Nerding Day: Quantum Leap: The Ghost Episode🌭 (Patreon)

Quantum Leap is a sci-fi TV drama from the late 1980s starring Scott Bakula as Dr. Samuel Beckett, a mad bastard of a scientist who tests a time machine by himself and gets stuck leaping from person to person through different periods of modern history, preventing tragedies before they occur. He’s a chrono body snatcher. It’s The Butterfly Effect for someone who lost their virginity beneath a poster of the space shuttle, or a monkey’s paw wish made by a kid who loves baseball more than the concept of cause & effect. The show is a possession tale told from the demon’s perspective, if the demon were a huge nerd.

Last time, we joined Sam on a spooky adventure to Egypt in the 1950s to match wits with a mummy. And I don’t mean he solved pyramid riddles. I mean a mummy came to life and choked a man to death.

It was common for otherwise grounded shows from this era of television to produce a supernatural episode. The Wonder Years probably had Kevin Arnold run afoul of a genuine poltergeist during its five-year run. I’m not going to check, but the point is we can’t know for certain. Boy, it feels like that show was on the air for longer than five years. Maybe it used to be, before Dr. Sam Beckett interfered. Anyway, Quantum Leap was unique among shows with the occasional spooky episode, because it had several spooky episodes. More than six! And I’m going to watch all of them, because I’m way too old for anyone to legally be able to stop me.

Sam is not alone on his time-traveling journey. Al, Sam’s best friend and co-worker on the Quantum Leap project, is able to communicate with him by beaming a hologram into his brain from their home timeline in the future. Sam can see and hear Al, and Al can see and hear everything around Sam, projected to him from Sam’s brain via some kind of holodeck technology. Don’t worry, it makes nothing but sense. Al is an arch pervert, and this characteristic will come into play often throughout the series.

In the episode “A Portrait for Troian,” Sam leaps into a paranormal investigator in 1971 and must prevent a wealthy widow named Troian Claridge from drowning in the Family Tragedy Lake in two days’ time. I call it the Family Tragedy Lake because we learn that it has claimed several members of Troian’s family, including her husband. They should probably drain it. There could be treasure at the bottom. As I’ve mentioned, cursed pirate booty would not be out of place in an episode of Quantum Leap. Sam knows a thing or two about inescapable doom.

“A Portrait for Troian” might actually be haunted. It’s frequently not included when the series airs on streaming, although at the time of this writing it’s available for rental and purchase. I think the episode’s inconsistent availability over the years has something to do with the fact that it stars the show’s then husband-and-wife producing team, Donald P. Bellisario and Deborah Pratt, in major roles. Pratt is already heard in several episodes as the voice of Ziggy, and as the narrator during the opening credits. So I guess she’s technically in every episode. Here she plays Troian, an artist seemingly haunted by her late husband’s spirit, and Bellisario plays Dr. Timothy Mintz, her new love interest and the person Sam inhabits during the episode. It’s definitely a sex thing.

Finally, Troian is the name of the power couple’s real-life daughter, Troian Bellisario. There has never been an episode of Quantum Leap more visibly dusted with cocaine fingerprints. Donald P. Bellisario is quantum leaping into Scott Bakula in order to bang his own wife as part of some kind of gothic soap opera romance they clearly invented while throating each other on a superyacht. The daytime soap tone is fitting, because Pratt’s acting is what you would get if you wrote MELODRAMA on the side of a toaster and tried to set the dial to it. “A Portrait for Troian” is a sex game invented by one of the richest men in television, and he wants all us Leapheads to sit in the cuck chair with him. It’s particularly embarrassing considering the couple did not stay together for long afterward. I love this episode so much.

I anticipated that it might be tough to stream, so I purchased a Quantum Leap DVD boxed set specifically to cover this episode. However, “A Portrait for Troian” cannot be ripped from the blu-ray. Every other episode on the disc worked just fine except for this one. I even ripped the mummy episode with no problem. But I tried “A Portrait for Troian” thrice, and it failed. Every. Single. Time.

Sam is knee-knockingly afraid of cemeteries in this episode. He’s like one of the Little Rascals with a flashlight. He leaps into Dr. Timothy Mintz while Mintz is dressed as a private detective standing in a graveyard beneath the full moon.

He looks like he’s attending a Call of Cthulhu game night at the hottest goth’s house. And this episode takes place in 1971, so hot goths either looked like luchadores or like they were road gigging for Janis Joplin. Troian emerges from a tomb clad in a Stevie Nicks dress, placing her firmly in the latter camp.

Troian believes her dead husband Julian has been calling out to her from the family crypt every night, and she wants Dr. Mintz’s help to prove she’s not losing her mind. Sam blusters a bunch about the weather because he’s afraid of the rain too I guess, and he lures Troian back to her mansion with promises of a Hot Toddy. Unfortunately, that’s the name of a drink and not a sexy English gymnast.

Troian’s housekeeper, Miss Stoltz, is an ice queen. She’s also a ghost, though we don’t learn this fact until the end of the episode. She’s awesome. I want a whole series about her. Miss Stoltz can see Al, because I guess ghosts can see your brain waves? Remember, Al is a hologram projected by Sam’s brain, so maybe that means ghosts haunt our minds rather than the physical spaces around us. Or, it could simply mean the Bellisarios did a bunch of cocaine before producing this episode of Quantum Leap. Miss Stoltz looks right into Al’s doll-like pervert’s eyes and says, “Strangers are not welcome here.” And she means it, buster.

Next we meet Troian’s brother Jimmy. Jimmy is what you would get if a spoon-bending psychic from the '70s tried to play pro tennis.

Most episodes of Quantum Leap have a villain or villainous conspiracy which Sam must defeat in order to change history, and Jimmy introduces himself with maximum fuckface energy, propelling him to the top of our suspect list. He says, “Hey sis! Just in case you missed it, those things in the hall closet are umbrellas!” He calls Sam a quack, which is fair, because Sam agrees with him. You see, Sam doesn’t believe in ghosts either, and he reminds everyone of this fact no less than seven thousand times. I’m surprised he’s not punching himself in the face to punish the ghost-worshipping quack into whom he has leapt. Though I guess that would mean he’d be punching Donald Bellisario, and that’s against the rules. Then Al appears, dressed as Max Headroom’s divorce attorney. He looks like a human trafficker from the '90s Super Mario movie.

Al is scared of ghosts, and his fear will overpower his horniness for most of the episode. He and Sam butt heads over whether Troian is really being haunted by her dead husband, or if she’s being tricked by a living culprit for some nefarious reason. Al is so scared he doesn’t even ogle Miss Stoltz. She instantly creeps him out and he keeps his distance. Normally he would’ve made some comment about how “the rigid ones are always dynamite in the sack, Sam!” But not this week. It’s too spooky.

Sam and Al vamp around the parlor looking for clues, and it’s a real haunted house movie set. I can almost see Johnny Depp on the other side of the wall, dressed like a vampire and butt-chugging wine between takes.

Al reveals he fucked a girl named Myra Boychick in a haunted house back when he was a teen. He says “we made it go bump in the night.” In retrospect, this is just a story about having sex in an abandoned building. By this point, Al’s dick must look like Stripe, the leader of the Gremlins. Sam refuses to believe that Troian is being haunted, but Al warns him against this sacrilege. He squeezes his cigar like a titty in a haunted mansion and says, “Careful Sam! Ziggy says this is a very strange house. Do you know that all the Claridges in that boneyard have died violent and unnatural deaths?” He explains that Troian is an illustrator of gothic romances written by her late husband Julian, but that she stopped painting 3 years ago when Julian drowned in the lake by the mansion. Julian’s body was never found, and in two days she’s gonna drown in the same lake, presumably to be reunited with him. Of course, we know that Troian’s brother Jimmy is behind the hauntings, because I’ve already told you, but our boys haven’t figured that out yet.

Troian is awakened in the middle of the night by spooky whispers. She follows wet footprints down the hall and upstairs to Julian’s study. Within the locked room, she finds a painting that she threw in the lake after Julian died, sitting on the easel and dripping with water.

It’s a hilariously dull painting of a man in a rowboat. It’s Thomas Kinkade art you’d find in your room at the Holiday Inn. We learn this painting was actually going to be the cover of Julian’s last book, and that Julian was posing for Troian as the man in the boat when he fell overboard and drowned. It’s the worst book cover imaginable.This would be a boring cover for a day planner, let alone a gothic literary bang fest. Julian died for a garbage painting that would have sold negative books. It’s the kind of thing teenagers would find romantic. I assume the Bellisarios were blowing each other pretty hard when they wrote this part.

Speaking of which, Sam conducts an interview with Troian while futzing with his paranormal machinery and nearly makes out with her. That’s weird, Sam. You’re inside the body of a 60 year old ghostbuster. (See “cucked by Scott Bakula,” above.) There’s a lot of “I’m a young man’s soul trapped in an older man’s body” going on in this episode. I fear the Bellisarios’ marriage may be in trouble.

Sam comes to the conclusion that someone is trying to drive Troian insane, and he suspects Miss Stoltz. Al appears dressed like a bathroom attendant in the Dick Tracy universe to vehemently disagree.

Al is adamant that the Claridge curse is to blame. He explains that the curse began back in the 1800s when the Claridge family patriarch found his wife with the butler and drowned them both in the lake. Their bodies were never found. At this point the Bellisarios are presumably motorboating each other so hard they’ve nearly drowned as well. Jimmy marches in to yell at Sam about Troian’s deteriorating state. Jimmy can hear Al’s voice thanks to some electromagnetic interference involving the ghosthunting equipment, because apparently you can hear people’s brain waves. Once again, it makes nothing but sense. Jimmy thinks Sam is just throwing his voice, but this frightens Al and he flees. Later on, while he and Sam investigate the family crypt, Al says, “I don’t want anyone else hearing me. Unless it’s women.” Sam asks, “What about that blonde over there?” Al’s horniness activates and he forgets he’s in a mausoleum, and he says, “WHERE?” Then he turns to see a skeleton with a disturbing amount of blonde hair. It looks like it’s wearing a Dolly wig.

Al says, “I’m not into necrophilia,” in a way that was meant to be funny but sounds like a serial killer’s mumbled alibi. Sam finishes the bit by exclaiming, “At last! Something sexual he’s not into.” What else have they discussed? Is Sam Al’s friend or his parole officer? Anyway, they discover one of Jimmy’s tape recorders hidden in the crypt. According to Sam, the recorder emits a sound frequency audible only to dogs and women, which is TV science that gets recycled every few decades, sort of like “humans only use ten percent of their brains.” There doesn’t seem to be conclusive research behind the idea that women can hear higher frequencies than men, except that men might be more likely to experience high frequency hearing loss for a variety of reasons. It’s the kind of junk science you’d expect from a rogue time traveler like Dr. Sam Beckett.

Sam is about to confront Jimmy with the tape recorder when he gets locked in the attic by Miss Stoltz. I’m not sure why she does this. Sam climbs out the window instead, which slows him down for a minute. Meanwhile, Troian is standing on the jetty, about to leap into the water to join her husband, when Jimmy shows up and literally says - I am not paraphrasing here - “I got this IOU to these bad dude in Vegas and now I gotta kill my sister. Talk about your bad days!” He reveals that he was worried Troian would find out about his gambling debts and cut him off from the family money, so he concocted a fake haunting to drive her bonkers or push her to suicide, whichever came first.

Jimmy is about to throw Troian into the water when an earthquake strikes, dislodging several corpses from the bottom of the lake like the worst tubing vacation. Sam arrives just in time and tackles Jimmy as though he were about to pull out an acoustic guitar. The two men crash into the lake.

Jimmy never surfaces, which means we can add a murder to Sam’s legacy as the inventor of time travel. Meanwhile, we learn that one of the surfaced bodies belongs to Troian’s husband Julian. The other two are the long lost bodies of the former Mrs. Claridge and her lover, the butler. He doesn’t get a name. Weirdly, Julian is also dressed as though he died in the 19th century.

A detective explains that the cold water could be responsible for their well-preserved state, although it is heavily implied that ghost magic is to blame. An extremely helpful local historian shows up to inform Sam and Troian that Mrs. Claridge’s maiden name was Stoltz, because for some reason Troian didn’t know that. Sam and Troian give each other a real Shaggy & Scooby look. Then Sam, who doesn’t believe in ghosts and has just proven that Troian’s haunting was a hoax, creeps over to the bodies to check whether one of them is Miss Stoltz. Sure enough, one of them is!

Miss Stoltz watches from an upstairs window and vanishes, having accomplished whatever it was she defied nature to achieve.

The historian lady says, “You look like YOU’VE SEEN A GHOST!” And then Sam leaps outta there onto his next adventure, leaving the Bellisarios to go finger each other on Edgar Allan Poe’s grave, or whatever it is they do while they watch this episode.

Tom Reimann is the co-founder of the podcast and streaming network Gamefully Unemployed, where he is posing on a rowboat in his backyard. Check out their Supernatural watchalong Him-Boos, and their improv mockumentary BADICAL, about the raddest fighting game (n)ever made.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Mort, who died peacefully in 1847 and woke up inside Scott Bakula with somebody else’s wife.

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