Mind you, by season 5, things have begun to change for Sam. When he's Lee Harvey Oswald the leaps are definitely instantaneous; and we see him go from Dr. Ruth to the next leap right away as well. But this could still fit that, if the nature of his leaping is on the cusp of changing by that point; that he'll ultimately begins leaping as himself, and leave nothing behind in the present.
That in the final episode, Al notes that there's no one in the waiting room' stating that fact as an oddity, works with this as well.
The only instance that might be a little incongruent is "The Leap Back," in season 4; and the way people engaged him, as if he had been gone the whole time and returned.
On the other hand, when Sam leapt into the serial killer in season 5, Gushy inexplicable sees Styles - albeit, obviously seeing him as Sam - and assumes it is in fact Doctor Beckett, and is confused by "Sam's" aggressive behavior; even though he should know better.
For the latter case, with Styles, it would be explained that if Sam did occasional come back, it wouldn't be unusual then for Gushy and other staff at the project to see and interact with him. The context of seeing Sam outside of the waiting room would then suggest to Gushy that Sam was between leaps. This could also maybe explain Styles getting the guard's gun, if the guard had been leading him into the waiting room; rather than entering it and being disarmed by Styles, who was already in there.
You might have to get a bit creative with why Sam felt he couldn't leap until Styles was back in the waiting room, but arguably, at minimum, they'd want him contained in a protective environment in the event Sam leaped straight into his next mission. Or if Sam did come back, he wouldn't want to be disoriented by whatever Styles was doing outside of the project compound, or the danger he could be facing.
With "The Leap Back," a continuity error could set the stage for another possible twist. In that episode, Al gives the dates as September 1999, but then episodes in season 5 (I think including Killing Time) are set prior to that date. In the Lee Harvey Oswald episode, Sam asks Al if he remembers switching places with him, and Al says he didn't; which sounds like Al simply lying, so that Sam doesn't remember too much of that event, but it could also be that Sam and Al aren't always in linear sync, and that Al experiences some of the leaps (maybe the later ones, that occur back to back) out of order from what Sam and the audience does. It gets a little "wibbley wobbly" as the Doctor would say, but it could explain the welcome home Sam got in "The Leap Back," if somehow that event transpired some time around or after they lost contact with him in "Mirror Image". But because Sam hadn't reached that point in his personal timeline of leaping around, he hadn't made the ultimate changes with Al and Beth's relationship yet, which is why Al is still with Tina.
This idea is still a little contentious, because it would then require the version of Al seen in "Shock Theater" to be a version of Al from later in the series, basically towards the end; while at the same time they used the principal concept of what happened to Sam in that episode to hide Alia from Zoe and Lothos at the end of the evil leaper trilogy...
"I'm in it for the power and the free robes." - Harry Stone
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