“The Leap Home: November 25, 1969” is episode one of season three of Quantum Leap.
Sam has leapt into a cornfield. He pretends to shoot a pheasant and a teenager girl, one of three, asks if Sam got him. Sam knows all three girls and one, Lisa, apparently wants to know if Sam is taking anyone to the dance after the game. Sam bolts. Because he’s home. As he arrives at the farmhouse, his mother comes out and he zones out, then hugs her. Sam then goes to see his father, and after talking about the upcoming basketball game and how Sam at 16 can’t expect to be better than his brother, Tom, Sam hugs his father. Then Katie, his sister, after she comes in.
At dinner, Sam’s is enjoying his food a lot. They are talking about the upcoming game and ‘No Nose’ Pruett and how he’s impossible to stop when Al shows up. ‘No Nose’ had the end of his nose cut off in a reaping accident and is apparently huge. Katie says he wants to kill Sam because he is after Lisa. And says Lisa asked Sam out and Sam ran off. Al thinks that figures. Sam excuses himself to do his chores. And so he can talk to Al.
Al gushes over the possibilities being a man in a teenager’s body. Sam already knows where and roughly when he is. The upcoming game was originally lost; by Sam, according to him, because No Nose beat him. He wished he could play the game again. Al says that’s why he’s here. If they win the game, so many people go on to better things. Beat Bentleyville and Sam is out of here. Sam doesn’t want to leave. He can stop his father from dying, Katie from eloping with an abusive husband and Tom from dying in Vietnam. Al says they didn’t manage to change his life in “M.I.A. – April 1, 1969”. Sam says this time it’s different. Because it affects him. Sam thinks he’s home and is being rewarded.
The next morning, Sam has got rid of his father’s cigarettes, made decaf coffee and a healthy breakfast. This does not go down too well. Sam and his father argue over the matter, especially as Sam is saying his father isn’t healthy. When his father has gone to buy more cigarettes, Sam’s mother knows he has gotten rid of the cigarettes. She may start making lower-fat meals.
Al speaks to Sam about the game. Sam doesn’t want to play in it, because he doesn’t want to leap. Al doesn’t believe Sam is there to help his family. Sam does. He ends up telling the truth about seeing the future, which goes down as well as you’d expect, and he’s not actually changing things.