chris-oates said:
1. Why didn't Sam choose to leap home..
I know the reason he doesn't is because he wants to help Al and Beth stay together.. But it's strongly implied that Sam was always controlling his own leaps, and when he realises he can leap wherever he chooses, he leaps to the exact moment in M.I.A when Beth is dancing.. But why doesn't he after he tells Beth that Al is alive, leap home. If he can control where he leaps, why can't he leap home after telling Beth? It seems like Sam had to choose between, saving Al and Beth's marriage, and leaping home. Why can't he do both?
You have to remember that, in Mirror Image, Sam only just then found out from Bartender Al that he is the one who's controlling his Leaps, not God, Fate, or Time. Just because he just found out that he can determine where he Leaps to, that doesn't always mean that he has the control necessary to be able to pre-determine where he ends up in time.
I kind of liken it to the series Chuck, and when he "downloaded" Intersect 2.0. Although the improved Intersect was designed to allow for the user to recall information at their own desire, that didn't necessarily mean that Chuck had the fine control over it that was needed. As a result, he Flashed on things without control, and hilarity sometimes ensued (i.e. when he told off the Chinese woman in Chinese, LOL).
Given time, and with help from a mentor like Bartender Al (as the Al we know from the Project wouldn't have the skill set to help Sam control where he Leaps - just what he has to do to fix history), I think Sam could have gained enough fine control over it to where he could Leap wherever he wanted to at least 75% of the time or better.
chris-oates said:
2. Does Sam telling Beth that Al is alive effect his friendship with Al.
After Sam tells Beth that Al is still alive, does this radically change history. Do Sam and Al even meet? And if they never did, this means Al won't remember Sam. But if this is the case would Sam still remember Al. Because when you think of the episode A Leap for Lisa, Sam changed history and Al was going to be executed. But Sam still remembered Al, even though history was saying that they never met.
I don't think it changes anything at all. The world around them would have changed, but how they met wouldn't have. The only thing that it would have changed is Al's history (in terms of his marriages) leading up to the point where Al and Sam met. The only way that they wouldn't have met would have been if something happened to where Al prematurely died (like in A Leap for Lisa).
chris-oates said:
3. Was Sam dead all along.
In the final episode it is mentioned how often we here stories of the dead coming back to help the living. It could be Sam never returns home because he was in fact dead all along. Once he died in the start of the series he began leaping through time to help people much like Al's uncle in the final episode who was taken at the moment of death through time to help the miners in the final episode. However, with Sam, his body was gone when he died because of the Quantum Leap, and Al & Gushy & Ziggy were able to use the technology from the Quantum Leap project to go back and time and observe Sam wherever he had leaped to. Al never realizes that Sam is dead and neither does Sam. But all along, Sam is just another dead person helping the living. That could be it.
I don't think Sam was dead at all. If he was, then those who's lives he inhabited wouldn't have been in the future at all (leading to great episodes like Killin' Time, etc). Likewise, Sam wouldn't have been able to return to the Project in the future when he and Al simo-Leaped, and Donna wouldn't have stayed with the Project. It'd make no sense for her to have stayed if her husband died in the experiment by Leaping, and could never return home. Being there would have been far too painful for her, no matter how strong in spirit she may have been.
chris-oates said:
And finally.. 4. Does Don Bellisario fully understand the last episode.
Maybe he doesn't understand it either. Maybe he just threw it all in because he couldn't think of an ending for the show.. I know that Don wasn't sure if NBC were going to renew it for another season, so he tried to make it both a cliffhanger and a series finale at the same time. But still it's so confusing, I find it hard to believe that Don understands everything about that episode
The whole point of Mirror Image was to prepare Sam for more difficult Leaps in the future - to show that he doesn't always have to be the one putting his neck on the line, and there are others in the world who do care and willing to help make things right.
Not just that, but the fact that he made his historic effort to Leap may have inspired others to follow in his footsteps. One of the alternate endings for the series, had it been allowed to continue, would have had Al following Sam by Leaping.
Donald Bellisario knew where he wanted to take the series, the direction he wanted to go in as well as the future elements he wanted to explore, but NBC pulled a Star Trek on us and didn't give the series a chance to have a proper send off (like Warner Brothers got for Chuck). The series was on the bubble (the potential of being cancelled) so many times, we're lucky that we got all 5 series that we did, even though the ending on Mirror Image was very hasty and only added to the confusion, as well as left many fans unsatisfied.
