Leaping of the Shrew - September 27, 1956 - S5-E3
Question: Shortly after Sam throws some items off the life raft, Al appears and tells him that because of what Sam had done, neither he nor Vanessa would be saved for quite a while. If Sam had not done anything, both of them would have been rescued within an hour. I might be wrong about this next part so further verification will help. Al also said that because of Sam throwing stuff into the ocean, that somehow, instead if only being stranded in the lifeboat for a few minutes, four whole hours have passed. How could tossing anything into the ocean have made time move so rapidly?
Mirror Image - August 8, 1953 - S5-E22
Question: Why would Sam need to warn Beth that Al would return and that he was an MIA? During the Vietnam episode the Pulitzer prize journalist took a picture of Al as a prisoner, so she already knew he was a prisoner.
Answer: In the finale, Sam leaps back to the episode "M.I.A." which is set in 1969. Originally, he failed to stop Beth from remarrying. However, the episode you're talking about, "The Leap Home", takes place in 1970. At the end of that episode, Al tells Sam that Maggie, the woman who took the picture of Al, finally got her Pulitzer Prize posthumously. But there's no indication when the picture of Al becomes public, or if Beth even saw the picture. However, if Beth did see the picture, or is aware Al is a POW, she's already moved on.
Star-Crossed - June 15, 1972 - S1-E3
Question: Al tells Sam that he's there to prevent the professor and his undergraduate student from having a shotgun wedding and ruining both their lives. That implies she got pregnant. Sam succeeds in keeping them apart. Um, does that mean he prevented someone from being born?
Answer: He means he's there to prevent there ever being the need for a shotgun wedding-that is, to stop the affair before there is a possibility of the girl getting pregnant.
Which would erase the child from history. That's my point.
Answer: Not necessarily; it could also mean that someone such as Jamie Lee's (the student) father discovered that the professor was having a sexual relationship with her and coerced the two into getting married.
This doesn't answer the question. You just described what a shotgun wedding is.
I think their point is that the "shotgun" aspect might not be due to a pregnancy, simply a forced attempt to legitimise an otherwise scandalous relationship.
My point was that a "shotgun wedding" doesn't always happen because an unmarried girl becomes pregnant; it can also happen because someone "stole her virtue", i.e had sex with her without being married or at least engaged to her. There's no reason to believe that Jamie Lee was, or would become, pregnant as a result of the affair or subsequent marriage.
The term "shotgun wedding" means a forced marriage due to unexpected pregnancy. It's sometimes even used when the woman is pregnant but it's planned or the wedding isn't "forced." In common colloquialism (especially in the 80's when the script was written), it doesn't refer to a force marriage just because of premarital sex (which the term "make an honest woman" is used for).
No, in the 1926 Sinclair Lewis novel 'Elmer Gantry', they talk about shotgun weddings, when a groom is forced to marry a woman because he took her virginity. Obviously, the term usually refers to a pregnant bride, but I see zendaddys point.
Mirror Image - August 8, 1953 - S5-E22
Question: I believe in the final episode, Al the bartender asked Sam where he would like to go and Sam said home. He then said he couldn't because he had a wrong to put right for his hologram friend Al, which he did. After telling Al's wife that Al is alive he leaps. I think it said after that that Sam never makes it home. So does he continue leaping forever or is he stuck in the last person he leaps into? I know he lost his memory but what happened after that?
Chosen answer: Per the Quantum leap page at http://www.scifi.com/quantum/episodes/season5.html. 8 August 1953: An enigmatic leap lands Sam in a Pennsylvania tavern, as his own grown self on the day of his birth. As Al and Gushie work frantically to locate him, Sam befriends a wise bartender (popular character actor McGill, who'd appeared in a different role in the very first "leap") and a group of coal miners. As a host of familiar-looking faces pass through the bar - with different identities than Sam remembers - Sam ponders his life of leaping with Al the bartender, who tells Sam he controls his own destiny. Pressed for more, Al the bartender simply shrugs and says, "Sometimes, 'that's the way it is' is the best explanation." Sam realizes he must right at least one more wrong before he can go home, and leaps back to tell Al Calvavicci's wife Beth (from "M.I.A.") to wait for Al, who will survive Vietnam and come home to her. The closing title cards state that Beth and Al have four daughters and will shortly celebrate their 39th wedding anniversary ... and that Sam Beckett never returned home.
Camikazi Kid - June 6, 1961 - S1-E8
Question: In this episode, Sam leaps into Cam, a teenager with braces. So when Sam looks in his reflection, he sees the braces, even though he's not wearing any himself. Someone submitted a mistake from one episode when Sam's reflection is wearing glasses, even though Sam isn't. While braces aren't as easy to put on or take off as glasses, they're still not part of the body (such as a zit), so shouldn't Sam have braces himself, the same way he'd have glasses on when leaping into somebody? Or should it not be considered a mistake that the reflection is wearing glasses and Sam isn't?
Answer: The obvious answer is that it would be very difficult to fit actor Scott Bakula with braces for an episode. As for the in universe rules, we can assume that items permanently attached to one's body (dental work, pacemakers, artificial joints, etc), would stay with the original body. Otherwise Sam would suffer agony when someone's fillings were jammed into his teeth. You have to have some suspension of disbelief when it comes to things like this. Why weren't Sam's shoes constantly too big or too small? Why does everyone look him in the eye, even when he's posing as someone much taller or shorter?
Question: How could Sam narrate parts of the stories if he never returned home ?
Answer: Likely, Sam's narrations are just his own internal monologue and not reports back to the project or anything.
Question: Has it ever been stated in an episode how long it takes Sam to leap from one person to another? It seems instantaneous from the viewer's point of view, but Al is nearly always present at the point where Sam leaps out, and appears quite early in the following episode wearing completely different clothes.
Answer: It's suggested that it can be a substantial period of time, as much as several weeks, although it varies dramatically.
Question: In which episode is it stated how long Sam spends bouncing around in time in between leaps? I have watched the lot and never heard this.
Answer: The amount of time Sam is away between leaps isn't constant, but in "Genesis" Al tells Sam that it's been around a week between Sam leaping out of Tom Stratton & into the baseball player even though from ours & Sam's perspective it happened straight away.
Question: Is it ever stated how the people act once Sam leaps out of them? Presumably the person leaps back into their place, but wouldn't they be confused initially and then just go back to acting the same way?
Answer: In "Double Identity", Sam leaps from Frankie to Don Geno when the blackout hits and we see how Frankie responds to returning. He appears to have no memory of the time he was displaced and thinks it is the moments just after when he left the day before.
The Leap Between The States - September 20, 1862 - S5-E20
Question: Is this the only episode where Sam leaps to a time outside the 20th century?
Answer: Yes. He can only leap within his own lifetime (per the 'rules' of quantum time travel). This episode was an exception, as an anamoly allowed him to make the jump into the life of a distant, but genetic, relative.
Answer: Sam threw items off the raft to lighten the load, so it wouldn't sink, in doing so he made the raft less heavy. Which made easier to float with the currents, if it was heavy the raft would have moved slower and not moved so far.
Except that Al said that immediately after throwing stuff out of the boat four hours passed and it was shown that they didn't really move from where they were. They were still in the same spot. Forgot to ask this too. When Sam and Vanessa are stranded on the island, one of them, can't remember who, did something and when Al appears, he tells them that because of it, time had suddenly skipped several more hours and if the event hadn't been interrupted, they would have been rescued by a boat. So, what happened on the island that once again caused time to speed up? It seems kind of strange that time could move so quickly on the island, especially since it was still day time and it never showed any sort of changes like the sun or clouds moving.