Augustine when he receives a text message and rushes to the Quantum Leap chamber and reprograms it with an entirely new set of algorithms, which overwrite all the upgrades the team had made. The next thing Ben knows. He has leaped back to July 13 of 1985, which happens to be the same day that Live Aid was being broadcast around the world. Ben finds himself in the body of Nick Rounder who turns out to be a getaway driver. As the plot unfolds we learn that Nick is trying to protect his friend who has got involved with a gang that is about to commit a really big heist. With help from his fiance Addison and the Quantum Leap team. Ben must figure out how to save Nick’s friend and prevent innocent people from getting hurt in the heist. 

Meanwhile in the Present Day. Herbert ‘Magic’ Williams who is Quantum Leaps liaison with the US Government has to investigate what happened and find out why Ben triggered the project so prematurely. The one lead he has is the daughter of a certain Al Calavicci who wanted in on the rebirth of the project given that her late father was a big part of the original. 

The Acting

The acting performances in general were okay. Raymond Lee seemed pretty solid in the new lead of Ben Song and does a fairly decent job of showing us Ben’s memory loss as a result of the leap. Likewise, Caitlin Bassett was pretty solid as Addison who appears to Raymond as a hologram. The most unique character in this series at present seems to be Ian Wright who is played by Mason Alexander Park. Their character seems to be the present-day version of Gushy in regards to them being one of the main coders that work with supercomputer ziggy.  

Overall

This pilot episode isn’t the strongest but does show a little promise. The show references the original run a few times and Sam Becket and Al get a mention here and there. But am not overly invested in these characters. The dynamic between Ben and Addison is much different from what we had with Sam and Al, which is to be expected. The heist storyline felt rather quickly hashed together and the 1985 setting looked like it had been thrown together on the backlot. The FX were pretty decent though from what little we saw.

This version isn’t so much of a leap, as it is a hop, skip and jump. In that, it has some work to do before it can actually leap. I quite liked the fact that we got to see a bit more of what was going on in 2022 at the project and rather enjoyed those characters. But I found the new paring of Ben and Addison to be kind of meh in that there isn’t really a great deal of humor there in their relationship. Hopefully, that is something that they work on as the show progresses.

One of the strengths of the original series was how time travel was used to look at the social mores of the time periods that Sam found himself in. There is a hint of that here, but only a hint. However, where this series needs some work is in its pairing of Ben and Addison. There isn’t really a great deal of humor in their relationship. At least from the little, I have seen.

Overall, this new Quantum Leap gets off to a sort of average start. Let’s hope it doesn’t take too long for it to find its own identity as the time periods it has to work with will present lots of interesting possibilities. But the characters and their relationships with each other need to be worked on. Obviously, I will be keeping an eye on it and do hold some hope that this new version does find its way. But it has a fair bit of work to do.