From MadCap's Couch - Quantum Leap: "The Right Hand of God"

I aaaaaaam the greatest!

"Yer gonna eat lightning and yer gonna crap thunder!!!"

... seriously, why haven't I reviewed any of the Rocky movies yet?

When we last left Sam Beckett, he had just (he hoped) assured a future with Teri Thatcher and had assisted in the downfall of Richard Milhouse Nixon before finding himself in a boxing ring having just had his clock cleaned.

Needless to say, not the best situation he's ever found himself in out of the three leaps he's done thus far. Unfortunately for him, Sam still has quite the journey to get through...

Sam struggles to rise and after being jostled around a bit in the ring manages to knock his opponent down. Brought back to the locker room, Sam sees the face of the man he has become, his trainer calling him "kid" and talking about his match as though he was... meant to win, Sam even noting how easily his opponent went down. Before he can hit the showers, two nuns arrive and mention that Clarence Cody - the man that Sam has leaped into the life of - has had his contract left to him, meaning that Cody is now boxing for the Lord!

Al considers if Heaven is really worth it...

Later, the younger of the two nuns takes Sam out to an empty lot where she intends to built a chapel. The Sister, Angela, has some big plans it seems. Sam gets the lowdown from her on what his part in that is - the nuns need him to win his latest prize fight. When Sam tries to weasel out of it, Angela insists that he's going to beat Tiger Joe Jackson and win the California Heavyweight Championship. Al appears, however, and mentions that things may be going according to God's plan, but not Ziggy's.

The nuns get Sam to move in with them to save money on housing and food... somehow? That part isn't particularly clear, but then I don't own someone's boxing contract. Al waxes nostalgic about when he and Sam first started their work on the Quantum Leap project. When Sam asks what the deal is, seeing as Al just said the Leap was supposed to drop him off at somewhere in Texas in the 1950s, Al calls it an "unscheduled stop". Sam believes he needs to win the fight against Tiger Joe Jackson to win the prize money so the nuns can build their chapel... to which Al says he hasn't got a prayer.

Sam, it seems, can't fight.

Returning to Cody's apartment, Sam is stopped along the way back Jake Edwards, a bookie who is expecting him to take a dive in his championship fight after having rigged several matches for him before this point to drive up his odds. When Sam brings up retiring, Edwards brings up that Sam would do amazingly well without kneecaps. This convinces Sam that he's not getting out of this one the easy way. Sam looks up to the sky, telling presumably God that He must know what he's doing. 

Oh, and a fight between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali gets mentioned. I'm sure that won't factor into the plot at all.

Finally getting to his apartment, Sam finds that Cody has a live-in girlfriend, Dixie. She's apparently a stripper and making a pretty decent amount of money doing so.

She and Cody have been saving up money, planning for a life of running a doughnut shop, which Dixie has estimated they will need about $20,000 for (that's in 1970's dollars, today that'd be about $120,000). Cody and Dixie have a very loving relationship it seems, Dixie is rather affectionate and seems to be very much at the forefront of planning for their future. Also, for a show in the late 80's, Quantum Leap seems to be very sex worker positive. It's progressive and not in an anvilicious way. Very nice!

Another bookie named Roscoe comes along to get $300 that Cody owes him for a bad bet, which Dixie pays up for. Sam brings up that the nuns want him to move in with them, which Dixie seems as confused about as I am. She provides him with some incentive to stay... the topless kind. Nevertheless, after some implied sexy times, Sam is seen carrying his bags into the church. We hear a beautiful rendition of Amazing Grace, just giving Sam a quiet moment to take in his surroundings as well as giving us a bit of Scott Bakula's singing voice...

"You're gonna eat lightning and you're gonna crap thunder!!!"

... and then Al is snoring on the floor. He mentioned in an earlier scene that he has a neighbor who has been keeping him awake, and this is a continuation of that. After a bit of a reminder from sleeptalking Al that he's a rake, he gets up and gives Sam some more information. Namely, Ziggy believes that winning the fight and getting the money for the nuns is his best shot at leaping out of here. Sam brings up several good points as to why this isn't going to work, in particular that he has no good trainer.

Al offers to train him, but the problem is that he's a hologram... so Sam goes back to Cody's trainer - Gomez - from before. Gomez is not keen on doing it until Jake shows up and heckles him about his own fighting history. He asks Sam if he's serious about not taking the fall anymore and, when he says he is, he tells him that he's got a trainer.

Sam's first training session goes... poorly, him being knocked out by the priest and needing to be revived with a bucket of water. Gomez tells Sam that he doesn't need a trainer, he needs a miracle. Nevertheless, it's training montage time... and we have the Great Value brand version of Gonna Fly Now while we get some sight gags. Later on, Sam is carrying bricks while a bike riding Sister Angela makes him run. During a brief break, Sam coaxes Angela to tell a little more of her backstory. Namely, her parents died in a fire when she was young. In her backyard, she had a "castle" - her treehouse, which was lost in the fire. For some reason, she was spared and after being a ward of various uncles for a while, she ended up on the streets. It was there, after she began to hate everything up to and including God, she ended up in a skid row chapel where a nun saved her soul.

With new hope and self-respect, Angela decided that she would create a chapel in a destitute part of the city to help people like herself. A castle, so to speak.

After that bit of exposition, Sam's training seems to be going much better. However, Al appears to let him know that Ziggy has crunched the numbers and Cody did not win the prize fight. The chapel was never built, either, instead being a shopping mall. Sam decides that he's going to change that. He also finally puts an end to Al's B-Plot with his neighbor that is so inconsequential that I've only mentioned it now.

After a confrontation with Jake in the bar and seeing a streaker on the news, the Foreman and Ali fight gets mentioned once again. When Jake tells him to take the dive in the first round, Sam says that he can't and declares he's intending to win it all.

Sam has apparently remembered who wins in Foreman and Ali and what round, convincing Dixie to put their money down on it. For his fight, Sam convinces Dixie to streak at the appropriate time during it to distract his opponent. He gives her a good inspirational speech and, again, shows a sex worker positive attitude, which is pretty refreshing for the time period in a mainstream TV show.

That night at the church, Angela reveals to Sam that Jake came by and left an envelope with a grand in it for taking the dive, apparently having no faith that Sam will win like he says he will. Angela's faith is completely shattered, believing that God sent her a cheat, rather than a champion. Sam tries to tell her that Cody has changed... although he says it in a way that leans into the fact that he's not Cody, not that Angela would know that. Angela isn't sure she can believe him or in anything anymore.

Sam says, so long as she believed he would win, he believed it. Without that, he really doesn't have a prayer.

Strong female character? Here ya go!

The day of the match comes. Al hasn't shown up, but Sam takes to the ring anyway. Jackson lays into Sam, and it seems that he's about to go down. The ten count starts, but Sam rises at seven and gets back into it. Angela notices. At the right moment, on cue, Dixie streaks and Jackson is caught off-guard, allowing Sam to clock him good. Al arrives just in time to see the fight... and for them to note that Jackson wasn't actually knocked out. With a bit of coaching from Al, though, Sam is able to put up a hell of a fight. Using his nature as a hologram, Al is able to show Sam exactly where to hit to take Jackson out, Al himself blowing a breath at Jackson to knock him down.

And, just like that, Clarence "Kid" Cody is the Heavyweight Champion of the state of California!

We get the wrap up. Cody and Dixie are set to open their doughnut shop, the nuns will get their money to build the chapel, and Jake will get $8,000 from Sam having bet on the Foreman/Ali fight, which covers Cody's debt to him. Sister Angela comes in at the last minute to thank Sam for winning the match, funding the chapel, and giving her faith back to her. All is peaches and ice cream... and then Sam finds himself leaping once again. This time, he's dropped into that one scene from Willow with all the pigs, only he's definitely not Madmartigan. So, y'know... major plus there.

Again, The Right Hand of God manages to put quite a bit into a 30-40 minute episode of television. Sam is once more faced with a situation that he's thrown into quite literally head first as he scrambles to make sense of things. Luckily, he seems to be adapting much faster to things than in the previous episodes, which I'm sure is going to help him a great deal going forward.

We also have good development of the two female characters, those being Dixie and Sister Angela. Dixie is a stripper, yes, but rather than the blonde bimbo stereotype you might expect from a product of the late 80s, she shows herself to be a very shrewd and level-headed individual. As I stated before, she's meticulously planning the future for herself and Cody, their plan of running the doughnut shop and having worked out exactly how much money they would need to pull it off. She has been handed a rough lot in life, but is aspiring to make something better of what she's been given, happy to be side by side with Cody for it.

Then you have Sister Angela. I personally have a weak spot for characters having a crisis of faith, and she's no exception. Angela absolutely bleeds earnestness and optimism, genuinely seeming like someone who wants to make the world better. It is that positive nature that inspires Sam to get back up to fight again in the heavyweight match, an act of faith that restores her faith as well. Admittedly, her backstory with the dead family is a little bit of a cliché, but it serves well enough as to her motivations and the actress plays the tragedy of it and how it still has an effect on her very well.

Being three, technically four with Genesis being a two-parter in syndication, episodes in it seems that Quantum Leap is definitely on a roll as far as good episodes go. Let's see if they'll continue on in episode five, How the Tess Was Won, because this episode is down for the count!