[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Quantum Leap Season 2 Episode 2 “Ben & Teller.”]
In the first season of Quantum Leap, Ben (Raymond Lee) and Addison (Caitlin Bassett) were kept apart by his jumps and the fact that he lost his memory. Now, in Season 2, the team knows he’s alive (after being missing and presumed dead for three years), but that doesn’t mean the (formerly engaged) couple can just pick up where they left off, even if he does remember everything now.
Rather, as the second episode reveals, Addison’s now in a relationship with Tom Westfall (Peter Gadiot), a former special forces soldier and a high-ranking US Army Officer in the realm of Army Intelligence. They’d known each other for years, and she credits him with helping her remember what it is to be alive and happy again after thinking Ben was dead and the darkest two years of her life.
“It was very strange for us to be filming that and watching, to suddenly just jump into her in a relationship,” executive producer and directing producer Chris Grismer admits to TV Insider. “It was interesting, and Peter is such a great actor, and he was such a welcome addition to the show that I don’t think with a different actor it would’ve come off quite as warmly or as believably. As a fan of the show, I was expecting to have some amount of animosity towards that relationship, but I didn’t feel that. I felt like, I get why Addison moved on. It’s three years later. Who can wait three years for someone and especially not knowing if they’re ever coming back?”
Adds executive producer Deborah Pratt, “You’re talking to somebody who fought very hard to make sure that Sam Beckett [Scott Bakula] was accessible because a lot of people fell in love with him and fell in love with the idea that he was out there by himself. And so I think it’s a real bend back again to the original series in that Ben has had to deal with the fact that he’s never coming home, that he still has this woman as a hologram who he cares deeply about but had tried to move on with her life. That’s going to put people into a whole wonderful conversation of, what would you do?”
From what we see in the initial scenes with Addison and Tom, they have a great relationship and care about each other. “What you see is what it is, but as they found Ben, obviously that dynamic is going to change and she’s going to struggle with some of the past,” Grismer teases.
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What will complicate matters: Addison is going to continue to operate as Ben’s hologram (after letting Mason Alexander Park‘s Ian handle that job for this episode’s leap), which will put the now exes in emotional situations together. “That’s definitely an interesting challenge,” Pratt laughs. “And you want that conflict in the sense of, not only how does she feel, how does Ben feel, [but also] how does Tom feel? Peter Gadiot is an amazing actor. We may see people picking teams — Team Tom, Team Ben, Team Addison — which I think is always a great platform for storytelling and opportunity.”
Of course we can’t help but wonder: Tom seems like a good guy but how much should we trust him, considering he’s also now working on the project with the others? “That’s the question, isn’t it?” Pratt says with a laugh. “I’m not saying anything.”
Though Addison put it off — she knew Ben would know with one look that she’d moved on — by the end of the episode, the two did come face-to-face. “That was just the beginning of how they have to explore the awkwardness and the conflict that they’re both experiencing because of what’s happened,” according to Grismer. “There’s various facets to the history between them and to what’s happened that they have to explore before they can move on.”
NBC
The other major part of the episode features that there’s more than Ian’s saying about what they did to find Ben. They told Jenn (Nanrisa Lee) and Magic (Ernie Hudson) that they left one computer station running to scan for Ben after the project was shut down, and it found him for a second. But later, Jenn tells Ian they need to tell the others what they did and how they actually found Ben. Yes, they left Ziggy running in the background, but that’s not the truth. Ian argues they don’t need to know the truth.
Jenn doesn’t know everything but will learn more as the season progresses, the executive producers share. Jenn has figured out what she has because “she’s incredibly smart,” says Pratt. Her wheels start turning because she’s “sensitive enough to know that the angst that Ian is going through. She finally will find out what Ian was willing to do to get Ben back and what it will cost them by doing it.”
We’ll get answers over multiple episodes, but what exactly will the cost be of what Ian did? Teases Grismer, “it will have a big impact on the team.”
When Ian and Jenn find Magic to tell him about finding Ben, he’s looking for a gift for a one-year anniversary. All Pratt can tease about that relationship is it’s “the opportunity to show a softer side of Magic.” We’ll have to wait to see more.
Quantum Leap, Wednesdays, 8/7c, NBC