Quantum Leap/Tear Jerker
Tear Jerkers in Quantum Leap include:
- The end of Quantum Leap
- The scene in the second season episode "Jimmy" in which Jimmy's brother, who loves him and has fought with everyone, even his own wife, to allow Jimmy to have a normal life, is forced to break down and agree to have him institutionalized.
- Also from "Jimmy" is Al's monologue about midway through the episode:
- The season three episode "Black on White on Fire," in which Sam manages to talk down his host's older brother only for him to be shot anyway because of a misunderstanding.
- The season two finale "M.I.A." with Al's wife Beth, the only woman he ever truly loved. He was M.I.A. at the time, and Beth thinks he is dead and has given up hope of him being alive. He tries to get Sam to stop Beth from falling in love with another man she meets, but they can't alter their own timelines. And if that isn't sad enough, the very end has hologram Al talking to and "dancing" with Beth in her home. She seems to reply to something he said, but it turns out that she was just reacting to the record that was playing. The change in Al's face from hope that she could hear his voice to pure sadness when he realized she couldn't...
- "The Leap Home" two-parter. In Part 1, Sam leaps into his younger self to win a championship basketball game. However, he desperately wants to change his family's future (prolonging his father's life, stopping his brother Tom from dying in Vietnam and preventing his sister Katie from marrying an abusive drunk). Despite his efforts, however, he is forced to realize that there are some things he just can't change.
- Part 2, meanwhile, provides Sam the opportunity to save Tom, but at an unforeseen price. Maggie, a war photographer that survived in the original history, dies during a mission to rescue some POWs. Additionally, her last photograph reveals that one of the POWs was Al, who won't be set free for another five years.
- In "Return of the Evil Leaper," Sam leaps into a college student named Arnold, who has a habit of dressing up as a costumed hero and risking death to save innocent people. It turns out that Arnold is an orphan, losing his parents in an ex-cop's shooting rampage and only surviving because he left to get his jacket out of the car. As Al talks to him about this, Arnold breaks down. ("I should've died, too.")
- Back to Quantum Leap