Quantum Leap Episode Rating Graph

October 3, 1954: Leaping into Sam Bederman, a mental patient who is suffering from acute depression, Sam receives an overloaded electroshock treatment, which causes his Swiss-cheesed memory to be replaced by personas from previous leaps. Al, finding himself visible to the mentally absent, must try to complete Sam's mission, and convince him to take another shock treatment, in order to leap Sam out before contact is lost forever.

October 14, 1964: Since mainstreaming the mentally disabled is not yet a popular concept, Sam must help Jimmy LaMotta, the "slow" young man he's leaped into, get a job and gain his co-workers' acceptance, to prevent his brother from returning Jimmy to the institution.

September 9, 1959: Rock 'n' roll is about to become big, but not in Peoria. That is, unless Sam, as DJ Howlin' Chick Howell, can manage to keep the radio station where he's employed from being shut down by overly conservative town elders.

July 28, 1978: Sam is an aging lawyer, recruited by Abigail, now thirty-three, to defend her when she is put on trial for the murder of Leta Aider, the woman whose daughter Abigail was accused of killing almost twenty-five years earlier.

June 15, 1945: Struck by lightning, Sam and Al find their roles reversed, as Sam returns to the future, and to a long-lost love, while Al leaps back to 1945 to prevent the death of a returning World War II hero and his former girl friend.

July 29, 1957: Though he can't remember much more than habeas corpus, Sam finds himself the defense attorney for a young black woman accused of murdering the son of the most powerful man in a small Louisiana town.

June 6, 1961: Sam leaps into the life of a teen-age hot-rodder who must stop his sister from marrying a wealthy bully.

June 25, 1957: Sam leaps into Al Calavicci to prevent the death of his married lover. But when Sam accidentally alters history, and finds out too late about her untimely demise, it could mean the gas chamber for Al and disturbingly a whole new situation at Project Quantum Leap.

September 4, 1954: In order to help his granddaughter save a small bar from the slimy loan shark holding a note on the place, Sam has to play pool like a pro...with a little help from Al and Ziggy.

September 30, 1981: As a divorced mother of three, Sam's job of preventing his teenage son from running away, never to be seen again, is made more interesting by the fact that his youngest daughter can see both him and Al.

April 1, 1969: When Sam leaps into the life of an undercover cop, Al explains that his mission is to convince a navy nurse that her MIA husband is still alive, and to prevent her from marrying a lawyer she meets on the day Sam leaps in. But a series of coincidences causes Sam to wonder about the true nature of his mission.

August 8, 1955: Sam experiences racism firsthand when he leaps into the body of an elderly black man in the pre-civil rights South of 1955.

September 13, 1956: Sam Beckett wakes up in 1956, disoriented, suffering from amnesia, but he has the awful realization that he does not belong there...

July 3, 1954: Sam swivels his hips into Elvis Presley, mere days before he is discovered. Along with making sure that Elvis does become the King, Sam must help Sue Anne, a local songbird, from being trapped in a not-so-gilded cage of marriage.

May 11, 1965: Sam must don the robe of a Ku Klux Klansman in order to save the life of an ambitious young civil rights leader, who is trying to register black voters.

June 20, 1980: It's up to Sam to try to bring a rapist to justice when he leaps into the perp's victim, a young woman who may have been unwilling to press charges against the young man - the son of the pillar of the community.

December 24, 1962: On Christmas Eve, Sam leap into Reginald Pierson, valet to a wealthy contractor, who is in danger of losing his soul in an attempt to demolish a Salvation Army mission, so he can build his "Blake's Plaza." Seeing a similarity to the Dickens's character, Sam and Al decide to "Scrooge" the greed out of the man.

September 13, 1956: After Tom Stratton comforts his wife and prevents her from having a premature birth, instead of leaping to save his wife and child. He instead realizes that instead of leaping home, he's lept into Ken Fox, a minor league baseball player in Texas at the end of the 1968 season, in the middle of a game, where he must make the winning play in order to leap further. Ken Fox makes a home-run, and Sam leaps into Dr. Gerald Bryant as a school teacher in the middle of a class.

May 21, 1979: Sam leaps into Ray Hutton, the understudy for the role of Cervantes just seconds before curtain time. His mission: prevent the drunken star from falling and seriously injuring himself during a benefit performance of "Man of La Mancha." Sam isn't helped by the presence of his former piano teacher, on whom he once had a crush, and who now appears to have caught the star's eye as well.

March 19, 1966: Things are already on there way downhill when Sam leaps back into Jimmy LaMotta. Despite Sam's inaction, history continues to change for the worst. The cause is unknown until Sam discovers another time traveler on the scene, one who's determined to destroy Jimmy's family, as well as Sam.

April 14, 1953: With looks that could double for Humphrey Bogart, Sam is Nick Allen, a private investigator looking for the murderer of his partner and, if he doesn't find the answer in time, himself. The case is solved with a number of Casablanca references as Sam launches a new pulp novelist along the way.

February 6, 1964: Although the concert pianist he leaps into is blind, a fact, which bothers his girlfriend's disapproving mother, Sam can still see. At least until an exploding flashbulb blinds him at the crucial moment: when he must rescue his girlfriend from a serial killer.

October 16, 1961: Sam is shocked when he learns he's leaped into a woman, Samantha Stormer. As a gorgeous secretary for an automobile company, Sam has to cope with sexual harassment by the boss, a suicide attempt by a roommate, and the effect his looks have on Al's lecherous tendencies.

September 20, 1862: In a bizarre twist of a genetic coil, Sam leaps into his great-grandfather, Captain John Beckett, during the Civil War. He must not interfere with his ancestor's romance with a riled southern belle named Olivia. He must also avoid being hanged as a Yankee dog by some home guard Confederate soldiers.

April 1, 1976: As a stuntman, Sam is to save the life of his younger brother, while trying to convince the pair's obsessive father to let the younger son go his own way, even if it means going into country-western music, rather than following the family tradition of stunt work.

May 10, 1958: Sam finds himself behind the wheel of a New York taxicab, in the life of Max Greenman, a driver striving to win his own tag, a license to drive his own cab. His mission is aided with the help of a woman who claims to be a guardian angel.

September 9, 1969: May meets December when Sam leaps into a young actor in love with an older woman, who is also an aspiring singer. If he can't boost her confidence and help her get her career on track, she will face a "fate worse than death," returning with her son to Cleveland.

March 10, 1975: As an eccentric, possibly vampiric, artist just outside of London, Sam must bear with Al's superstitions, while trying to prevent the death of his host's young wife, at the hands of a couple who are taking a sacrificial ceremony in honor of the "blood moon."

February 28, 1979: It's more like a nightmare when Sam leaps into a detective, investigating a gruesome murder. He may be next if he doesn't find out who eviscerated the victim and his only hope is the victim's catatonic son and her husband's psychiatrist. The horrific flashbacks he's experiencing don't help matters much either.

October 16, 1968: Leaping into a housewife and mother of two on the verge of women's lib, Sam must prevent the death of his daughter during a sit in, while convincing the girl's father that his marriage can survive a liberated wife and daughter.

April 7, 1963: As a backup singer in a black, amateur girl group Sam finds between the fifteen year-old lead singer and her father as he attempts to rescue the girl from a sleazy night club owner's clutches.

April 30, 1959: Sam, as the singing half of a comedy team, soon finds that trying to convince two people that they're truly in love is no laughing matter, especially when one of them is the object of a sleazy casino owner's desire.

February 25, 1958: As a horse-playing, traveling brush salesman, Sam finds himself with two wives and two families. Although Ziggy predicts that Sam's mission is to choose between the two lives, the choice is made more difficult by the fact that there's only a 50/50 chance that he'll choose the right one. As if things weren't bad enough, Sam finds that his penniless host owes a pair of bookies some big bucks.

June 18, 1976: It's the leap from hell as Sam, a bounty hunter handcuffed to a wily embezzler who will stop at nothing to get away from him, has to deal with his captive, as well as his attraction towards her, despite her countless attacks on him.

June 3, 1954: Aboard an ocean liner, Sam must stop the marriage of a young man's ex-wife to a mobster. In the process, he finds himself in one heck of a mess in the ship's garbage compartment.

March 2, 1957: It's almost as though Sam were on vacation when, as Egyptologist Dale Conway, he gets to read hieroglyphics, search lost tombs, and, of course, visit Egypt. But between an encroaching sandstorm, computer glitches back at the Project, the suspicious deaths of the guides, and a 3000-year-old curse to round things off, Sam has very little time to play in the sand.

July 23, 1955: The heart of a champion belongs to Ronnie, a professional wrestler, who will die if he competes in the title match. Sam, as his brother and new partner Terry, must convince him of his hidden health problem, while avoiding his own health problem - the jealous wrestler-husband of a woman who has taken an amorous interest in Sam.

November 28, 1957: Sam finds himself in the life of Tyler Meanes, a teller of tall tales who faces death at the hand of an old friend in a shootout at high noon.

November 2, 1956: Sam and a fellow convict named Boone are the defiant ones when Sam has to rescue his companion from a fifteen-year sentence on a chain gang.

September 7, 1953: A devastating drought will be the ruin of a small town unless Sam, as Billy Beaumont, "purveyor of precipitation and maker of rain," can find a way to make it rain, while keeping his family together in the process.

August 6, 1961: A pitcher on a minor league baseball team, Sam must decide if he's there to help a fellow team member, get his host back into the major leagues, or baby-sit the porcine team mascot, all while resisting the amorous advances of the women in his life.

March 11, 1963: Babysitting a kidnapped tot and a flaky, compulsively lying stripper keeps Sam busy as they cross Texas, on the run from the legal father and a squad of cops.

May 9, 1974: Leaping into magician Harry Spontini, Sam has to prevent his estranged wife from taking their daughter away from him as she files for divorce, so she can marry her sleazy divorce attorney.

June 15, 1965: Sam is a photographer who must protect a fashion model from a growing dependency on amphetamines and a predatory manager's ambitions.

January 24, 1961: The fates make a monkey out of Sam when he leaps into Bobo, an astro-chimp who must avoid succumbing to the experiments of an Air Force neurologist.

April 25, 1985: While Sam is in 1985, running her radio talk show, playing matchmaker to her producers, and trying to help a young secretary who's being sexually harassed by her boss, Dr. Ruth Westheimer spends her time in the Waiting Room, counseling Al on his feelings towards his five wives, as well as his relationship with Tina.

November 6, 1972: Sam leaps into Henry Adams, one of a trio of friends who fought in Vietnam and came home each with their own personal scars and the memory of a lost buddy. He has to save the life of a friend, Roy, as well as of a young boy, Daniel, who ventures into the woods of Washington looking for proof of Bigfoot.

April 4, 1960: As chauffeur to Marilyn Monroe, Sam must try to prevent Marilyn's tragic death. But when a well-meaning plan backfires, it could mean the end of Marilyn's career, even if her life is saved.

August 17, 1969: Sam meets Camille, and possibly a killer, when he leaps into a deputy sheriff in a small Mississippi town, lying in the path of a deadly hurricane.

June 14, 1966: Finding himself back in the same small Louisiana town, in the arms of Abigail, now twenty-one, Sam must prevent an angry crowd of townspeople from lynching his fiancée, following the disappearance of a young boy whom she had been babysitting.

August 8, 1955: A pair of unsolved murders marks just the tip of the iceberg when Sam leaps into a sheriff in a small Louisiana town. Rumors of a history of family insanity, the suspicions surrounding his daughter Abigail's involvement in the murders, and ghostly visions of his institutionalized wife just make matters worse.

September 1, 1958: As "Bones," a member of a motorcycle gang, Sam is an uneasy rider who has to prevent a Jack Kerouac-inspired young woman from meeting her death on the road.