NBC is relaunching Quantum Leap, the sci-fi show about a time-traveling scientist dude who tries to correct historical wrongs. It was a show from the 1980s and it was alright, I think? I’m not sure I’ve watched an entire episode all the way through but I do know what the show is. The NBC reboot may be good or it may be bad, but the prop department royally screwed up when it designed the worst shifter imaginable. Jason wanted to write about it, but our own David Tracy took issue with the concept that people know what Quantum Leap is. Here’s Slack:
This debate raged for some time with Jason and I trying to convince David that he’s a crazy person and his very limited perspective is less applicable than our perspective. To make this interesting, David, Jason, and I are almost each exactly ten years apart in age from one another. David, who has 900 brothers, asked them if they knew. He assumed this was scientific somehow:
I’m under 40, for the record, and I’m aware of what it is. I said: Let’s poll this. Let’s just do a Twitter poll. More than 600 of you answered and these were the results.
— The Autopian (@the_autopian) September 13, 2022 Is that good enough? Not for David. David then insisted that only people at a Walmart would be the right people to ask. We were a little busy with the Detroit Auto Show but our wonderful video crew and editor, Tiziano, went and did it for us. You can hear the results in the podcast or watch it in the video above (worth it to watch that part of it). To listen to the podcasts episodes you can go to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or you can use the RSS feed and point your favorite Podcast player at it. I’m embedding the three most recent episodes below if you want to listen to it from your browser. Please like, subscribe, rate, et cetera.
I just started watching Quantum Leap with my kids, they love it! I used to live in the same town as Scott Bakula and would run into him at the bank when I was 10-12, huge fan of the show at the time. You’ll be glad to know he’s not a dick to kids. It sounds like a cool concept; I may check out the reboot. Yeah, that shifter was embarrassing, but my wife would likely have never noticed, and we ONLY own manual transmissions, which she loves. #shrug There was also a show called Knight Rider. Never watched that one either. Talking car. Hah. Seemed like a silly premise. Also, there were TV shows about a bunch of dumbasses who had a big Dodge with a Confederate flag on the roof; an A-Team of mercenaries who had a big van with a stripe on it; other detectives who had a Ford Gran Torino with a stripe on it and Miami Vice. I didn’t watch any of those shows, except for Miami Vice, because they were bad. Miami Vice and the Ferrari Daytona they drove, that I liked. The Testarossa not so much, but that was more because the story lines were getting a little confusing at the end. If Miami Vice ever comes back with a bogus looking Ferrari Daytona shift lever and Jason writes about it, I’ll read it. I’ll probably re-read it. But I digress. It is safe to say that it really doesn’t matter to me and maybe to other readers, and certainly not to David if an old TV show had a car in it because we either never heard of it or it was unwatchable.. Now, if you ask me what old TV shows were great, well sir I’ve become a big fan of Gunsmoke and Have Gun Will Travel. Now those are great old TV shows and they are still on the TV in re-runs, though I don’t really like all the advertisements for hearing aids. However, I suppose they aren’t really suited for Autopian commentary either, because, well, cars hadn’t been invented when the West was wild. But those TV shows had horse and carriages. And so do the modern Amish. In fact, the Amish have electric turn signals and brake lights on their horses and carriages. (Maybe not on the horses.) So, if Jason needs a great TV show or turn signals to write about, he should write about Gunsmoke. And Amish carriages. Because no one watched those other shows and David Tracy never heard of them. https://youtu.be/yujF8AumiQo Even if you’ve never seen it, it still feels like something you should just acquire some knowledge of through cultural osmosis, the show was on for 5 seasons and got pretty high ratings Anyway, on topic, 36, I enjoy the original Quantum Leap. Probably won’t see the new one though.
