MovieChat Forums > Quantum Leap (1989) Discussion > Is Sam Beckett a rapist?

Is Sam Beckett a rapist?


I remember a few shows where he had sex with women, and with maybe one or two exceptions he did not reveal his true identity to the women that he had sex with. They believed they were having sex with someone else.

I believe that under the law this constitutes rape, but I'm not sure, I always thought rape was an act of violence against an unwilling recipient, but apparently knowledge of identity is important under the law.

I remember watching the first season of American horror story and the wife in that series was considered raped because she had sex with someone in a mask whom she assumed was her husband but really wasn't. Sam Beckett wore a mask of sorts in every episode.

Quantum Leap was one of my favorite shows of all time, and Sam Beckett was always a great moral hero to me, I know that in his mind he didn't deliberately rape anyone, but was he wrong to do what he did? Did the fact that none of the women would ever find out make it OK? or were the acts intrinsically wrong?

I'm of the opinion that women that he met while disguised as his host were ok to sleep with because those women never met his host and that when you choose to sleep with a virtual stranger, well, a stranger is a stranger is a stranger.

on the other hand , women that knew his host before he leaped in...like wives or girlfriends etc..well...thats kind of rotten, how come there was no outcry over these episodes?

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I saw a similar discussion on the Revenge Of The Nerds board when Lewis was pretending to be Stan and went down on Betty.

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I saw a similar discussion on the Revenge Of The Nerds board when Lewis was pretending to be Stan and went down on Betty.
Is that really all they did? I though they straight out had sex.
Either way, I've had a harder time watching Revenge of the Nerds, without looking at that scene in a very different, and kind of dark context. It's pretty hard to justify Lewis misrepresenting himself as someone else's boyfriend, to take sexual advantage of that person. Her enjoying it doesn't retroactively make it okay; that whole scene could have easily gone very differently, and become horrific for everyone very quickly.

And, like I said above (and in the copy thread that was also posted here) it's where Quantum Leap walked a very fine line; and for the most part they always preference any of the three times Sam made love to a woman, with the woman have some level of Sam not being the man they thought they were by outward appearance. One of them knew unequivocally. Another had an esoteric sense that there was something different about him, and they connected on that level. If Abigail Fuller suddenly saw Sam for who he was, and knew that Will had been there before, and Sam explained; I could see Abigail accepting it, and the full knowledge of the truth helping her reconcile what she was feeling for Sam.
Sam's former piano teacher is a bit more of a grey area; if she suddenly Sam for who he was and explained everything, I think it would be harder to say that everything would go exactly the way it did. Yet at the same, she seems to support the idea that they're two effective strangers, who happen to have familiar names and faces; and from that stand point, it's Sam's personality that sparks with her.
There's also a weird dichotomy between Sam and who he leaped into. There's a possibility that Ray might have at least a foggy recollection of that night with Nicole; an encounter or memory he wouldn't object to, anymore than Nicole did, while Sam will likely forget it.


"Our families are in there! Our, uh, mothers and... and tiny, tiny babies!"

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Sam has sex exactly 3 times in the entire series; "Catch a Falling Star," "Temptation Eyes," and "Trilogy Time Part 2" There's plenty of other romance in other episodes, lots of kissing, Sam tends to be a push over when it comes to falling in love, but that's it.
"Catch a Falling Star," is a somewhat hazy encounter in it's own right; heavily inferred through Al saying something to the effect that the "earth moved" for Sam, and Sam takes it especially hard when he believes Nicole has been fooling around with the male star of the show they're in (and she's upset when she thinks he's been with the female lead) - but they don't unequivocally say they have sex. They probably did, but it's expressly said. They also arguably did some proverbial tap dancing leading up to it, with Sam telling her he's not the Ray that she knows, and she responds that she's not the same Nicole - and strictly speaking, since their reunion, she's only seen or interacted with him up to that point with him as Sam; so the only impression she has of who he is now, is who Sam was.

In "Temptation Eyes," it's clear cut; the woman is a psychic and sees Sam as Sam, and when she does, that's the start of their relationship.

"Trilogy Time," in general, let alone part 2, is a bit of a cluster-frak. When Sam leaps in, he's in bed with Abigail right off the bat. Added to that, part of his mind is merged with Will's, the person he's leaped into, and has at minimum inherited Will's stutter, if not perhaps Will's feelings for Abigail. Abigail later says that at first, thing between them didn't feel quite right, and suddenly it felt perfect; inferring that she sensed Sam's presence as being the deciding factor. They have sex again later, and Sam says the instant he was with her, all trace of Will was gone. Somewhere between these two instances - if the first was even actually in the midst of anything - was how Sammy-Jo was conceived.
There's a lot of metaphysical nuance that they try to play with; with Sam usually being upfront that he isn't who they think he is. Then there are at least some occasions where there is some part of the person he's leapt into, influencing his state of mind. And in both the case of "Catch a Falling Star," and "Trilogy Time," he's leapt into the person that the other person would be with anyway; so there's a sort of three-way mutual reciprocity, where it becomes as much the person in the waiting room's experience as the other two. Will is believed to be Sammy-Jo's father; what any of them remembers is the least certain thing of all.
What it comes down to though, is whether or not the consent would change with unequivocal knowledge of who he was and what was happening; and that's ambiguous at best in the two instances where they don't outright know everything, but have indirect conversations where both have some type of understanding that he's not who they think he is. With Nicole, the conceit is first, she knew Sam and she also knew Ray; and that it's been so long for either of them, that they're basically strangers meeting anew - a point that Nicole makes, rather than Sam; and by that token the Ray that meets is Sam, and that's who she goes to bed with.
With Abigail, she senses a fundamental change about the man she's with, that is meant to be construed as her knowing on some level that he wasn't Will, and feeling a deeper connection with Sam as a result.

I would have preferred more clear-cut engagements, but more than that, what bothers me about Sam and Abigail, is that Sam had just leapt out from being her father, to leaping forward and becoming her lover; which just seems creepy. His first blush feelings for her, are paternal; and then they become romantic and even sexual. At best I want to believe some element of that is residual from the people he had leapt into.
On top of all of that, is the revelation that one of his earliest leaps resulted in exactly what he had hoped; he and Donna got married. Yet he doesn't remember, Al's following orders and not telling him, and Sam's gets pretty intimate with a lot of women, kind of falling in love with quite a few, and sleeping with three of them; while Donna's waiting for him back home.... and then he never returns home...


"Our families are in there! Our, uh, mothers and... and tiny, tiny babies!"

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It's been awhile, but didn't Sam have sex with the photo journalist in "The Leap Home, Part 2"?

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It's possible, maybe even probably; they kind of left it ambiguous how far Sam let her take things. Considering he wanted her to go on the mission anyway, he would have arguably been content, relatively speaking, leaving it at a promise of "favors" after the mission, in return for get her to go along. Even then, he was a stranger to her; and she had only met "Magic" while he was Sam, and his identity otherwise wouldn't have affected her decision to sleep with him, since it would be predicated entirely on him agreeing to help her go on the mission regardless.


"Our families are in there! Our, uh, mothers and... and tiny, tiny babies!"

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I can't make a rational, logical argument with anything you said. It's well thought through and reasonable.

But I love Trilogy - especially 2 & 3. I've always been pretty good with suspending certain things when it comes to TV/movies - not being too pedantic about things "no way, they couldn't really do that" type stuff at least to some degree. In the case of Trilogy in particular, the residual of the person he leapt into (father/lover/lawyer), the passage of time, etc I just didn't let it bother me. And as you mentioned, the fact that the lines were blurred - heck, even beyond that, I believe he came right out & said it was all him with Abigail - it just didn't worry me.

But beyond all of that - dear lord, how could you not find yourself falling in love with Abigail/Melora Hardin in that role? I haven't seen it in ages and I can still picture that scene where she comes running down the steps and pauses at the top. The way they created the romantic element there was so well done.

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In most of these he tried to avoid sleeping with the women as much as possible. Such as in season one, when he leaps into someone on their honeymoon. He keeps trying to put the wife off as much as possible.

I think, morally, it would be a baking act between not taking advantage but also not screwing up that person's life too much while he was there. Like if a husband wouldn't sleep with his wife for several days she might get upset, think her husband was fooling around, whatever.

I can't remember the latter seasons that well but I'm watching now and most of the ones I've seen he tries to not do it as much as possible.

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