Shock Theater

From Quantum Leap Wiki

"Shock Theater" was the finale of Quantum Leap's third season.

In this episode Sam leaps into a patient in a psychiatric hospital at the moment that a crooked orderly who mistreats patients is about to give him an unauthorized electro shock treatment for punitive reasons. Sam is given a dangerously high voltage shock which wreaks havok with his brain.

When Sam awakens he begins channeling the personalities of people he jas lept into over the past three years, which the doctors interpret as signs of multiple personality disorder. Al tries to help Sam get ahold of himself so the doctors will leave him alone so they can complete his mission, teaching another patient who was born with a mild case of Down's Syndrome how to read. Sam, however, believes Al to be an hallucination and refuses to listen to him. Al then takes it upon himself to teach the other patient, who can see Al along with almost every other patient in the hospital, his ABC's with the help of a clever rap song he and Sam programmed into Ziggy as a joke.

After the mission is completed Ziggy theorizes that the only way to get Sam's mind back into a condition that will allow him to leap is to give him a second electro shock treatment equal in voltage to the first. Sam, still in a state of emotional shock from the first treatment, is reticent to comply but is successful in getting the doctors to prep him for a treatment.

Sam, in tears of fear, convinces a nurse to zap him with the same dangerously high voltage which almost killed him the first time and leaps.