That was my thought as well.Sam thinks others too much.How many times he almost lost in people he's leapt into and gets really emotional about their problems?
Thinking him as helpless is depressing for me but hoping that he will decide to go back to his family&friends somewhere in time sounds much better.

This is another point I forgot to address earlier.
The events of Honeymoon Express don't add up for me. That indicative incident with Diane McBride replacing the chairmen conflicts with the U2 attempt. How Al thought that the committee could remain aware of the previous timeline where the U2 went down is beyond me. The Diane McBride reaction suggests that the same happened with Donna after Sam leaped out of the professor in Star Crossed, that she would have suddenly appeared from Al's perspective but not from those of anyone else at the project. If this is the case Al should have taken note of that.
While Lightning McQueenie once offered an idea I politely disagree with it.

The reason Al has the luxury of being aware of both timelines is his brainwave connection to Ziggy or so is the explanation offered by the novel series. They even speculate that both he and Sam actually established their imagining chamber connection via a sample of their brain tissues which is vaguely suggested by some to in addition have contributed to Ziggy's personality (this would explain her hits on Sam in The Leap Back LMAO! XD).
Random Measures by Ashley McConnell explores the concept most and very precisely I might add. She picked at it probably too much, Bellisario would no doubt grit his teeth at it but aspects of it are quite interesting in my personal opinion (In addition it's a very well done leap).
FYI, McConnell offers that over a period of several hours the newer timeline would populate memories in Al's mind which dominate the previous, creating a more dream like recollection of what was before. This explains quite well why Diane McBride's appearance in the chairperson's seat was initially a shock for him. After a few hours he would remember that he'd presented the project's case to her before, that she's always been the chairperson while still remembering the previous chairperson. The proposals in front of him instead of Diane just wouldn't feel real anymore which they wouldn't have been.

There is official confirmation that it's an error.
Recently I have begun a screen capture collection and currently am working on The Leap Home which brought to my attention a specification of the controversy.
When Katie first enters and Sam's behavior makes her suspicious that he is trying to win favor to claim Tom's vacant bedroom John suggests:
"Why don't you let Sam use it until he starts college next fall".
So he'd just barely turned 17.
I had thought there was a mention.

It could however also be read as Al in his intention to make a tease of the mention figured it was close enough to accurately apply.

This was a very good season opener. All dreams had been fulfilled here. Pivotal episode as it's the one where Sam is finally reunited with Donna and his working mates, but it's also the so-acclaimed continuation to "Shock Theater", and Donald P. Bellisario of course didn't disappoint at all after he made us wait for so long. Au contraire, once you saw this episode you couldn't help but feel that the show was getting better and better every minute. DPB handled everything here brilliantly. The directing by Michael Zinberg couldn't be more accurate. The scenery, the special effects, all very smooth. I think even the quality of the picture had improved with this season and that's evident since the very beginning.

Even when DPB dares to show a lot of impossible things in this episode (because it has to deal with the PQL more directly) and the "future" is portrayed in a very early 90's fashion, you never get the feeling that anything is over-the-top, not even Tina's flashing earrings. I enjoyed a lot watching Ziggy and hearing her talk. Deborah Pratt did an amazing job at providing her her voice. The things I liked the most in this ep. were the drama, the way the letter works, when Sam as a hologram scares Al in a sort of revenge, Project Quantum Leap and of course the fact that you finally get to see Gooshie, Tina and Dr. Beeks (all those other guys who never talk as well) in their entirety. I thought Gooshie was going to be portrayed as very one-dimensional but I was wrong. He's one of the best QL characters there are. Pretty enjoyable ep. throughout. One of the very few I watched with my entire family and they loved it as well.

Things I didn't like: O.K., there were some things that bothered me about this episode:

- The humor. Not talking about Ziggy's, but the one at the beginning, when Al is with the milkman and his wife at the lunch place. It seemed forced to me. Even Scott's reaction is not funny at all, in my opinion, which brings me to my next point...

- Sam as a hologram: I loved every moment when he was with Donna and his scenes at the PQL in general, but when he had to be a hologram to Al he kind of overdid it, and that's because Scott's acting wasn't that good for such a portrayal. His humor didn't work for me, as didn't his "action" sequences, when he tries to hit Clifford but he's still not there. And I know it's implied that his mind merged with Al's but his acting comes off as a bit silly. It's also implied that he's not made for being the hologram, but he's extremely slow and he shows from little to no common sense at all. Perhaps all this was on purpose by DPB so we could cheer when Sam became the leaper again, but I just didn't like it.

- Amanda Wyss's and the guy who played Clifford's acting. They were both horrible, as was the milkman himself and his wife, but the milkman and his wife were sort of two-dimensional and that's not a problem. Amanda's character and Clifford, on the other hand, were not supposed to be two-dimensional at all and they were portrayed that way. I liked Amanda in "A Nightmare On Elm Street" but she played a character there that demanded her almost nothing except for some really loud screams, but her acting in QL fell flat. She tried to be dramatic but she didn't accomplish it at all. And Clifford, well, the guy who played him didn't seem to know how to act any other reaction than utter bewilderment.

And last: I don't remember if it was both Sam and Donna who were wearing the flashing watches or only Sam, but that looked kinda ridiculous.

My favorite parts: When Donna asks Ziggy what are the odds of getting Sam back and Ziggy responds in a "what-a-shame" tone: "9.6 percent!!!". The other is when Sam gets back as a leaper and sees the Ziggy handlink in the car. He picks it up, pushes the buttons calling Gooshie, and then the thought or the memory strikes him: He's not there as a hologram anymore. He's the leaper again and he may never come back home. Very intense and emotional!!

I must confess that the first time I saw it, I didn't think Clifford was gonna die. That moment caught me off-guard. You almost never saw that sort of violence on QL, but I think that works on this episode's favor.

My rating: Good. Could've been excellent but the things I didn't like were crucial for my decision.

To me the humor, especially Sam verbally lashing himself every time he made a dirty comment was priceless but the problem that I agree there was with Sam's portrayal as the hologram is that instead of giving him his own version of the role they clearly had him mimicking Al's. The mind merge is in my opinion does NOT make that level of displaying Al's behavior excusable. It felt to me like the writers wanted to give us that 'what if' atmosphere of the concept but the only time he was allowed a natural response to a situation in the leap was those last moments he spent as a hologram apologizing to unconscious Al and trying to get at Clifford but that wasn't nearly enough. So I can see how the portrayal was off putting.

As for the Donna/project scenes, I've always loved them as well and they made me crave more scenes at the project in the proceeding portion of the series which is fulfilled very little but recently I think I'm coming to like Donna and buy her as the love of Sam's life less and less. Maybe it's because my eyes have been opened to the fact that the development is just not there, there were missed opportunities even with his amnesia of her to build up that relationship much like the little snippets we get of Beth that clearly tell us that she was the love of Al's life. That and the fact alone that he jumped into the accelerator in the first place suggests that he'd always put the project before her. I can see where at least two of the novelists had seen fit to portray him as a workaholic with an estranged relationship with his family.

And call me fickle but I can't get over her "I don't care" comment and attitude in regards to Al's life being dependent on Sam's leaping again even given the unfairness of the circumstances. It just bugs me. It didn't always but it has come to.

Now that you mention it Clifford did seem extremely monotone in his deliveries and Suzanne/Amanda was pretty cheesy. She actually does seem the type that is only good for a classic horror movie screaming role.

Mike's and Kelly's (the milkman and his wife) acting isn't such a big deal though because their role was small and didn't really impact the story. Interestingly for being such insignificant characters they were the ones (in leap anyway) with the best development.

Huh, I'd always read that is being the moment the amnesia kicked in but this actually makes more sense.

Oh, man, this is a bit annoying: I can't edit out my posts anymore due to edit deadline. That didn't happen before. Had to delete this one.

You know what, you're right. Donna is very underdeveloped. To the point of being just another passing QL character. They never even mention her again after this episode, I believe. Of course I know we're supposed to buy this because what would happen if Sam remembered his wife?, but still. Gooshie and even Tina, who is almost never seen, either, have more dimension. An episode that contradicts this one on so many things and levels is "Killin' Time", but one of the things that comes to mind right now is extactly that one: Why Donna is not there? Looks like she doesn't care about Sam anymore. "Lee Harvey Oswald" is also contradictory, but a bit less. And as for her background, like I mentioned before on the episode "The Americanization of Machiko", it looked to me that Charlie Coffey with that screenplay was trying to begin the story arc of Donna there, but as the series progressed they just sort of dropped it and didn't care to follow it, so when The Leap Back came it seemed that Donna was just something they took out of a hat to give the storyline some sort of conflict. I still think this epísode is very good, but you make a valid point regading her.

At least not buying Donna makes it a bit less unsettling when Abigail from "Trilogy" enters the picture... Oh, Abigail Fuller, she's another character I have a bone to pick with, but I'll get to her later, hopefully very soon, but I can't promise it. Unfortunately my time is painfully reduced now. I want to end my reviews but I just can't see when that's going to happen. Oh, well, at least I'm on the 4th season now. :)

Well, it's more the other way around in my opinion. But anyway he did leave her high and dry, so who could blame her if she got fed up and left?

Exactly, and that's one of the things that really weakens this episode and that story arc so much. There are things I like about this episode but each time I see it again I find more and more things that really make it fall apart. Which is too bad because there was real potential but they crammed too much into just 45 minutes and didn't cover anything well.

I also personally dislike intensely when writers of TV, movie, books, whatever stick in a character as nothing more than a plot device without developing them as a person, and this is the biggest problem I have with both Donna episodes. She is treated by the writers as nothing more than an object that Sam is entitled to in Star Crossed (and Sam's behavior toward her in that episode is even skeevier than Al's behavior throughout the series, which really says something) and as a tool for conflict that Sam can angst over as well as the prize he won in The Leap Back. This is where some fanfic writers surpass the writers of the original series - they at least treat Donna with some dignity and respect as a human character.

The Trilogy and the ending of Mirror Image makes the Donna storyline even more problematic, and both make Sam look like a huge jerk.

They however didn't specify the extent to which Sam's memory of Donna had been wiped, thus they could have inserted minute mentions in reference to the timeline in which she didn't marry him.

'Black on White on Fire' is actually a good example of such a mention:
"When she looks at me I feel like she wants to just crawl in and never come out. There was only one woman who ever looked at me like that."
No, it's not a mention by name but who else, right?

That's actually exactly what it was. According to Another Time, Another Place Tom was actually originally going to have her role, but it was felt that Donna, I'm assuming because her relation to Sam is more fluid, would present a stronger conflict. Which there is no arguing.
Something that also factored into her absence in the form of both mention and project presence post-'The Leap Back' is that Deborah Pratt had mentally erased her having not approved, not just of Donna but of a lot of the project aspects of the episode.

One could also call her a plot device in her introduction episode 'Star Crossed', simply there to introduce the project rule that the leaper can not make attempts on his personal life and Sam's behavior in this episode alone borderline surpasses the sleaziness of Al's on an episode basis.

She's basically nothing but thrown around as an excuse to showcase Sam's selfish tendencies. The novel writers actually did a better job with her character than the show writers because they actually treat her as a significant character and they humanize her. Even Ashley McConnell is more respectful just by not even using Donna. So one can guess that either she considers Donna never having been successfully rewritten into Sam's life or that he'd rubber-banded that rewrite. Probably a little of both as in 'Random Measures' she actually treats the project's condition in relation to the changes Sam makes extremely, almost nit-picky fluid including a mention that Al has been in several versions of the project in which Sam WAS married but seemingly never consistently the same woman.

This is why the person I most buy him in a healthy relationship with is actually Tamlyn of 'Temptation Eyes' and they were together for 2 weeks!

Good point but Donna was never the reason I disapproved of Sam's sleeping with Abigail. I detail my opinion of that in the appropriate episode thread so will not discuss it here.

lol, this is exactly what I said. But I don't think Sam borderline surpasses Al's sleaziness in that episode -- he's way past it.

In reference to Sam, "The Prudent Prince" (which is something Al actually calls him in 'Southern Comforts' hehe) you are probably right.

Well, I was actually talking about something different in my comment above. The fact that Sam is 'The Prudent Prince' has nothing to do with what's wrong with his behavior specifically in Star-Crossed. And the thing is I'm sure the writers did not mean for it to come across that way -- it's something that's so embedded in our culture they probably didn't notice it when they were writing it.

Sam was wearing one too, and yeah, the technology in the modern day project scenes generally doesn't update too well in my opinion. A lot of it looks cheesy, particularly the flashing jewelry that all the women wear -- though I do kind of like Tina's flashing heels at the beginning of the Genesis episode.

That's an interesting take on the scene. I always thought this is where the Swiss cheese effect took over again. Sam is about to identify himself and he stops because he can't remember his name. Then in the next scene back at the project Al tells Donna that Sam doesn't remember having been home (or anything else) and it's confirmed.

This is definitely a pivotal episode but not because of Donna, since as we know that plotline gets completely tanked. But looking at the show as an arc this is the episode that starts things moving toward Mirror Image.

While the purpose of the leap in 1945 was for Al in an obvious way -- he's able to vicariously work through his Beth issues somewhat by helping a leapee in an almost identical situation (in the same way Sam could help Cam's sister in Camikaze Kid after he couldn't directly help Katie) -- it's for Sam too. Here Sam has to explain to Al why he has that 'creepy crawly' feeling -- he has to remind Al what happened with Beth, and he has to observe first hand the effect that it had on him. The whole diner scene is mostly played for laughs but there's some real drama going on when Al reacts to Cliff and is set on kicking his butt. He's reliving his own trauma and reacting as Al instead of as the leapee, and Sam is trying -- futilely -- to stop him. I think it's in this episode that Sam begins to consider on some level, though probably only subconsciously at this point, that maybe he made the wrong choice in not helping Al and Beth.

It's also in this episode that I think Sam for the first time starts to take responsibility for his actions. When he crouches over Al and says "I'm sorry, Al, it should be me lying there," I don't think it's just an apology for Sam failing him as a hologram, though that's part of it. I think Sam in that moment is acknowledging that it's his stepping into the QL accelerator that has brought the situation about and that he is at least in part responsible for the chain of events that have occurred. Which of course comes to full fruition in Mirror Image when Sam confronts the reality that it's been about his choices and what's in his control all along.

Probably more could've been done in the episode with these two points. DPB made the choice to add in more humor and not play up these things too much. But they're there.

That was my assumption as well but now I like Donofrio's theory a lot better. It's stronger. It also makes more sense because Al is proof that that particular form of leaping (switching places with another leaper) has a much more mild swiss cheese effect. Whereas Sam had gotten it full on his first time, Al forgot smaller details but the big picture was still there. Then when he leaped out after finishing the 1945 leap that's when his former leap memory would have kicked back in.

By the way, since we're discussing this scene, is it just me or did Sam have Al's voice for that quick second when he first called Gooshie's name after picking up the non-functional handlink in the car?

There were other ways...
 

Of course the events at the end of the episode were "necessary" from a TV standpoint, but there were other options other than leaping into Al.

1. If the retrieval program really was updated as Sam stated, why couldn't they just retrieve Al?

2. If it was possible to leap into a specific person at a specific date, why not leap the real Tom back into himself - he'd be awake and able to stop Clifford. A similar action WORKED in "Leap for Lisa".

3. Why was Sam's leaping back a last-second decision? If he can truly leap into anyone at any time, then even if Al died in the past, Sam could always leap into Al the previous day and prevent it.

1. The retrieval program was updated but it still didn't work well. Ziggy calculated the chances of it working at 8%. So chances are they wouldn't have been able to retrieve Al.

2. The 'Leap for Lisa' events happened later, so they didn't have it as a reference point in 'The Leap Back' and Sam didn't think of it at that point. But this would've worked probably. :)

3. Maybe. But like you said from the TV point of view they had to get Sam leaping again.

True, this was before Leap for Lisa, but Sam actually did think of it because that's exactly what he did. So if he could leap himself back into Al, he could have done the same thing with Tom.

Thanks for the response!

This is an insightful theory but it's flawed in two ways.

1.) In 'A Leap for Lisa' both leaper and leapee were the same person, thus the required neuron and meson connection existed to establish a target, whereas it was two different people here. Recall how Sam justified being able to leap himself into Al:
"'45 was eight years before you were born, you can't leap further than your own lifetime"
"When we simul-leaped some of our neurons and mesons obviously merged. Part of me is Al."

2.) Even if the neuron and mason issue did not exist there was no guarantee that Tom Jarett would have retained the memory of the instructions given to him.
It was the same roll of the dice with Bingo and had in both cases if the leapee did not succeed, the objective of the leap would not have been fulfilled. Sam, in particular, would not have been able to accept that as an option.
It's directly stated that he wanted to save not just Al's life but also Tom and Suzanne's.

"He'll [Al] leap back into the imaging chamber where he was when the lightning strike simul-leaped us, and I'll leap into 1945 where I can stop Clifford."

Love and hate this episode at the same time. Too many problems.

How did the Imaging Chamber get a lock on Al so quickly? Later on, Ziggy claims she won't know where Al is until they have a lock on him. Yet Gushie claims they didn't know where Al was in time until they got the letter.

While holographic Sam was hillarious, I hate how he only spent a few hours home and part of it was stuck in the imaging chamber.

It's not up to Al and Donna to decide what Sam should know about his life or not. He should know all the facts. It would have been a huge factor in wanting to come home.

Hate hate hate that Sam was put into the position of giving up his freedom to save Al. Speaking of which, when did he have time to update the circuitry for targeted leaping and working in the retrieval program. The scenes imply Sam and Donna went home after Ziggy said it would take 11 hours to find out why Al was in 1945.

Sam swears to Donna he'll be back. Liar.

I enjoy this episode but in the light of "Mirror Image" I also hate it lol

One more thing I forgot to add: Sam comes to the conclusion their minds have merged for no reason whatsoever. It ends up being true later and is convenient to the plot but this is the dialogue:

Sam: "Al... I'm getting my memory back!"
Al: "You've taken it from me!"
Sam: "no! The leap did that. Leaping together must have merged our minds"

So then yes?

But more importantly how did Sam getting his memory back equate to their minds merging? He was back in his own time so of course he was getting his memory back.

Agreed, and I never completely understood the reasoning behind it. Al told Sam in the very first episode that this was a rule, that he couldn't answer any of Sam's questions about himself that he couldn't remember on his own, but it's not really clear why, especially since once Sam and Al switched places in this episode, Sam was filling in tons of stuff for Al that he'd forgotten. Obviously Sam didn't consider it an issue, and he has the last word on this since it's his project.

Whether Sam still would've made a different decision than the one he made at the end of 'Mirror Image' if he remembered his wife and other important things about his own life is hard to say. Sam had a real white knight/martyr streak in him and it was obvious that he enjoyed helping other people, so he may have still decided to keep leaping and that would be very much in character for him. However, because he doesn't remember his wife at home (and as far as we know they didn't retroactively eliminate her from his life via a leap) Sam's decision at the end of 'Mirror Image' is not a fully informed decision, and that's a real problem.

I think that's my biggest obstacle to accepting Sam never returned home. Donna. If he didn't have a wife looking up at the sky every night waiting for her husband to come home, I might have been more accepting of it. But I just can't. He abandoned her, after changing history so she would marry him.

One thing I fed really weakens this episode was no acknowledgment whatsoever that Sam was married to Donna because of Sam's actions during a leap. If one has seen this before any season 1 episodes, you'd get the impression he was married the entire time.

Donna's reason is specified. It was her belief that Sam would be unable to fulfill certain leaps with the knowledge that he was married.

Based on the fact that Sam had taken his chances in the accelerator in the first place knowing that he was gambling more than just his own fate this illustrates that she was in denial/romanticizing him, that she'd deluded herself into believing that he was leaping merely as an obligation. She didn't understand or just didn't accept his passion for it.
One thing I appreciate about the novels is that they characterize her a lot more convincingly and genuinely.

Although we don't know what their marriage was like prior to his leaping it's still suggested minutely that Sam was never fully invested in it despite that he did love her.

He didn't seem to ever take his marital status into account when he'd find himself attracted to the women in his leaps. He's periodically inquired about certain details of his life with Al; his name, his brother, what he was like in college but never once did he inquire about his marital status and/or if his attempt on his marriage to Donna was successful (he almost has to remember it sometimes because he's stated a few times that he's able to remember a certain past leap and references to the simul-leap suggest that they can come and go).
This suggests that even if it's subconsciously, either he can compartmentalize his potential marriage from his leaping or his own marital status doesn't present an obstacle in his success and it's Scott's belief that as long as Sam was aware that Donna understood the nature of his actions within leaps his capability would not be compromised.

In 'Mirror Image', it could be argued that Sam's blood was not thicker than water, that he, while unable to factor in Donna still chose leaping over his family; his mother, sister, by his own doing his brother and their children (even if the existence of their children are only a presumption). Point being that I'm not convinced that Sam's being aware of Donna would have changed his decision.

I must say that in 'Star Crossed' I never understood how Al justified his apparent implication that it wasn't valid for Sam to override his own rules and wholeheartedly agree that no one had any right to withhold knowledge of his marriage from him. That's a significant piece of his identity.
Al is entitled to slight leniency, however because it wasn't entirely his call. He was stuck between whether to honor his best friend's need/right to be reminded of his life and his best friend's wife's request that he not be (it's similar to the dilemma of seeing your best friend's spouse cheating on them and having to puzzle out whether or not it's your place to tell them) and considering his tendency to be reluctant to reveal certain details to spare Sam's emotions (i.e Tom in 'Disco Inferno'), Donna's request is logically more sensible because it regards both.
If you really think about it, it would also be cruel to impose that guilt on him and though some fans might call that karma and find it deserved, Al would never do that.

That being said I believe Sam's marriage was absolutely need-to-know in '(Trilogy Part II) One Little Heart' when Al listened in disbelief as Sam described having very intimate desires for another woman establishing that he could tell a line was being crossed. Yet he said nothing! How?! Especially in this case because Al had betrayed both Sam and Donna by basically allowing him to be unfaithful. I'm able to forgive this only because Deborah Pratt discredited Donna to justify Abigail and it's completely plausible to argue that Sam rubber banded her which many including myself would consider a service to her.
As well as in 'Catch a Falling Star' when Sam, in a very personal manner, falls for Nicole (On a side note, because of this I don't buy Donna's claim that Sam never did anything that hurt her, if she wasn't hurt by Nicole or could get passed it that easily then the extent of her denial is almost insane).

That information is there, anyone who watched 'Star Crossed' first knows that, ergo it's not their problem if viewers chose to watch 'The Leap Back' first.

Now it would have been interesting to get Donna's perspective on that but they already did a poor job with her in their allotted 45 minutes and considering that her's and Sam's marriage remained completely undeveloped following 'Star Crossed' as opposed to Al's and Beth's then the fact that she was among the reasons Deborah Pratt was unhappy with 'The Leap Back' there was clearly not enough interest in her character to be real thoughtful with it.

The novel 'Mirror's Edge' has a fanfictional suggestion of how Donna's response to 'Star Crossed' if you are interested.

Eh I'm not convinced of Sam's "passion for leaping". For helping people, yes. But for leaping without end, no. The entire "Mirror Image" episode has Sam saying "No way am I leaping myself". He's crying at the end of the episode. HE WANTS TO GO HOME. A last minute edit is responsible for him "choosing" never to go home. And it's not even entirely clear until a black screen with text tells us so.

There is no reason for him not to come home between leaps and take breaks. And frankly, Deborah's attitude towards Donna is ridiculous. It was done and she should have taken it into consideration.

Besides, are we to believe GTFW thought Sam deserved a two week vacation with a psychic and not his wife just a few episodes earlier?

Yes, I'm aware of what Donna gave as the reason, but I don't buy it as a truly acceptable reason. Also, until the end of Star Crossed there was no Donna at the project yet but Al still tells Sam he can't tell him anything he can't remember on his own -- the reason for that is never made clear, and the Donna explanation doesn't work yet.

All of which makes Sam come across like a huge, selfish douche bag. Which is really the point that I think both I and The Leaper are making. Sam used his ability to travel in time to manipulate not only his own life but Donna's so that she would marry him (in a truly creepy manner as I've stated elsewhere). Which is bad enough. But to do all that and then not take it seriously really makes him pretty terrible.

I respectfully disagree with Scott.

I'm not either. Which again points to Sam's extreme selfishness and self-centeredness in changing history to have Donna marry him and then treat it with such disregard.

I'm also not convinced that Sam really loved Donna. I'm not really sure what he felt, but I don't think it was real love. He had no respect for her or her boundaries in Star-Crossed. In The Leap Back she is almost treated like nothing more than a booty call and when it comes time to leap again he completely brushes her off like she's not there. He treated the woman who kidnapped him in Moments to Live better.

As far as the events of the Trilogy, I found Al's behavior in Part II to be out of character, so that's just another reason why I don't like that episode.

Totally agree. There is no logic that can make Sam seem noble with regards to his marriage. If he was going to do this, he should have left Donna alone in that third episode. Instead, he condemned her to a life of forever waiting for the husband who is never coming back. It's like she was a prize to win the affection of, and then when he won, meh...on to the next leap.

That's not a mistake. It's to emphasize that "part of me is Al." He speaks as Al, clears his throat is his voice is back to normal.

Yeah, I have all kinds of problems with the 'Temptation Eyes' episode and my main one is how early Sam leaps in, just so he can have a two-week affair -- it's very contrived to me. But it could also be looked at as a tell that Sam's marital status changed again through an unseen leap. Not only does GTFW (or Sam) give Sam a two-week vacation with the psychic when he didn't even get two days with his wife, Al encouraged him ("don't do anything I wouldn't do and if you do take pictures"). It's one thing to not tell Sam he's married and withhold information because he couldn't do his job otherwise if he knew, blah blah blah. But to actively encourage it, especially while he's back at the project with Donna and witnesses day after day how difficult it is for her? That doesn't make sense to me. Al has his issues with women and his relationships but even he's better than that.

This is my view exactly. The "Dr. Sam Becket never returned home" notion is nonsense. Even Bellisario considers it up for debate.


It's actually evident in Donna's obvious absence from 'LHO', 'Killin' Time' and 'Mirror Image' and Al's encouragement in regards to Tamlyn could be interpreted as a tell that a rubber-band effect did erase the marriage prior to 'Temptation Eyes'.
This is arguably canon fact considering Pratt had disregarded Donna and it wasn't just out of dislike but with the intention to justify Abigail. Ergo sensibly it justifies Tamlyn.

Though it was ludicrous of her to have presumably expected the fans to see it that way. Personally, I don't consider Sam's relationship with Tamlyn unfaithful because I take the aforementioned viewpoint but it's stated in 'Another Time, Another Place' that the majority of fans did and were quite unappreciative despite acknowledging that he doesn't remember Donna.

I agree with you blue, that while it's almost inarguable that Sam genuinely believed Donna was the love of his life that wasn't the case. Essentially she was a case of puppy love no different from his teenage crush on Nicole or even Lisa aside from being unhealthy.
'Star-Cross' was essentially a glorified pick up, at basically the same level as Dirk in 'MIA' (ironically Sam did think Dirk was fate just as he thought being leaped into Donna's life at the one point when her love life could be altered was). Why Al didn't call him out on that is inconceivable, even his behavior towards women isn't that bad.
It speaks volumes that he wasn't going to say 'I love you' when he got back into the accelerator in 'The Leap Back', he only did when she said it first.

I actually prefer the Sam/Tamlyn relationship, although it was only two-weeks long, it was far more genuine.

That's a major cop out to me: an offscreen leap erased Donna? Sorry I don't buy it.

Indeed, it literally is a cop out on Pratt's part because she erased Donna on her own terms but while the off-screen leap rubber-band effect is reaching, it's plausible. Sam's presence in a given time causes everything and the lives of everyone around him extending to the project to become hair-splittingly volatile. Every single choice he makes down to the smallest of them has the potential to change something and that something becomes everything.

Ever hear of the butterfly effect?
It has been said something as small as the flutter of a butterfly's wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world. - Chaos Theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect

Including his own life, which may account for the Swiss cheese effect. If Sam's own life is potentially in flux every time he's displaced in time, it makes sense that he can't remember things -- those things may be changing or already changed even as he's trying to remember them.

I think the writers forgot that leaping takes time. How else to explain Al's knowing the date Sam is in while in the Imaging Chamber? Even with the "one of my ex-wives is suing me today" bit, the leap would have had to be instantaneous for Al to be correct about the date.

Other than the pilot, are there any other episodes that imply that leaping is not instantaneous?

Also, another thought about this episode and "Mirror Image"...If Sam is leaping himself around and his intention actually was to make the world a better place and to put right was once went wrong, wouldn't he remember that in this episode? In this episode, Sam is reacting like someone relieved to be home, having woken up from a bad dream.

Leaping from "Black on White on Fire" where Sam is badly beaten, bloody and bruised, to "The Great Spontini" where he is completely healed. Time must have passed to allow him to heal...

As for Sam's intentions - maybe he subconsciously thought that Al being out there doing some good was enough (especially while he was helping him as the hologram).

Leaping Sam seemed to be an elaborate process in this episode. Yet the pilot episode seems to suggest Sam kept without telling anyone. How else to explain Gooshie's frantic call to Al in that episode.

Anyone wanna elaborate on what he meant by this?

Bellisario and Pratt were on the verge of splitting up around this time. There were rumors among fans that Bellisario intentionally messed with the character that Pratt created out of spite. I'm not sure how accurate that is -- I only know about it via hearsay.

It would explain why she refused to acknowledge the marriage after this episode ...

Directly, no, however, I concur with this statement:

That he is able to go from one leap to another without maintaining any prospective injury establishes that there must be an in-between state in which he is healed or the fact that he was injured erased.

Lightning and I actually discussed a theory that Billy Jean's baby in '8 1/2 Months' most sensibly remained in a void between the two time periods since Billy Jean's womb was found to be empty and clearly Sam cannot carry it (that he felt the sensations of carrying it were obviously a form of mind-merging, although mind-merging wasn't officially discovered yet this is not the only premature case of it).

Tina actually suggests the exact same theory using a bullet in the novel 'Foreknowledge'.

It's also arguable that 'Mirror Image' occurred in Sam's subconscious while he was in between leaps given the strange circumstances.

From Sam's perspective, however, it seems to appear instantaneous.

This is new information to me, interesting.
Though I'm not seeing how that supposed rumor fits with the fact that it was Pratt that didn't appreciate Donna being reacknowledged in a form that made Sam's inappropriate feat in 'Star-Crossed' successful in this episode (among other things) and had tried to use Trilogy to justify disregarding that.