Another Friday night, another mid-tier network TV show getting kicked down the corpse chute, landing with an unceremonious thump on the Friday Night Murder Pile—that place where shows watched by you, and like twenty people you knew on social media, and that’s pretty much it, go to die. Tonight’s victim: NBC’s revival of Quantum Leap, which managed to last for two whole seasons on the network before facing the Friday Evening Executioner, that harbinger of clandestine TV show murders for lo these many years.
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Credit to series showrunners Martin Gero and Dean Georgaris, though: They clearly knew their show, a revival of the classic ’90s sci-fi adventure series—was probably going to be on the bubble when they were making its second season, crafting at least some kind of happy ending for time-displaced scientist Ben Song. (At the very least, Ben didn’t get his name misspelled in the show’s final frame, which is more than you can say for his predecessor, Dr. Sam Becket/t.)
Although, per strict Friday Night Murder Pile protocol, Quantum Leap didn’t get any kind of glowing farewell message from the network, star Raymond Lee did hop on Instagram to eulogize the series, thanking fans, calling the series “the ride of a lifetime,” and writing that “We’re so proud of the show we made and more proud of the stories we got to tell.” Lee’s note was echoed by one from co-star Caitlin Bassett, who went so far as to thank NBC and the show’s producers at Universal TV for the experience.
In addition to Lee and Bassett, the series also starred Mason Alexander Park, Ernie Hudson, Nanrisa Lee, Peter Gadiot, and Eliza Taylor, with most of them playing members of the support team trying to bring Ben back to the present day after he recreates Sam Beckett’s efforts to leap through history. The series aired its final episode in February of 2024, and no, before you ask, Scott Bakula never did come back to do a cameo. (They also, as far as we know, never used the original Mike Post theme song, which we know we have complained about every single time this show has come up around here for the last two years, but since this is our last chance to do so, we thought we’d mention it one last time.)