Nerding Day: Quantum Leap: The Devil Episode (Patreon)

Quantum Leap stars Scott Bakula as Dr. Sam Beckett, a cursed time traveler barreling through the past and abducting human souls so he may temporarily inhabit their bodies to prevent great tragedies before they occur. No, really, these spirits are sent to a “waiting room” in Sam’s timeline, where they hang out while he takes their flesh jeeps for a spin to right some wrongs. It’s a noble mission, kind of, and I say “kind of” because Sam is an unwilling participant. He was just a mad scientist who recklessly tested his time travel device and found himself stranded in the hands of an angry god. This mission is his punishment for breaking the laws of nature, sort of like when your sensei makes you smash bricks for an hour because you bo-staffed his testicles during the Trial of the Snake.

Sam’s only companion in this purgatory is Al, a pervert bedazzled in Back to the Future Part II’s finest menswear. Al is a hologram beamed into Sam’s thoughts from a lab in the future via some vague fantasy technology neither I nor the writers of Quantum Leap were paid to understand. Al’s primary concern is ogling women in the past, because nobody else but Sam can see or hear him.

Quantum Leap ran for five seasons before abandoning Sam to oblivion, and over the course of those 97 episodes our time-hopping folk hero was nearly killed by an array of haunted creatures. Like, so many more than you’d expect. Let me explain. In the arena of 1980s television, shows would occasionally feature supernatural episodes, meaning episodes in which the protagonists run afoul of ghosts or monsters or the dark ruler of the Malebolge. This was a real phenomenon: look up any popular show from the decade and there is a very good chance it will have produced a Scary Episode. Airwolf probably fought a Frankenstein. This practice continued into the early '90s, when even Martin Lawrence got attacked by a ghost in his apartment on Martin. For whatever reason - maybe because the show was so high concept, maybe because television producers can have their cocaine delivered - Quantum Leap aired *multiple* scary episodes, and I’m watching all of them, because destiny is both petulant and insatiable.

We’ve already watched Sam fight a mummy in “The Curse of Ptah-Hotep,” and were thrilled out of our jeans as he matched wits with a ghost in “A Portrait for Troian.” In the Season 3 episode “The Boogieman,” Sam Beckett meets his greatest challenge yet - a parlor murder mystery hosted by the Christian Devil.

Sam leaps into schlock horror novelist Joshua Ray on Halloween, 1964, as Ray is preparing a haunted house for the local presbytery with the help of his fiance Mary. Al appears and tells Sam that Mary is going to be found strangled to death in the haunted house later that night unless Sam can find the culprit and stop them. But it’s All Hallow’s Eve, and strange things begin happening from the start. For instance, Al is normally able to provide Sam with clues generated by Ziggy, the supercomputer Sam built in his spare time. But this week, Ziggy is thwarted by mysterious bugs and glitches at every turn, as though some malevolent force is preventing the computer from gathering any helpful data. Meanwhile, other people keep dying around Mary in mysterious accidents, causing Sam to doubt whether he is there to save Mary or stop her rampage. The culprit turns out to be Satan himself in disguise as one of the characters, because somebody in the writers room passed out in front of The Omen while snorting $10,000 from a butthole. Which character? Read on, dear hotdogger. Whose butthole? Like an episode of Quantum Leap, there are several suspects, including the Prince of Lies.

Quantum Leap occasionally becomes obsessed with time travel jokes hinged on dramatic irony, e.g. “That John Wayne Gacy will never amount to anything!” In this episode, Sam meets a young Stephen King and accidentally gives the future author some of his most famous ideas. It’s not quite “Marvin Barry” (see Back to the Future, above), but Stephen King sued the producers of The Lawmower Man to protect his name and I don’t think that would be out of line here. The episode begins with Sam wearing a Shakespeare costume stolen from a personal items bin, as though the show can sense this impending lawsuit.

Sam has leaped into a member of the Hellfire Club. He’s wearing the shoulder pads of a playing card character and holding a candle. It’s an outfit that loudly declares NOBODY is having sex tonight. He’s reading a book about witchcraft published in 1879, and he repeats the publishing date with rising horror. He seems to think he’s leaped into *the year* 1879, because he doesn’t understand what publishing dates mean. Sam hears a strange noise upstairs and creeps up to investigate. He is surprised by two goofs dressed in costumes assembled from the trunk in Grandma’s attic. This frightens him so badly he tumbles down the stairs and is certainly killed.

Sam is stunned but OK, and the costumed freaks are revealed to be Mary and Stevie, Josh’s fiance and teenage best buddy, respectively. The grownups send Stevie out to get supplies for the haunted house, but Mary is quick to comment, “We have enough pumpkins.” A strangely bewildered Sam, behaving as though he is unfamiliar with the concept of Halloween, replies, “You know me. Have knife, will carve. Pumpkins.” It’s an awesome joke and we almost don’t hear the next thirty seconds of dialogue because we’re laughing so hard.

Sam finally looks into a mirror and we see Joshua Ray, a card-carrying member of the magician’s guild. He looks like a guy who argues with children.

“One of these days I’m gonna write the scariest book in the whole wide world!” Stevie declares as he skips out to his car. Remember, this is Stephen King, so he is presumably imagining a magic cowboy shooting a woman in the crotch as he says this. I love Stephen King, but he has written some weird shit. Most of it without Sam Beckett’s influence.

Sam enters Joshua Ray’s office, which, like the foyer, is decorated with a strange abundance of fake plants. The man must have a deep phobia of leaves. All of his novels sound like Misfits songs. Skull Party. Her Ghoulish Figure. Hell yeah. He has a snake’s head cane, too. Are we sure Sam doesn’t meet young Danzig in this episode?

Tully the Handyman is fixing the windows and immediately hits Sam with some folksy spookiness. Real hard Judd Crandall shit. He croaks, “What’s time to Old Scratch? Yesterday’s tomorrow for him. Mark my words, you want no part of his business because all he’s selling is DEATH.” Then a goat knocks the ladder out from under him and he falls to his death. It’s meant to look evil but it just looks like an old man taking a nap with his goat.

Now Sheriff Ben Masters is on the scene, and he believes with all of his small town heart that Sam killed Tully. He apparently runs on kerosene, because he is forever chewing a thick wooden matchstick.

Sam insists a goat was responsible but nobody believes him, not even Mary. She points out that Sam doesn’t own a goat, and Sheriff Ben scoffs that the closest farm is 20 miles away. It’s a genuine mystery, because goats famously do not get loose and cause trouble on their own. Al arrives, dressed like the best-selling R&B vocalist of 1995. He also seems to think Sam may have pushed Tully.

Sam is pissed at Al, but not for randomly accusing him of murder. He says, “If I’d had a little warning I could’ve saved him!” Al replies, “Don’t blame me or Ziggy, we didn't know anything about this.” Then Sam says, “Well if I’m not here to save Tully, then why am I here?” This is when Al tells us that Joshua Ray’s fiance Mary is going to be found strangled to death in the spook house at midnight. I’m not sure what Mary and the Sheriff are doing while Sam is having what, to them, is a chilling one-sided conversation, but they never bring it up.

Thanks to all the spooky interference, Ziggy isn’t able to get many details about Sam’s mission. Sam asks, “What if Joshua Ray strangled his own fiance?” Al says according to Ziggy there was never enough evidence to arrest Joshua Ray, so Ray is *probably* not the killer. The computer and Al are noticeably unhelpful this week. Sam reasons that if Josua Ray is the murderer, then all he needs to do is inhabit Joshua Ray for the next 24 hours and not strangle anyone, which should be a piece of cake. Most people succeed at this task for their entire lives. But then Al sows the seeds of doubt by saying, “Unless Mary isn’t innocent.” It is at this point I fear the Devil may have tipped his hand, but let’s continue the charade anyway.

Mary is going to die that night, meaning if Sam were there to eliminate her, he wouldn’t need to do anything. Kind of a waste of a Leap. So this is just Al outing himself as a man who deeply fears and mistrusts women. He does this at least once an episode. We move past this paradox almost as quickly as it is introduced, because someone has poorly written Tully’s death into Joshua’s novel.

Al is instantly suspicious of Mary, because he hates women. Sam is suspicious of the sheriff, because the sheriff was weird as shit. He tries to learn more about Sheriff Ben from Dorothy, the town gossip, but Dorothy is bitten to death by a snake in the haunted house.

Sam finds a matchstick on the floor next to Dorothy’s body, pointing the finger at the sheriff. Meanwhile, Al still thinks Mary is killing everyone, despite the overwhelming matchstick evidence to the contrary and the fact that, again, they are there to save Mary. Sam says, “I’m telling you Al, she couldn’t have done it! Just look at her eyes!” To which Al retorts, “Well, maybe she’s wearing contact lenses.” I love what these men have together. I adore their friendship. You could almost forget two people have died.

Mary overhears Sam talking to Al and mistakenly believes Sam is accusing her of murder, so they get into a heated argument. A skull on the mantle starts vibrating the angrier she gets until finally it flies across the room and shatters against the wall. Then she collapses and has a seizure. Sam TEARS his belt off as though he is about to shit so grandly it changes his religion and we escape into commercials.

Why does Sam remove his belt? Because TV medical wisdom at the time dictated you must shove something into a seizure victim’s mouth, and the suggestion Sam heard from the audience was “belt.” We return from commercials to Mary’s bedside at the hospital, where Sam explains the flying skull and Mary’s seizure by delivering the most incredible piece of dialogue I've yet encountered during this rewatch experiment. Mustering every ounce of scientific authority one could glean from a cocaine delivery boy in 1990, Sam declares, "Psychokinesis is very real, Al. The brain works on a chemoelectrical level. Epilepsy is a sort of crossing of the wires. So maybe when her neurons short circuited, maybe it stimulated her psychokinetic energy.” Al absorbs this information while watching Sam as though he is frantically trying to swallow his own head.

I realize I am prone to hyperbole, but please believe me when I say I had an audible reaction to “Psychokensis is very real, Al.” It was a special moment and I’m honored to have shared it with you all here. Meanwhile, Sam and Al learn that Mary lives at 966 Salem Ave. Sam is nervous about entering the house, because he’s only scientific to a point, so he makes Al go inside first.

The house is weirdly dirty and contains at least one vaguely racist decoration, which makes sense for 1964.

Sheriff Ben is here too, and he lets Sam grill him like a teenage murder witness on Law & Order. Luckily Ben Masters went to the Joe Piscopo school of snitch judo:

SAM: Sheriff, you could've put a snake in the kitchen.

BEN: Yeah but I didn’t.

SAM: I found a broken wooden match near her legs.

BEN: You got a wood stove. You light a wood stove with matches.

The next scene is Sam driving with more square narration. Squarration. Boy this narration sucks, and the show knows it, because suddenly a cat jumps out of the backseat to imperil Sam.

Then a goat walks into the road so he swerves. But suddenly Stevie appears in the scarecrow costume and Sam serves again, causing him to crash. Three different things had to jump out of the darkness to make Sam wipe out; he’s that good of a driver.

Stevie helps Sam out of the car and says “I didn’t mean to scare you!” This is the second time he’s sprang out in a monster costume and caused a huge injury while claiming “I didn’t mean to scare you,” so Sam would be forgiven for not believing him. You’re literally wearing a monster costume, Stevie. What else could you be trying to do? Sam tells Stevie he lost control of the car as though it had a mind of its own, “like in Christine,” a famous Stephen King novel. Stevie says “Christine?” like he doesn’t know what Sam is talking about, but he DOES know, because one day he will grow up to be the king of all Stevies.

Sam learns the sheriff checked Mary out of the hospital, so he races back there but finds the sheriff's truck crashed by the side of the road. Sheriff Ben is dead behind the wheel, and Sam screams a very anemic NOOOOOO! It’s like Star Wars but worse. Which is just another way of saying it’s like Star Wars.

We get some more Squarration but this time it rules because Sam muses on how all this murder has ruined his Halloween. He says, “Tonight there were no treats. There were no tricks. There was only death.” When you’re right, you’re right, Sam. Stevie meets him outside the haunted house and tells him that Mary and the sheriff arrived just ahead of him. Sam is either too upset to hear Stevie correctly or nobody sat still for long enough to write a second draft of the script, because Sam doesn’t react to being told a dead man is waiting for him inside. He trudges into the haunted house to tell Mary that Sheriff Ben was killed, to which a confused Mary replies, “He’s not dead, he’s in the kitchen.” A ferocious Doppleben emerges from the back and says, “It’s about time.” Time for what? We’re not certain.

Sam grabs Doppleben, who flashes red and transforms into Al.

Sam and Mary try to escape but Al locks them inside. This is the last thing dozens of women ever experienced.

That’s right, folks. It was Al the whole time. We’ve got an Evil Al situation. The One True Al finally teleports into the episode dressed like a high roller in Twin Peaks. He’s going trick-or-treating as one of the henchmen from Bad Boys. He looks like Robocop’s public defender.

Evil Al explains that he is really the Devil and that he is out for revenge against Sam. Judging by his suit, the Devil is a fan of Virtuosity. “Who gave you the right to meddle with time, putting right what I made wrong?” he snarls. I guess he has a point. He starts choking Sam, which Al insists is a positive development. He shouts, “If you can touch him you can hurt him, Sam!” and I don’t think that’s true, Al. What a bold and dangerous assumption by the holographic man.

But Sam starts choking the Devil right back, because what else is he gonna do, I guess. Then they begin rapidly spinning around like they’re going to transform into Wonder Woman or shrink down and be injected into Martin Short’s ass. That’s an Innerspace joke. Where’re my Innerds at?

The Devil transforms into every other character from the episode, including the goat. Prestige television never had this kind of courage.

Then Sam abruptly wakes up back at the beginning of the episode, at the bottom of the stairs. Al shows up and tells Sam they couldn’t locate him for a few minutes. Then he says, “You’re here to save a man named Tully,” and Sam springs into action before Al can finish. The group races up the stairs to Joshua Ray’s office just in time to catch Tully and pull him in through the window to safety.

Having saved Tully and strangled the Devil back down to his shrieking throne in Hell, Sam leaps outta there, but not before handing little Stevie King the idea for Carrie.

Tom Reimann is the co-founder of the podcast and streaming network Gamefully Unemployed, where he may or may not be an evil hologram. Check out their Supernatural watchalong Him-Boos, and their improv mockumentary BADICAL, about the raddest fighting game (n)ever made.

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