From MadCap's Couch - Quantum Leap: "Star-Crossed"

Hey, baby, I'm Jonathan Archer.
Don't you wanna say you hooked up with Jonathan Archer?

Well, looks like we're picking up right where we left off. Last time, Sam Beckett had scored the winning run and brought the Waco Bombers to a victory before leaping into the body of a college professor in a room full of nubile young students. What's he going to do next?!

... get your mind out of the gutter.

... I mean, it is the 1970s.

Regardless, no, after a short introduction to get us up to speed (narrated by Scott Bakula) Sam finds himself having to improv through a lecture about Wuthering Heights (we've all been there!) and soon finds himself not only having to contend with an amorous student that he's apparently having an affair with... but also, Teri Hatcher, who Sam recognizes as someone from his own past - Donna. Al appears while Sam's being fawned over by his student, Jamie Lee. After getting her out, Sam is told by Al the reason that he's here - to keep the starry-eyed student and her professor from getting together via shotgun wedding.

Sam, on the other hand, believes this is him getting a second chance with Donna. With his Swiss cheese memory still in effect, Sam gets a few of the events surrounding them in the wrong order, but the general gist was that Sam was going to marry Donna and then... something happened that caused one of them to leave the other at the altar. Al disappears before he can elaborate, although he is mum on the subject talking about how the "Committee" is already threatening to take him off of the project due to him telling Sam his own last name.

The mother of Becky Rosen, everybody!
...heh. Reference jokes.

After an awkward scene where Sam attempts to get Donna to look into his eyes and "see another soul" that ends with her telling him not to bother her again, Sam gets attacked by Oscar - Jamie Lee's boyfriend who is none too happy with the good professor. Sam manages to talk around him and then returns to his home to contemplate love... and Jamie Lee makes an appearance dressed as Guinevere, wanting to play dress up with Sam as Lancelot.

... something that maybe could have been avoided if Sam had not left the window open, but I really don't want to give him that much grief.

While Al takes in the professor's kink closet, Sam tries to convince Jamie Lee to go pursue Oscar (to little success). Sam is still hung up on the idea of arranging something with Donna, although Al and the Committee (including someone named Weissman) are very heavily against it. Nevertheless, Sam meets Donna at the Science Building. While he at first seems to be wooing her with the poetry of physics, he soon lets slip his knowledge about her father having left her family... something that she has never told anyone. He manages to get her back, at least to a degree, but proposing a discussion of his theories on time travel and we get a montage instead of him full-on explaining.

Afterward, Al pops up... and is clearly being observed by some outside force. Sam tells him of his plan to reunite Donna with her father (who is still in the military at this point in time) and thus help her with her vulnerability issues and thus him not be left at the altar in the future. Al is against this... but notes that one of Sam's doctorates is in Ancient Languages, and Al just so happens to be wearing a sash with Egyptian hieroglyphics.

From it, Sam is able to work out that Donna's father is in D.C. at the Pentagon. Unfortunately, Sam doesn't have a name... which Al gives as he's being dragged away. With this knowledge, Sam convinces Donna to go with him to D.C., but before their trip Sam calls up her father and attempts to get him to agree to a meeting. Unfortunately, the Colonel is less than pleased with this and doesn't want to reopen the wound - only saying that he and his wife's breakup had nothing to do with Donna. Also, he's leaving for Vietnam in the morning. As that door closes, another opens, and Oscar punches Sam right in the face.

Good golly, Miss Lane!

It seems that his attempt to woo Jamie Lee back did not work.

Sam manages to, after punching him back, get Oscar to agree to a road trip. Sam, Donna, Oscar, and Jamie Lee on a cross-country road trip! What could possibly go wrong?!

Al shows up when they're at a rest stop and tells Sam that he was actually fired... but being that he set up Weissman with his wife, Al managed to use her sympathy to get himself back on. Unscrupulous? Absolutely, but effective. He also ran the numbers through Ziggy and found that, if Sam's plan works, there is a 1 in 4 chance that Donna will commit to a relationship in the future. Sam is ecstatic until Al reminds him that, before him, Donna was engaged to somebody else. Back on the road, as Oscar and Jamie Lee are asleep in the back, Sam confesses to Donna a little bit of his own backstory... or rather their backstory, though is smart enough to keep the details out that would pollute the timeline. He also tells her the reason for their trip: to go and see her father. She finds this all hilariously romantic.

When they get to the hotel, they get stonewalled at the reception desk. While the hotel security checks out the car (much to the shock of Oscar and Jamie Lee still in the back), Sam and Donna sneak in through a side door that has conveniently been left unlocked. Getting to the Colonel's room, he and Donna have a tearful reunion. Sam turns to leave, Donna goes to him and expresses regret that he's not a little younger or she a little older. Sam gives her a kiss on the cheek, leaving her to her reunion.

Outside, Oscar and Jamie Lee seem to be rekindling their relationship and the security team... finds a piece of tape stuck in the door that Sam and Donna entered through.

"Crazy Ralph?! Oh, boy..."

That's right. It's 1972... and they're at the Watergate Hotel. Sam doesn't remember the incident in question, Al mentioning that the Republicans would just love him. Despite it all, even the knowledge that Donna might marry the man she was engaged to before him, Sam has a smile on his face... at least until Al mentions he hasn't leapt yet. As Oscar and Jamie Lee kiss in the back of the professor's car, however, Sam does mid-sentence... and ends up in a boxing ring, having just taken a punch and being encouraged by his coach to get back up and fast while Sam looks on, dazed and confused.

And that was Star-Crossed. A nice character piece on Sam as we learn that the man is quite the romantic and, in the end, his inherent drive to do the right thing ultimately wins out over his own selfish desires... even if we ultimately don't hear him say as such when he's ribbing Al in the stairwell of the Watergate. Donna's happiness meant more to him than anything else, so he was happy to walk away after getting Donna and her father to meet again regardless of what the outcome might have been. A pretty effective and very enjoyable episode, to be sure. Perhaps it was fated in the stars!