Sunday, July 17, 2016

Quantum Leap -- Episode 32: Leap of Faith


Sam Leaps Into: 
Father Francis "Frank" Pistano, a Catholic priest.

Objective:
Stop another priest from killing a young man out of revenge.

Date:
8-19-63

Location:
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Memorable Quote:
Listen, Mac, I know it's not my place to say anything, but don't you think that your drinking is getting to be...  ~Sam
You're right, it's not your place.  ~Father Mac

Highlight:
We're in Philly!  I wondered if there would ever be an episode set in the cradle of freedom.  I'm from Allentown (about 60 miles north) and I like to see the city get a little time in the spotlight -- given its location between the nation's financial center (New York) and the political center (DC), Philly often gets left out in the cold.

Lowlight:
The storyline of Al and his relationship with the church and prayer felt rushed and underdeveloped, like they were trying to force an extra element into the story without giving it the proper treatment.

Other thoughts, observations, and questions I didn’t ask when I was in fourth grade:
  • It's impressive how quickly Sam is able to switch gears between leaps.  I would think it would be difficult to come down from what happened at the end of the last episode and that he'd still need some time to process everything before jumping right in as a priest.
  • Father Mac is played by Sandy McPeak who featured in Bushmaster as the guy who briefs Pete on the mission and flies the plane that MacGyver and Kelly parachute out of, and Tony is played by Danny Nucci who starred in Titanic as Leo's Italian friend. Thinking about Bushmaster may or may not have led me just now to cue up some of the scenes and listen to the glorious Edelman score.
  • I like the Stallone/Rocky reference, even if Stallone isn't from Philly and never boxed there, at least not to my knowledge.
  • Oh no, Sam's been shot again!  That brings his total up to 2 (the other episode was Freedom).  If this keeps up I may need to make a shot chart!

Final Analysis:
I'm not a big fan of this one.  Other than the scene in the bar (where it is fun to see Sam doing martial arts as a priest), it's a pretty slow go and there's not too many highlights or fun to be had. I also didn't get what they were trying to do with the Tony character -- at first I thought they were implying he was innocent of the crime and simply misunderstood, but then he shot at Sam in the church and we're led to believe that he was guilty.  Sorry, Philly, but I gotta rank this one 4th from the bottom.  

3 comments:

  1. I... don't remember any of this episode at all.

    Though, I should ask - did Philly get represented correctly in QL? B/c the little city I lived in in VA got rep'd all sorts of wrong in an episode of NCIS. They went there, but clearly no one did any actual research and just picked a random VA city, learned it had a Wal-Mart (or assumed it had one) and went about their day. Google maps were awesome enough at the time of that episode that a GoogleEarth search or street view would've told them what they needed to know.

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    1. I'd say it wasn't really represented correctly or incorrectly -- they didn't do much to make it distinctly Philadelphia compared to any other urban area, though that didn't bother me because I didn't expect them to. They did have a quick shot of Independence Hall and touched on the boxing culture there.

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  2. This one didn't do a ton for me either. Tony's character was impossible to peg and I also figured they'd follow up with him being innocent, possibly covering for his little brother who did it by accident, until his attempted assassination of a priest in the confessional!!! This revelation, coupled with his behavior at the funeral of the guy he killed, pretty much indicated the guy was the lowest form of humanity on the planet, making Al's revelation (discovered through Ziggy) that Tony spent some time in prison but went on to clean up his life, pretty anticlimactic. If he's a cold-blooded murderer, shouldn't we as an audience want to see him locked up in prison for life?!?! Agreed that Al's cynicism about the church needed some prior development for it to work as well as it could have in his moment of revelation at the end. The tortured drunken Irish priest played by Sandy McPeak (something about his appearance seemed dramatically different here than "Bushmaster") was also a bit of a cliché. Below-average episode definitely....between "Sea Bride" and "Blind Faith" for me.

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