Mid-Season Finale Of NBC’s Quantum Leap Pays Homage To Stand By Me Sans The Corpse But Not The Friendships

I can’t imagine what it would feel like to leap into another human’s body and then technically push said body’s consciousness aside for a bit (I don’t even like drinking out of the same glass another person has no matter well I know them. I mean, what they just ate is just sitting there in that bottle/glass/container marinating in it. Moving along.)

Ben however has no choice and in Stand By Ben, he leaps into the body of a 16-year-old boy nicknamed Clepto who has been sentenced to stay at a juvenile detention summer camp called Sierra Valley for the entire summer with several other kids all of who are hell-bent on escaping the camp at all cost. All the kids have a rap sheet a mile long except Leah who was forced to attend due to her propensity to self-harm. What starts off as the Great Escape 90’s style quickly turns into a fight for survival when the stolen vehicle they were just borrowing to get to Las Vegas blows a tire and sends the truck off the road and into the desert. Jeeps are great but not when they’re upside down and broken.

Luckily when grabbing what they all thought they would need to survive in case something happened someone pocketed a compass and map that would lead them to an abandoned cabin listed on the map where they could rest up and try to plan their next move. Right here is where Addison pops in with bad news (of course) from Ziggy who shows in the original timeline the kids die and in this timeline, it’s Ben’s job to make sure that doesn’t happen again. Oh, and per Addison (or, as the group calls her, Clepto’s invisible hottie GF that he talks to all the time) Ziggy cannot find the cabin shown on the map. It’s decided that even if they can’t find the cabin they can at least find the river that both Ziggy and the map confirm is definitely there and it all turns out to be an incredible journey.

Meanwhile back at headquarters, Jenn has found Janice and is going on another road trip with Magic while Ian watches over Ben’s current leap and makes certain Janice can’t pop back into the imaging chamber and mess with Ben’s head, or at least that’s the plan. However, since Janice has the same tech as QL’s headquarters and has access to their security system she’s as all-knowing as Santa Claus (or Jesus whatever works for you), and when Janice gets wind of Jenn and Magic’s plan she initiates a high-level lock-down meaning no one was getting in or out of HQ for a while.

Back in the desert, after two near-death experiences and a whole lot of meltdowns, the group makes it safely to an off-the-grid cabin that they stumble upon thanks to a dry river bed and an extremely upset Dr. The escapees are discovered, however, and Leah makes the ultimate sacrifice and allows herself to get caught so the others could flee and come back for her or at least she hoped they would. Her bet paid off and soon the camp and others like it all over the southwest find themselves under investigation both publically and privately for the horrific treatment campers suffered at the hands of the counselors. We also find out the real reason why Ben lept without telling anyone and it’s heartbreaking.

Stand By Ben is a well-thought-out, well-crafted episode whose storyline creates a solid bridge to the mid-season opener in Jan 2023.

All eight episodes can be viewed on NBC.com and streamed on Peacock.com

Series returns January 2nd