Sam leaps, not into anyone but as himself, to a bar in a mining town Pennsylvania on the very day of his birth. There he helps some miners who are trapped in a mining accident, but more significantly, he a bartender named Al who seems to know everything about Sam’s time travelling, and who may indeed be the one who set it all in motion in the first place.

Written by Donald P. Bellisario. Directed by James Whitmore Jr.

Previous Episode: Memphis Melody

Comments:
Well, it’s finally here–the last episode of Quantum Leap. Such a thing is always going to carry a little bit of controversy with it, especially since it doesn’t seem like the finale the creators would have ideally wanted (not exactly, anyway). The story goes that Mirror Image was written to serve as either a series or season finale, whichever proved necessary, with multiple endings being prepared. However, I’ve also heard that the ending that we got may not have been what writer and series creator Donald Bellisario intended, particularly the final text screen which reveals that Sam never returned home. I

Of course I didn’t know any of that when I watched the episode back in 1993. I only knew that the episode was, or might possibly be, the last episode, and so when Sam’s final fate was spelled out on screen, I remember feeling that though it was sad, it was also kind of lovely, and it fit the tone of the episode itself. In Mirror Image, Sam is told that in reality, he is, on some level, in control of his situation, and that it is own desire to make the world into a better place that keeps him from going home. To then be told that Sam indeed never goes home…well, that’s kind of inspirational. He keeps at it, putting right what once went wrong, never stopping helping people.

But I was only a casual fan of the show. I can imagine that for someone more devoted, this would be quite the punch in the gut. If you were watching Sam improve not just the broader world, but his own personal life, and then never get to go and experience that life, well that would be disappointing. After all, doesn’t Sam deserve to go back to the brother, the wife, and the daughter that he didn’t have before stepping into the accelerator, but were now presumably waiting for him? Certainly a lot of fans thought so, and I imagine, still do.

I guess I’m one of them. I’d rather Sam had had an overtly happy ending…but I don’t actually wish it had happened in this episode. I kind of like Mirror Image as it is, with its confusing lore-building and bittersweet tone. Scott Bakula does a great job as Sam in this episode, showing the man’s confusion, vulnerability and tiredness. The episode’s unique premise gives him a chance to explore these things in a way that we rarely get a chance to see, and though his conversations with Al the Bartender keeps shrouded in enigma what exactly is going on with the Leaping, they do reveal much about Sam’s character. We see his desperation to return home as we rarely do, but right there with it is his strong inclination to continue doing what he can to help in whatever way he can.

In some ways, it’s a shame that “regular” Al has such a limited role in Mirror Image, but still it’s nice that his and Sam’s relationship turns out to be at the heart of the final episode. It’s nice that they brought Susan Diol back to play Beth, even for just a moment, and the episode does a nice job recreating the moment of her quiet dance in her living room from M.I.A. The idea of Sam fundamentally changing Al’s own backstory is fascinating. It would have seriously altered certain elements of the story if it had continued, but as it is it serves well as effective closing note to the entire series.

Of course, I personally wish this hadn’t been the end. I’d rather the show had gone on for another year or two, and had shown us the Al whose life had turned out so differently. I wish there had been more exploration of the Evil Leaper, and all the other mythology that this episode hints at (Al the Bartender, Stawpah leaping out of the bar and out of everyone’s memories, Gushie the Miner looking different in the mirror, and so on). And I wish that Sam had gone home.

But given that I live in the world where nobody changed history so that Quantum Leap wasn’t cancelled, I’m pretty happy with this final instalment. It adds to the show’s world rather than reduces it, and does not try tie every thing up into a neat package. It brings back a bunch of familiar elements, but in a way that builds the mystery rather than just getting in the way of the story with a bunch of self-referential moments of celebration. And at the same time, it’s not just confusing or allegorical or bizarre (like, say, the last episode of The Prisoner), and provides a certain sense of completion.

Maybe if the production team had been told definitively that things were ending, the show we got would have been different. But given that they went into the production with a level ambiguity, I think they were able to use that uncertainty to their advantage, and not it derail the episode or the series.

Cast Notes:
• W. Morgan Sheppard (Gushie the miner) is a well-known character actor. I’m familiar with him from Doctor Who (The Impossible Astronaut), Star Trek, specifically The Next Generation (The Schizoid Man), Voyager (Bliss), and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (as a Klingon). He was also in a couple of episodes of Babylon 5 as different characters, a couple of episodes of Macgyver as “Dr. Zito”, and a whole bunch of episodes (and eventually the regular cast) of Max Headroom as Blank Reg.

• Stephen McHattie (Stawpah) is another well-known character actor whose roles include the movie Watchmen as Hollis Mason (the elder Nite Owl), Deep Space Nine‘s celebrated In the Pale Moonlight, a couple episodes of The X-Files as “the Red-Haired Man”, and a movie called Pterodactyl Woman from Beverly Hills.

Many of the guest cast members have appeared on Quantum Leap previously. These include:

• Bruce McGill played the Bartender. In addition to playing Jack Dalton in MacGyver, he appeared in Quantum Leap’s first episode, Genesis, as Weird Ernie.

• John D’Aquino, aka John DiAquino, plays Tonchi. He had previously appeared as Frank LaMotta, in both Jimmy and Deliver Us From Evil.  He also appears in a bunch of other scifi series, and some other Donald Bellisario productions, including Magnum PI,  JAG, M.A.N.T.I.S., Sliders, Lois and Clark, Third Rock from the Sun and as a regular on SeaQuest 2032.

• Richard Herd plays Ziggy Ziganovich, and previously was Moe Stein in Future Boy. I am most familiar with him from V and V: The Final Battle, where he played the alien commander John, and from Star Trek: Voyager, where he appeared as Admiral Paris.

• Mike Genovese plays Mr. Collins. He previously appeared in Quantum Leap in Double Identity.  He was also a Desk Sergeant in the first holodeck episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and also appeared in an episode of Deep Space Nine (The Circle).

• Susan Diol reprises her role as Beth Calavicci from M.I.A., a role she also played in the revival of Quantum Leap from the 2020s. She also appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation as Riker’s brief-lived love interest in the episode Silicon Avatar, and then later in Star Trek Voyager as Danara Pel, a love-interest for the Doctor who appeared in two episodes.

• Dan Butler (Mutta) appeared in Quantum Leap before in Southern Comforts. He was in an episode of Star Trek Voyager called Vis À Vis, and was in a a whole lot of episodes of Fraiser as Bulldog Briscoe

• Dennis Wolfberg appears as Gushie (or Gooshie, I’ve seen both) for the last of five times (or six, if you count Lee Harvey Oswald as two episodes). He first appeared all way back in the first episode of the show (similar to Bruce McGill, above).

• Brad Silverman plays Pete. He’s well-known on Quantum Leap for playing Jimmy, a part he appeared in on three previous occasions–Jimmy, Shock Theatre and Deliver Us From Evil.

• J. D. Daniels (Kid #1) previously appeared on Quantum Leap in the episode A Tale of Two Sweeties.

• Michael Bellisario (Kid #2) also appeared in A Tale of Two Sweeties, as well as Camikazi Kid and Play Ball.

• Series creator and episode writer Donald Bellisario has an uncredited cameo as a miner.

Who and Where is Dr. Sam Beckett?
Sam is himself! And he is in a bar called “Al’s Place” in Cokesburg, PA, on August 8th, 1954.

What does Sam have to do?
What Sam has to do is never explicitly explained, but he only leaps after he realizes that he has to put something right in Al’s life (saving his marriage to Beth). It’s also implied that this leap might be akin to a sabbatical, before taking on a difficult new assignment. Al the Bartender explicitly tells him that he is not there to save the miners, at least, not directly.

What do we learn about Sam Beckett?
Sam’s driver’s license is seen, so we learn that his license is issued in New Mexico, and that the license number is 5738457. It was issued on August 2, 1995, and expires in 1998. It also states that Sam is male, his hair is brown, his eyes are green, he is 6 feet tall and weighs 175 lbs. His name is listed as “Sam Beckett” and his address is “P.O. Box 555 Stallion Springs, NM, 77501-4893.

Sam was born precisely at 12:30 pm in Indiana.

He also says that he created Project Quantum Leap to travel in time, to make the world a better place, to put right what once went wrong.

What do we know about Al?
Al has an uncle named Stawpah (and thus knows that the name is Russian for “Steve”) who has rheumatoid arthritis that had him “twisted up like a pretzel”. Al describes his uncle in the present tense, which implies that it’s not the same Stawpah that Sam meets in this episode, in spite of the similarities. Instead, it seems to be another strange “coincidence”, similar to the other ones Sam encounters here.

In the revised timeline at the end of the episode, we are told, “Beth never remarried. She and Al have four daughters and will celebrate their 39th wedding anniversary in June.” We meet at least one of those daughters in the revival series in the 2020s.

What about the experiment?
When no one shows up in the Waiting Room, Al reasons that the only possibility is that Sam is out there as himself. This is so even though way back in Genesis, Al said they from his perspective, there was a week of time between Sam’s first two leaps.

When they cannot find Sam, the project undertakes a “nano search” to look for Sam. This involves Al standing in the Imaging Chamber being exposed to a dizzying array of imagery. Gushie says this will take a little over a month, but that Ziggy says there’s an 80% chance of acquiring a “neuron lock” in two and a half weeks. The process makes Al sick to his stomach, but he still is able to get an accurate hunch that Sam is out there on one of his birthdays. Gushie is then able to scan all of Sam’s birthdays, not just in the but in the future–until the end of the 21st century, he says.

Al says he’s always wanted to own his own bar.

Al claims to not know what Leaping looks like, because as soon as Sam begins to leap he returns to the Imaging Chamber. But in other episode, Al indicates that he does know what the process looks like.

“Driven by an unknown force…” (God or Time or Something)
Sam meets Al the Bartender (who owns and even built the bar that he’s in), who clearly knows about Sam and what he is doing, and believes that he is “God or Time or Something” which reached and grabbed him during his first leap and set him on the strange journey he’s been on for the whole series.

However, Al tells Sam that he is the unknown force that caused him to start leaping from life to life, driven by his desire to make the world a better place. Al tells Sam that he can go home whenever he wants to, but he has to accept that he’s in control of his own destiny.

Eventually, Al the Bartender tells Sam an analogy about being a priest that might imply that he or someone or something else is moving Sam around from leap to Leap, but that Sam still has to take responsibility for the fact that he’s leaping at all.

He also says he loves coincidence, and Sam runs into a lot of them in his time in the bar. However, since Al is the one who gives people their nicknames, and it’s Al who uses the term “caca”, it could be that he is intentionally creating a bunch of the apparent coincidences himself.

What the heck is going on…with everything?
There’s not really any answers given, but there are a lot of hints:

Sam witnesses Stawpah leaping out of the bar after the miners are saved. He is also the only person other than Al the Bartender to remember that Stawpah was there until moments before. Nobody Leaps in after Stawpah leaves, which Sam speculates is because Stawpah is actually long dead (something he learns shortly afterwords).

When Sam asks Al why nobody else can remember Stawpah, Al just says that that’s the way it is. Al says that sometimes that’s the best explanation. When. Sam expresses his dissatisfaction, Al says he doesn’t think he’s ready for more.

Gushie the Miner looks like a completely different person in Al’s mirror, something that only Al and Sam seem to be able to see. Al uses this as an object lesson to Sam about how Sam has accepted both realities during his leap, both is in the mirror and what is in real life.

Stawpah, who as a Leaper himself might know something about Al, tells him that he never forgets anything, and implies that things might go badly if they did. (This is especially meaningful given that everyone but Al eventually forgets Stawpah).

“Oh Boy”
The catchphrase is heard only right at the start ,when Sam sees his own face in the mirror.

Sam’s Complicated Love Life
Nothing going in with this one.

The Many Loves of Al Calavicci
Nothing happening here in this episode either.

Other Observations
• For the first time in ages, the episode doesn’t begin with the narration from producer and writer Deborah Pratt explaining the premise, but just launches into the episode. This means that this is one of the few episodes to not feature Deborah Pratt in some capacity in the episode itself. Given it’s the final one, and that there are some extended scenes at the Project, it’s a little surprising that they don’t give her a cameo as Ziggy.

• For the last episode the show returns to the original opening theme song, and the visuals from Season 4, apparently. I’ve read that Donald Bellisario did this as a gift to the fans, recognising that the Season 5 revision wasn’t popular. I agree.

• It’s a clever bit of writing when Sam responds to the signs of his own aging when he sees himself in the mirror for the first time. “You know, you really should look in the mirror more often,” Al the Bartender tells him.

• The early dialogue between Al and Sam is a great way to set up the premise for the episode. “When’s the last time you took a really good look at yourself” asks Al. Sam replies, “It’s been a while,” to which Al says, “Well, you let too much time go by, you could lose touch with reality.”

• For whatever reason, the episode title, “Mirror Image,” and the episode date, “August 8, 1953” are presented on the same title card. Maybe the episode credits were too long to do it otherwise.

• Of course, much of the episode, especially near the beginning, is built on Sam either recognising familiar faces from other leaps, or meeting new people with the same name as people that he knows. This includes Gushie the miner who has bad breath, just like Sam’s Gushie, the two kids from A Tale of Two Sweeties, a couple of miners named Tonchi and Pete who look like Frank and Jimmy from Jimmy (with Pete having the same disability as Jimmy), and Moe from Future Boy renamed “Ziggy”. And Al, of course.

• With this there are flashbacks to Future Boy and one of the Jimmy episodes, as well as Genesis and M.I.A.

• Sam never questions the fact that he’s somehow leapt in in his own clothes, with his own wallet (complete with velcro) in his pocket.

• The whole cast is good here, but I got to shout to Richard Herd for creating such a different character than I am used to seeing him. Sam and Ziggy have a fun conversation about the Project’s Ziggy. When Ziggy the miner learns that the other Ziggy is a girl, he says, “Not much of a looker, huh?” Sam replies under, “I wouldn’t let her hear your say that.”

• The special effect used to show the “nano search”, where Al is looking through time for Sam, is pretty goofy.

• Before you know that Stawpah is some sort of Leaper, he demonstrates some behavior similar to Sam in a normal episode. He talks about why he is there, he takes decisive action to help people in need, and has a lot of information about what the trapped miners are going through, like Sam does thanks to Al. He even says, “I need find way get them out this time,” which is a little strange. But there’s nothing definitively strange here–he could also just be a good guy who knows what’s happening because he’s lived through it, and that he’s lost other people in the past.

• There are some neat lines between Sam and Al the Bartender: “A good bartender has to be part philosopher, part psychiatrist, part psychic,” Al says. Sam replies, “I’d like to talk to the philosopher part.” When Al deflects his question, Sam calls him out: “No. That’s answering a question with a question. That’s psychiatrist stuff. All right? We’re talking philosophy.”

• Sam cleverly drops the fake orders down the mineshaft and then blames the guard for doing it.

• There’s a lot of good stuff between Sam and Al the Bartender. Al asks him why he wanted to travel in time. When Sam struggles, Al suggests, “To make the world a better place?…To put right what once went wrong?” Sam replies, “Yes, but not one life at a time.”

• Then Al memorably tells Sam about the good he’s done: “At the risk of overinflating your ego, Sam, you’ve done more. The lives you’ve touched…touched others, and those lives, others. You’ve done a lot of good, Sam Beckett, and you can do a lot more.”

• Sam says to Al the hologram, “You remember the first time I leaped, and we all felt that someone or something grabbed me?” I don’t think they ever said exactly that, but they did say (back in Genesis) that Ziggy’s theory is that God or Time or something was waiting for Sam to leap so that he could use him to fix something that had gone wrong.

• The brief scene between our two series stars plays well. Al is really concerned that Sam has gone crazy. He says, incredulously, “Uh, you haven’t been leaped around by God or fate or time, but, no, you’ve been leaped by a bartender.” Sam replies, “He’s not just a bartender. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Al. I think he is God… or time or-or fate…or maybe even something that we’ve never even thought of.”

• The final scene, where Sam visits Beth and tells her that Al is alive and is coming home, is pretty touching. Having the leap-effect start around the picture of Al, presumably indicating that his history is changing, is pretty cool.

• The last title tells us that “Dr. Sam Becket never returned home.” Amongst the reasons that one might have to be frustrated by this is the fact that they spelled the character’s name wrong–it should be “Beckett”. It does indicate a level of sloppiness to the ending.

• The final image of the show is a photo of Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell as their character, standing outside of Al’s Place.

• And then the ending credits role over a photo of young Donald Bellisario with his father, who was apparently the inspiration for Al the Bartender.

Favorite Dialogue
I like a lot of the dialogue, but maybe the bit that’s resonated with me the strongest is the “priest” analogy that Al the Bartender uses to help explain things to Sam:

AL: Sam, if you became a priest…
SAM: I’ve been a priest.
AL: So you have. If the priesthood had been your chosen life, even though the church might
move you from parish to parish, don’t you have to accept responsibility for the life you lead?
SAM: Even priests can quit.
AL: That’s true. But they can also take sabbaticals, especially before embarking on a difficult new assignment.
SAM: Are you telling me that the leaps are gonna get tougher?

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

The Best Moment
There’s a lot of moments I like, including the different conversations between Sam and Al the Bartender, and also between Sam and Al his friend. I also like the moment at the end where Sam visits Beth and changes Al’s life.

But probably for this I’d actually pick the moment where Stawpah smiles at Sam and suddenly leaps out! That was a jaw-dropping shock, on the level of the things like the original reveal of the Evil Leaper. It’s too bad that we’re left with so many questions about what it means, but it was still quite cool.

And that concludes my blog-through of Quantum Leap! It’s taken me forever, it seems like. More accurately, it’s taken me nearly nine years (I posted about the first episode on July 1, 2016!) That’s ridiculous, but oh well, there you go. But now, finally, I get start reading and blogging through the Quantum Leap comic book that I bought a while ago–I decided not to do it until I had finished the show, but I’d no idea it would take so long.

There is also, of course, the revival series, but I never liked that anywhere near as much, so I probably won’t bother with a rewatch.

Previous Episode: Memphis Melody