Posted by sean at 170.148.10.46 on January 23, 2004 at 17:02:49:
In Reply to: Taken from The Quantum Leap Information Kiosk posted by jkm822 on January 23, 2004 at 00:59:14:
: With the announcement of the show's cancellation well after the filming and much of the editing of Mirror Image was complete, the episode was hastily re-edited to turn it into a series finale.
I don't know why you read into this that the studio was behind the ending line; I've never heard anybody as being responsible for it other than Bellasario, the guy who created and stuck with the show.
Incidentally, the "Al" part that you say above which you don't mind was also part of this hasty re-edit, so if you blame the studio for the text, you also have to accept that they did the right thing by way of the Al stuff.
And, also:
: Sam helped people because HE hoped that eventually, God, or whatever it was that was leaping him around, would let him go home.
But you do get that, at the end of the show, he's the one who's controlling his leaps, right? So the fact that he never returns home is his own conscious choice; he's chosen the sacrifice himself in order to help people as long as he physically can. I think that's an amazing ending, personally.
And it's the only TV moment that made me cry which I can still remember (and which still makes well up a bit if I see it).