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The Boogieman was the fifth episode of Season 3 of the TV series Quantum Leap, also the 36th overall series episode. Written by Chris Ruppenthal, the episode, which was directed by Joe Napolitano, originally aired on NBC-TV on October 26, 1990.
Synopsis[]
In this episode, Sam leaps into Joshua Ray (the leapee is played by Chris Ruppenthal), a horror novelist, on October 31, 1964. As he leaps in, strange things start to happen. And it gets worse and worse... until something unexpected happens.
Storyline[]
Halloween, 1964: As Sam gets his bearings as he leaps in, he finds a book in front of him published in 1879, Witchcraft in America, by the Reverend John T. Immendorfs. As he 'knows' leaping outside of his lifetime is impossible, he starts to wander the creepy house to see if anyone is at home. When he is frightened at the top of the stairs by people in masks, he falls back down them and knocks his head, losing consciousness briefly. (This is where the theme song plays, and will also be discussed after the synopsis.)
As he comes to, he meets the people in the masks: his fiancée Mary Greely (played by Valerie Mahaffey) and his young assistant, Stevie King (David Kriegel), who apologizes for scaring him; both are dressed up because they are making the creepy house into the Church Spook House for Halloween. Stevie has to go peel grapes and prepare gopher guts for the upcoming party, as Sam regards a scarecrow on the front lawn and thinks they're in the same boat: "With my head all full of stuffing and no idea why I was really there." Joshua's fiancé Mary, assures Sam they'll be ready for the party. and says she can't wait until they're married. As he leaves, Stevie boasts that some day he'll write the scariest book in the world.
Once Stevie leaves in his old car, Mary figures that Sam is having a problem killing someone, and says he'll have to rewrite the entire book otherwise. She suggests he burn the character like Alice McHorner, the woman who lived in the house in 1692 and is supposed to haunt the place.
Then he meets Tully Maltin (Donald Hotton), the handyman, who is working on a ladder outside a second story window, as Mary tells Tully to keep the noise down. As Tully rambles on about the devil, saying to him "You know what they say, don't you? Them that dance with The Devil are bound to get scrorched!" and tells him about the story of Alice and how she "tempted evil" and was burned at the stake. and how Sam should stop writing about him, a goat mysteriously appears, pulls on a rag under the ladder, as Tully falls to his death.
The local sheriff, Sheriff Ben Masters (Paul Linke) and Mary don't know anything about a goat, and even Al, who appears wearing a sharp white and silver-blue suit, seem to suspect Sam of pushing the man off the ladder. As the others leave, Sam rages at Al that he could have saved the man had he had a bit more warning, but Al tells him that he and Ziggy had no knowledge of it. Al then informs Sam that his fiancée is found later that night, strangled.
Al points out that Joshua has a Black Mamba snake, one of the most poisonous snakes in the world, in a tank on the stairs. Mary comes out to see Sam talking to himself, and as she heads down the stairs she steps between Sam and Al. She seems to feel a presence as she passes Al.
Sam retires to his office to speak with Al privately, and notices that the typewriter—on which he'd seen two paragraphs written earlier—now has a third paragraph, describing Tully's fall from the ladder, that he of course did not write.
The town gossip, Dorothy Jaeger (Fran Ryan), soon shows up with some candlesticks, and while they're talking, Al again shows up to explain that they've run all the probability matrices, and Sam is definitely there to help Mary. Of course right after he says this, there's a scream from the kitchen and they run in to find Dorothy dead on the floor, and they find the Black Mamba as well.
Al insists that Mary is the only logical suspect in both deaths. She had been in the kitchen earlier, and she "could have pushed the ladder from a lower window" without Sam seeing her. Then Sam finds that yet another paragraph has appeared on the typewriter, describing Dorothy's death. Of course, Mary walks into the office as Sam is arguing with Al, and is upset that Sam has just appeared to call her a "demented psychopath."
As Mary and Sam argue, a skull sitting on a ledge behind Mary begins to shake, as if Mary's anger is manifesting as telekenisis. Al vehemently believes she's the killer, Sam is trying to explain that there have been weird things happening, and Mary is getting more upset by the moment. When the argument comes to a head, the skull behind Mary flies off the shelf and Sam barely gets out of the way before it crashes into the wall where his head had been. Al gets creeped out, but then Mary begins to have an epileptic seizure, and Sam rushes her to the hospital.
Sam decides to visit Mary's house, at 966 Salem Avenue. As they arrive, Sam gestures for Al to proceed him through the open door, and as he does so, the house number flips to become 666. They find a few strange items, and a church bulletin that shows that Mary, Tully, and Dorothy are on the board of deacons of the church.
The sheriff shows up, wondering why Sam is there, and they talk. When Al tells Sam he's going to go back to check the sheriff again, the sheriff seems to look around, almost like he hears something strange. Al then disappears again, and Sam goes back to the hospital to visit with Mary for a bit.
Sam drives back to the Spook House, and notices he's being followed by a pickup truck that suddenly bumps him. Then the black cat from the house jumps up from the back seat and the pickup veers off the road. Now a bit spooked, Sam suddenly sees the goat in the middle of the road and then Stevie, in a pumpkin-head costume, so he over steers and falls off the road.
While they discuss that Stevie didn't see the goat, and how Joshua doesn't have any cats, Sam mentions that the car seemed to have a mind of its own, "like in Christine," which Stevie doesn't understand but Sam shrugs off with a "never mind."
Back in his office, Sam is checking out a book on the devil when Al appears suddenly behind him, startling him. As Sam decides that the only suspect has to be the sheriff, Al says "Maybe it's the Boogieman."
Sam discovers that the sheriff is on his way to pick up Mary from the hospital and jumps in his car, but finds the sheriff's car part way there—he's crashed, and he's dead as well. In an overdramatic moment, our favorite time traveler yells "Noooo!" to the stars. The goat reappears briefly and then is gone, so Sam gets in his car and drives back to the Spook House. Reminicsing that Halloween had been his favorite holiday growing up, he sighs. "Tonight there were no treats. There were no tricks. There was only death."
Sam arrives back at the house, and the sheriff's pickup is there. Stevie is outside, and Sam asks the kid if Mary and the sheriff are inside. He sends Stevie home, and when Mary meets him in the foyer, he tells her that the sheriff is dead. She says, "No he's not, he's in the kitchen."
As the sheriff comes out of the kitchen, Sam approaches him warily. They stare each other down a moment, then Sam grabs the sheriff's arm, and then, in a quick flash of a strange red light, he morphs into Al, in his white and silver-blue suit, with a strange reddish glow in his face.
Sam explains the strange things he's noticed about Al all during this leap: he managed to quote one of Tully's lines despite not knowing about it, he's never walked through anything or used the Imaging Chamber door, he has disappeared without using the handlink, and he's been the only other person around when the murders happened.
As they're talking, the real Al emerges from the Imaging Chamber door apologizing because something was messing with Ziggy, and falls silent when he sees the other Al. Sam begs the real Al to tell him there's nothing in front of him, but the real Al says "Oh, there's definitely something there..." Then the Devil-Al turns to the real Al and says, "That's more than I can say for you..."
Then The Devil/Evil Al grabs Sam around neck, choking him, and as Sam tries to fight back, they start spinning. The clock strikes midnight, the piano starts playing, and things fly around the room as real Al and Mary look on helplessly. Then the Devil-Al lets Sam go, flinging Sam to the floor.
As he falls, things spin, and then we see Sam falling down the stairs, just as he did at the beginning of the episode.
Sam comes to, just as he did at the beginning of the episode, and again Mary and Stevie are there asking if he's all right, as is Al, dressed in his loud shirt. Shaken, Sam reaches a hand out to make sure Al is intangible, and he's relieved to find that he is. "...there were two of you," Sam tells Al, "and you were trying to kill me!"
"I was trying to kill you?" Al and Mary ask at the same time. Al shrugs it off, and begins to tell Sam who he is, where he is, when he is, and that he's there to save a "Tully..."
At this Sam jumps to his feet and rushes up the stairs, getting to the old handyman just as he's falling off the ladder, saving him. Al appears (with the normal sound effects) and tells Sam how amazing it was, that Sam knew what he was there to do before Al even had the chance to explain it to him.
As the episode wraps up, Stevie's mom arrives to pick him up and Mary greets her as "Mrs. King." Sam and Al exchange a look, putting it together: Stevie... King? Sam realizes he gave him a bunch of ideas for his upcoming novels with the references to Christine and flying kitchen knives, and Stevie calls the big St. Bernard in the back seat of the car Cujo... and then Sam Leaps.
Trivia[]
- There are many theories about this episode, but one of the most common is that Sam dreams the entire episode—once he loses consciousness at the bottom of the stairs at the beginning of the episode, nothing between then and him waking up at the end ever actually happens. If this was the case, however, Sam would not have known Tully was about to fall and would have been unable to save him.
- Other things of note: There is a lot of symbolism of the devil throughout, including the number 666, the goat, the snake, the skulls, and the fact that Devil-Al is disguised as a friend. Devil-Al continually tempts Sam into believing an innocent is guilty, to blame her for what Devil-Al is doing, and to condemn her as a witch.
- This episode marks the first appearance of the colored-cube handlink.
- Chris Ruppenthal, one of the writers for the show, makes a cameo appearance in this episode as Joshua Ray's mirror image.
- This episode is the only time in the entire series that we see Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell physically touch one another.
- Sam initially thinks he had leaped to 1879 based on the publication date of the book he is reading, even though the age of the book should have made it clear that he had not.
Audio Commentary[]
Check out an audio commentary for this episode here... http://quantumleappodcast.com/audio-commentary/halloween-commentary/