Recap / Quantum Leap S 5 E 22 Mirror Image

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Quantum Leap
Season 5, Episode 22:

Mirror Image

Sam: Who are you?
Al the Bartender: Bartender.
Sam: Who knows everything?
Al the Bartender: Only God knows everything. (Sam looks shocked, Al laughs) You don't really think I'm God, do you?
Sam: You're more than just a bartender.
Al the Bartender: Well that’s true. I own the place, too.

Written by Donald P. Bellisario

Directed by James Whitmore Jr.

Airdate: May 4, 1993

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August 8, 1953

Sam leaps into a bar in a Pennsylvania mining town as himself. The surreal situation is made stranger when Sam finds himself surrounded by familiar faces and a mysterious bartender who seems to know as much about Sam’s journey through time as he does.

Tropes:

• Almighty Janitor: More specifically, Omniscient Bartender.
• Artistic License – History: Captain Z-Ro wouldn't have aired in Pennsylvania in 1953, as it was only airing in California at the time. It wouldn't be nationally syndicated until December 1955. But Acceptable Breaks from Reality are likely allowed here considering that "time's a little funny" in Cokeburg.
• Back for the Finale:
  • Gushie — that is, Project Quantum Leap's Gushie — makes his final appearance at Ziggy's main console.
  • Beth Calavicci from "M.I.A." appears at the very end, when Sam tells her that Al is coming home.
  • Subverted with the people in and around the bar, who Sam recognizes as Moe Stein, Jake Dorleac, Don Geno, Frank and Jimmy LaMotta, Bob Crockett, Dr. Mintz, Martin Junior, and Josh, but are actually other characters.
• Back to the Early Installment: At the end of the episode, Sam leaps to April 3, 1969, at the end of Season 2's "M.I.A.", when Beth is dancing by herself in her house.
• Badass Boast: Stawpah claims he could load 24 tons of coal during a shift at the Marianna mine. Miner Gushie later says that no one could do this, "not even Stawpah."
• Bittersweet Ending: History is changed so that Al and Beth never divorce. They're still married and have four daughters. On the other hand, Sam never makes it home.
• Brandishment Bluff: Variation: After the mine is closed to ventilate it (despite the fact that two miners are trapped and are at risk of drowning), Sam, under the guise of a safety inspector, presents the cop guarding the mine's elevator with a piece of paper that he claims is an order to reopen the mine. Sam then proceeds to drop it down the shaft right as the cop reaches for it, and accuses the cop of causing it to fall.
• Call-Back:
  • Sam talking to Al about Stawpah potentially being a dead leaper brings to mind Sam asking Al if he was dead in the pilot.
  • Sam and Miner Ziggy sitting at the same table and taking drinks at the same time matches how Sam mirrored Moe Stein (Miner Ziggy's doppleganger) drinking milk back in "Future Boy."
• Chromosome Casting: The only people seen in Cokeburg are male, meaning that Sam doesn't see any dopplegangers of women he's leaped into or helped. In fact, the only woman seen in the entire episode is Beth, who appears in a flashback, and again at the end when Sam leaps to her house in 1969.
• Continuity Snarl:
  • Ambiguous: Al says he never saw Sam leap out before... despite there being episodes in the past where he alludes to it. But then again, given how freaked out Al clearly was when hearing Sam try to explain what he's experienced in Cokeburg, he could just be lying impulsively.
  • Sam leaps in at the proverbial beginning of the string, at the moment of his birth, though twice he's leapt prior to his birth, while he was in utero: four months before his birth in "Play it Again, Seymour", and four days before in "The Americanization of Machiko."
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: If Gushie had only started a year earlier in his search...
• Creator Cameo: Donald P. Bellisario appears as one of the miners in the bar, appropriately making him the doppleganger of the leapee in "A Portrait for Troian" (also played by Bellisario).
• Cutting the Knot: "But, instead of starting with 'Once upon a time', let's start with the happy ending..."
• Dead All Along: Stawpah. "He die in '33, twenty years ago."
• Do You Trust Me?: "I'm going to tell you a story, Beth. A story with a happy ending. But only if you believe me."
• Dramatic Irony: After Al realizes Sam had leapt to his birthday, he tells Gushie to have Ziggy search Sam's birthdays. Gushie starts with his first one... in 1954.
• The Ending Changes Everything: The finale's big twist is that God wasn't the one who's been running the show — Sam was.
• Everyone Is Related: Variation: one of the patrons of the bar is a cantankerous old man named Stawpah, who's been crippled by rheumatoid arthritis. Al later mentions to Sam that he has an uncle named Stawpah... who also suffers from arthritis. Sam's conversation with the Bartender all but confirms they're the same person.
• Expospeak Gag: Inverted.
  Al: [In the Imaging Chamber "vortex"] Gushie! I'm gonna ralph!
  Gushie: Ralph?
  Al: Barf! Spew! Upchuck! Make like Mount St. Helens! I'm gonna blow chunks!
  Gushie: Oh, regurgitate!
• Foreshadowing: Stawpah says he must save Tonchi and Pete "this time", and way too accurately describes what they are experiencing in the flooded mineshaft.
  Sam: How do you know all this?
  Stawpah: I been there... too many time.
• Fridge Horror: invoked Look at Al's face when Sam explains what happened to Stawpah, and how he leapt out in a burst of blue light and electricity, only for no one to be present once he was gone. And especially when Sam abruptly starts talking about "dead souls coming back to warn the living".
  Sam: I bet I turn blue and tingle with electrical energy! The same way [Stawpah] did when he leaped! (slightly confused) Only no one leaped back in, but that was probably because he was dead.
  Al: (quietly) That's it, I'm outta here.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: With Sam faced with the prospect of either finally going home, or continuing to leap with the challenges getting harder, he is asked one question:
  Bartender Al: Where would you like to go, Sam?
  Sam: Home. I'd like to go home. But I can't, can I? I've got a wrong to put right for Al. You knew, didn't you?
• Friendship Moment:
  • Sam and Al's interaction towards the end: Al took all day to locate and get in contact with Sam, only to be noticeably concerned with Sam's attempts at explaining what's been going on at Al's Place, let alone his sudden bout of laughter after he mentions his uncle Stawpah. As such, Al decides to leave the Imaging Chamber in order to find out what's going on... but not before saying one last thing:
    Al: I'm gonna get you out of this. Whatever it takes, I'll- I'll get you out of this.
  • After finally coming to the realization that he should've helped Al save his marriage to Beth back in "M.I.A.", the episode (and series) ends with Sam leaping back to that point, and telling Beth that Al's still alive.
• Good-Guy Bar: The bar Sam finds himself in.
• Good Is Not Nice: Stawpah is antagonistic and suspicious towards Sam, but he demonstrates that he wants to save Tonchi and Pete just as much as he does.
• Gut Feeling: When Al and Gushie are trying to locate Sam with the Imaging Chamber, Al has a sudden moment of intuition and tells Gushie to search using Sam's birthday:
  Gushie: If we could only narrow our search...
  Al: Sam's birthday!
  Gushie: What about it?
  Al: Wherever he is, it's his birthday.
  Gushie: How do you know?
  Al: I don't- It's just a feeling. I have a hunch. Have Ziggy search his birthdays.
• Humble Hero: Sam thinks that all he's done is change a few lives.
• Laughing Mad: Downplayed: after it clicks for Sam that Stawpah was Al's uncle, he can't help but laugh at the absurdity.
• Local Hangout: Al’s Place is this for the miners of Cokeburg, PA.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Because he, Gushie, and Ziggy have concluded that Sam must've full-body-leaped, Al spends most of the episode using the Imaging Chamber scanning to find Sam, and doesn't witness any of the strange goings-on. When Al finally reaches Sam, Sam starts going on like a lunatic about how the bar is full of dopplegangers from previous leaps, Moe Stein's doppleganger is named Ziggy, there's a man named Gushie there with halitosis, something about how a random jolly-looking bartender is leaping Sam around and might be God or something, something about another leaper named "Stawpah" who fully leaped out because he was dead, and some mad cackling about Uncle Stawpah's rheumatoid arthritis. Al is so profoundly disturbed by all of this that he leaves the Imaging Chamber to check with Ziggy to see what's going on.
• Malaproper: The miner Ziggy frequently uses the wrong words in conversation such as cabbages, BVD and iodine in place of cartridges, KGB and ionosphere. English is not his first language.
• Manly Tears: Sam when he thinks about where he would most like to go.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The hows and whys of Al the Bartender’s knowledge of time travel are never explained.
• My Greatest Failure: Sam regrets not saving Al's marriage when he had the chance.
• My Greatest Second Chance:
  • Sam returns to Beth's house on April 3, 1969, to tell her that Al is alive and coming home.
  • It's implied that Stawpah previously made multiple failed attempts to save Tonchi and Pete, and Sam's presence finally allowed him to succeed.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • After arriving at the bar, Sam's about to settle in when he sees himself in the mirror.
    Sam: Oh, boy.
  • Sam again after Stawpah leaps.
• One-Steve Limit: Defied – The episode features a second Al (a bartender), Gushie, and Ziggy (coal miners).
• Perception Filter: A variation; after Stawpah leaps, none of the miners remember that he was ever there, and Bartender Al simply says that's just the way it is. It's also implied to be the case when Sam and Bartender Al have a conversation about quantum leaping, as none of the miners seem to notice or be bothered by it.
• Pink Elephants: When Sam starts going on about Stawpah disappearing in a flash of blue energy, the miners all think that Sam had something really powerful to drink.
  Mutta: Whatever Sam's drinking, I'll have one!
• The Reveal: Bartender Al shows Sam who it is that's been leaping him throughout time: Sam himself.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: After Stawpah leaps, only Sam and Bartender Al remember him.
• Sadistic Choice: Sam can either go home now or change things for Al and then face even tougher leaps.
• Self-Insert Fic: While not based on Donald Bellisario himself, the bartender is inspired by his father, Al Bellisario, and his bar in Cokeburg, PA.
  • Fix Fic: Following this logic, the last scene counts as this: Sam realizes he needs to right one specific wrong for Al... and leaps back to the end of "M.I.A." to tell Beth a little story...
• Series Fauxnale: Inverted: They didn't intend this to be the last episode, but the show was cancelled at the last minute, so they did a little editing to try to provide some finality to it.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Never has there been an instance of Sam doing just that than in the final scene: Sam leaps back to the events of "M.I.A." and prevents Beth from leaving Al, which is exactly what Al wanted Sam to do back in that episode.
• The Teetotaler: Stawpah says he never drinks beer.
• This Cannot Be!: Among all the other things Sam struggles to deal with learning in this leap, the fact that he himself is the one leaping himself around time is the thing he can't believe.
• Tomato Surprise:
  • Stawpah is actually a leaper.
  • For the series as a whole: Sam himself has been guiding his own leaps this entire time.
• Tragic Intangibility: This is the most separated that Al gets from Sam. Since there's no leapee, the Project has to use an alternate method to get a lock, and by the time Al finds Sam, Sam is raving like a lunatic. Al looks so absolutely helpless by the end of their conversation, and exits the Imaging Chamber to consult with Ziggy because he has no other tangible options as a hologram.
• Two Roads Before You: Sam is essentially told that he can either continue leaping (where he will face even tougher challenges) or go home. Sam chooses to leap so that he can save Al and Beth's marriage.
• The Unreveal: When Sam demands to know why the others no longer remember Stawpah, Bartender Al simply says that's the way it is.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The first clue that the Bartender isn't what he seems? He barely reacts when Sam rambles that he entered the bar at the exact moment he was born.
• Wham Line:
  • During their discussion about mirrors and the reality they present, the Bartender gives Sam arguably the biggest revelation of the episode:
    Sam: You are the one who's been leaping me, aren't you?
    Bartender: I wouldn't say that.
    Sam: Well, what would you say?
    Bartender: (points behind himself) That he's been leaping you through time. (pan over to where the Bartender was pointing... and it's Sam's reflection)
  • When Sam tries explaining to Al that Stawpah's name is Russian, Al states that he already knew that.
    Al: I've got an uncle named Stawpah.
    Sam: (slowly sits down on the bar's porch bench) Does he have, um... uh, rheumatoid arthritis, Al?
    Al: ...he has, uh... it's got him all twisted up like a pretzel...
  • In-universe (and to great effect given the circumstances): "Al's alive. And he's coming home."
• Wham Shot:
  • Sam seeing his own reflection in a mirror.
  • Stawpah leaping.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Bartender Al refutes Sam's belief of only making a difference in "a few lives."
  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.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Following Al's guess that Sam leapt to his birthday, Gushie does a scan of every year from 1954 to the end of the twenty-first century, unable to find him. "...unless, of course... you meant literally his birthday."
  Al: What?
  Gushie: We started the search on his first birthday, we never checked the actual day he was born.
  Al: (looking like he's about to barf) Oh my God.
• You Need a Breath Mint: Cokeburg's Gushie has bad breath just like Project Quantum Leap's Gushie.

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Sam: I'm going to tell you a story, Beth. A story with a happy ending. But only if you believe me.
Beth: And if I don't?
Sam: You will. I swear you will. But instead of starting with "Once upon a time", let's start with the happy ending. ...Al's alive. And he's coming home.