Quantum Leap Episode Review — Season One, Episode 13 “Family Style”
Don’t watch this episode while hungry. Or without having just eaten, because by the end of it…
Yeah, it’s a restaurant episode. More than that, it’s an Indian restaurant episode. Ironically, I watched it while eating Chinese. Go figure.
It’s also a deeply personal episode for Ben. At the start of the leap, I thought “At least he probably knows how to deal with that type of mother.” The mother in the episode is a very typical Desi mother. I was more right than I knew. Ben is dealing with somebody almost exactly like his mother. Who died when he was a child. With unfinished business between them.
He’s also dealing with an indebted restaurant, a fight between his mother and sister over the menu (The sister has ambitions to be a great chef and wants to change the menu. She’s right).
Oh, and a landlord who is evicting them so she can burn the restaurant down for insurance fraud.
Which Ben thinks he’s there to prevent.
He fails. Because he’s really there to bring this benighted family back together. And not just them but all of their family. Everyone clubs together to pay off the debt and put a downpayment on a new restaurant.
With the daughter’s menu.
It’s a very feel good story about hard work, family, and listening to each other.
Meanwhile, Ian reconnects with their ex who helps them deal with the fact that they are the one who got Ben to leap.
Now they have to work out what would cause them to do that. What would be important enough to upend everyone’s lives like this?
It has to be something big.
And now I want curry, even if I am already full of the second best sweet and sour I’ve ever had in my life. Which is made with Heinz ketchup. Go figure.
