Quantum Leap -- Episode 74: Lee Harvey Oswald

Sam Leaps Into:

Lee Harvey Oswald

Objective:

Save Jackie Kennedy.

Date:

several (spanning 1957 to 1963)

Location:

several (including Texas, Louisiana, California, Japan, and the Soviet Union)

Memorable Quote:
I'm ready for my lesson, Sarge. ~Sam

Highlight:

I liked the early scene where Sam is talking to Al on the firing range and they're coming to grips with the magnitude of this leap.  It's a good example of a scene that doesn't have or need any background music -- if this were the MacGyver reboot they'd play something schmaltzy and generic that would end up lessening the impact.

Lowlight:

I don't like the whole "Sam is turning into and acting like Lee Harvey Oswald" plot line, which essentially is the entire two-parter.  I suppose that if you want to have an episode where he leaps into Oswald, it's the only way to do it because if Sam was just acting like himself, he would run far away from the Book Depository and there wouldn't be an episode.  But the downside is that after the early highlight mentioned above, just about every other scene until the end is slow, redundant, and unnecessary, from the scenes in the Japanese bar to everything that took place in Russia.  They only serve to give more examples of how Sam is turning into Oswald -- they could have cut most of them and easily made it into one episode.

It would have been much more interesting and compelling if Sam would have leaped into a police officer or concerned citizen trying to stop the assassination from the outside.  That way he could have just been himself, and it could have been a thrilling episode as he raced against the clock to try and solve the puzzle.  They went that route in the last minute when he leapt into a Secret Service member, but Al's revelation that he saved Jackie fell flat since we couldn't tell in the moment that he had done so and since so little time was devoted to that final leap.

Other thoughts, observations, and questions I didn’t ask when I was in fourth grade:

• Whoa, it's a new theme song!  I actually remembered this was coming and I was glad to hear it.  I still like the original one a tad better, but the remix is pretty solid and fun, and I like how they had a fresh and uptempo take on the same underlying theme. Kind of like what they did for the MacGyver reboot, only the exact opposite.
• Let's talk about the JFK Assassination (aka our country's most infamous unsolved mystery and the defining moment of my parents' and grandparents' generations).  I have a few thoughts!
• People can spend years studying the JFK Assassination (and some have) -- the sheer amount of angles and rabbit holes is absolutely insane, and it's impossible to know what is valid information and what is misinformation. So while it's hard to feel confident about any opinion, we all have one, and on the question of whether others were involved in the assassination I say yes for two primary reasons:
• The fatal and disturbing head shot from the Zapruder film.  The movie JFK made famous the phrase "back and to the left" regarding Kennedy's head movement and how it was not consistent with a shooter from the book depository. The physics of the head movement is debatable, but clearly the location of the shot is on the front and right of his head.  And after evaluating the angle of the book depository window vs. the position of Kennedy's car at the time of the shot, it appears much more likely that it came from the grassy knoll.
• Jack Ruby's murder of Oswald on live television.  He said he did it to spare Mrs. Kennedy any hardship, but he was a lowlife with connections to the underworld and so my best guess is that he killed Oswald in order to silence him.
• At the very least, the initial investigation was either extremely incompetent, intentionally obstructionist, or a combination of the two.  And knowing a little about J. Edgar Hoover, I don't put much trust in him to lead an honest investigation.
• That brings us to Oswald.  Much has been written about his supposed ties to the CIA or other intelligence organization, the possibility of him being undercover and framed, or even the existence of two Oswalds. For me he's one of the most enigmatic persons in world history -- the more I learn about him, the more he confuses the hell out of me and I don't know what to make of him.  Was he legitimately pro-Soviet and pro-Cuban, or was that an act?  What kind of husband was he?  But the thing that puzzles me the most are his actions after the assassination because they don't make sense no matter what his role is.
• Why does he leave the rifle on the 6th floor and not do more to try and hide it?
• If he was actually undercover and/or innocent, what was he doing while the shooting was going on?  If he was trying to stop the attack, he didn't do a very good job.
• Then things get very weird -- he takes a bus back to his house where he changes clothes and grabs a pistol (or so the story goes), then goes on foot and allegedly shoots Police Officer Tippit in a neighborhood.  And then he makes his way to the Texas Theatre and sits down to watch a movie.  Huh?!?!  What the f was he doing? It seems like he was trying to get away but without any sense of urgency that I would expect from someone who didn't want to get caught.  The only thing that makes sense is that he was meeting a contact, but then what happened to the contact?
• Then in the interviews before his death he denies everything and says that he's a "patsy."
• If you listen to even a little bit of two radio interviews he did in the summer of '63, you can tell he's a smart guy who is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and current events.  He sounds pretty genuine in his support of Castro and Cuba -- if he was a double agent, he did a hell of a job in those interviews arguing the other side.
• So the big question: did he pull the trigger in the book depository?  I go back and forth on this, and at the moment I feel like he......I really don't know -- I need to read up on it some more.  
• There are more documents scheduled to be declassified in October of 2017, but unless there's a bombshell in there I suspect that we'll never know what really happened since it's unlikely anyone who was directly involved is coming forward at this point with new evidence if they haven't already.  Glad we got that settled!
• Back to the episode.  At the 15:27 mark of Part One, we can hear Sam's voice ("I could stop the assassination"), but his mouth is not moving.
• The actor who plays Oswald we've seen before as Seymour in Play it Again Seymour and on the new Hawaii Five-0.  I like him in those roles, but here he struggles -- not only does he not look or sound like the real Oswald, but his overacting is painful to watch.
• Elya Baskin is our first triple MacGyver / Quantum Leap guest star, appearing in Quantum Leap, the original MacGyver, and the MacGyver reboot! 

                                                

Final Analysis:

I wasn't a fan of this one.  Too bad, because as you can tell I'm clearly fascinated by Oswald and the JFK assassination (to the point where watching this episode has got me going again and led me to do quite a bit of reading and youtubing on the topic during the last few days).  They tried their best to make this episode as epic and dramatic as possible, but unfortunately it was a boring and substandard script and a missed opportunity.  Too bad, because this had the potential to be one of the all-time greats. Ranking it 65 out of 74.