“Disco Inferno – April 1, 1976” is episode two of season two of Quantum Leap.
At the end of the previous episode, “Honeymoon Express – April 27, 1960”, Sam had leaped into someone in a nightclub with disco playing. Sam doesn’t like disco, at all, and is thinking he’d rather be dead when a man shoots him with a shotgun, blasting him through a glass screen.
Onto a mattress as it happens. He’s covered in blood, but it’s fake, and someone says to print that cut. Two people are currently arguing over what happened; it seems things weren’t quite set up right. The younger is Chris, Sam’s – Chad’s – brother; the older, Ray, their father. Ray isn’t happy with how the film is being handled and he’s the stunt coordinator. He quits the job, and says his boys are quitting too.
Chris is upset, because in two days he’d have done a stunt and got his card. He wants Chad to talk to their father to try and change his mind. A woman pulls Chad aside; it seems she’s admiring how he looks. Another woman is less happy when Sam doesn’t know her name; it seems Chad has slept with her. Sam sees Al dancing and heads over. Chris is approached by a girl, Shannon, who, it seems, doesn’t go crazy over Chad like every other woman does. Chris is more her type.
Al tells Sam this is a low-budget disaster movie. He thinks he saw it. It wasn’t good. The 70s were the happiest time of Al’s life, though. Sam is in Burbank, California, in 1976. Sam asks if Ziggy knows why he’s there. According to Al, Ziggy crashed. But before that tagged extra zeros on everyone’s paycheques and half the staff left on vacation. However, before the crash, Ziggy said in two days Chris would be killed. Al doesn’t know how, when or where. Sam remembers he has a big brother. Tom. Al won’t tell him any more.
Sam talks to Ray and asks him to ease up on Chris a bit. Ray doesn’t think much of the director they’ve just quit on; he’s dangerous and takes too many chances. He promises that Chris will get his card soon enough. He could do the stunt that Chad is doing tomorrow, if Chad is okay with it. Given that Sam is worried that Chris might die in such a case, he isn’t.
Chris is unhappy with Chad. Sam is remembering things about his brother. Only he thinks he’s afraid of remembering something. He hears Chris playing the guitar, rather well, and heads to see him. Chris says you can’t make a living playing the guitar and he can’t play that disco garbage. Sam has a feeling disco will die in the next couple of years. Sam remembers his own brother pushing him into his current career, but tells it as a story to Chris. Then Shannon shows up and Chris asks Chad not to hit on her. Because he hits on everybody.
Ziggy isn’t working right and Ray isn’t very supportive of the idea of Chris becoming anything other than a stuntman. Even if his talents lie elsewhere. Chris feels a need to prove he can be a stuntman. Which may well be where the dying part comes from.