blue enigma said:
I'm not sure if I agree with this part completely. It's possible that if Al was truthful with Sam right from the start it would've worked. But I really think the circumstances weren't right for it in this leap. Beth would've been very suspicious as to how the leapee knew about Al and I don't know that Sam could've or would've told her who he really was at this point. Short of continuing to physically keep Beth and Dirk away from each other there really wasn't anything that he could plausibly do as Jake without giving himself away. If his purpose here was to fix Al's marriage he would've had to leap into Beth, or Dirk, or maybe one of their friends, in order to nudge one of them into a different decision. But he leaped into someone who had no relation to either of them. He just happened to be in the same vicinity and Al made an assumption and tried to force it to be that. Which is easy to understand and we sympathize with him. The Donna leap was the same -- Sam was there for something else and Donna happened to be in the vicinity. The circumstances happened to just be easier for Sam to do both. But I don't think he was there for Donna. He didn't leap out until Jamie Lee and Oliver kissed -- that was his purpose for being there.
Agreed absolutely, there' no way the leapee could have been convincing, he had barely gotten away with the calalillies (BTW I love the cleverness of her love for them,
Calalily like
Calavicci...thats how I look at it anyway). I said that in the beginning and I still stand by it however if Sam had known who she was perhaps his approach could have been slightly more tactful.
BTW I highly recommend the novel
Pulitzer. It's an amazingly written leap which happens to occur along side Al just returning home from Vietnam, and actually has Sam rethinking his selfishness.
"Would it really have been so bad to just tell her Al was alive?"
He shows a lot of care for his closest friend in this novel as despite observer Al's warnings not to Sam gets heavily involved with the Lt. Al in the leap.
blue enigma said:
There's also the question of why Al didn't trust Sam enough to tell him the truth. Maybe he hated the idea of being that vulnerable with Sam. Or maybe he'd already dealt a lot pre-leap with Sam's 'do as I say not as I do' type of double standard and figured it would be the same this time -- which wouldn't be completely fair of him but people react based on experience. We don't know much about their friendship before Sam's leap but I would imagine at least certain dynamics were the same or similar.
He probably didn't want to appear vulnerable to Sam in addition to being a tightly closed book regarding his family and hardships. My best friend who has quite an amazing handle on Al's character has written some brilliant backstory scenes that express this excellently.
It's also quite possible that he on some level knew that Sam would have a selfish response and not justify the attempt as he did his own with Donna(Though to cut our Sam a little slack it's quite possible he didn't remember the Donna leap, his swiss cheese memory has been clarified as selective). Thus he might not have tried, not that the attempt did much of anything except give Beth a shoulder to cry on when the pain of losing her patient surfaced.
The thought has also intrigued me of Alia actually having leapt into Dirk. I mean
"She has a single son and she wants grandchildren"? Come on! That just feels so intentional to me. Plus it would explain the pink sweater...HA! Sorry small joke.
What's beyond me is how Al didn't run other scenarios at the same time. Or as Ladystoneheart has pointed out, how Ziggy didn't offer the Scaggs situation.