Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the quantum leap accelerator and vanished. He awoke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own, and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so, Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home.

Private Dancer

• Sam finds himself on stage as an exotic dancer.
• He is passionately kissed by an uncontrollable woman in the crowd.
• Then he’s introduced to the audience as Rod the Bod, to many shouts and cheers.
• October 6, 1979
• Women fight over Sam’s pants, which they’ve managed to tear off his legs.
• I guess that whole Look-But-Don’t-Touch rule doesn’t apply in this particular establishment.
• Sam is able to get away to his dressing room and Al tells him he’s Rod McCarty in New York in 1979.
• Al is envious of Sam’s position…
• Unfortunately, Al has no more information for him, saying they should have a better idea about why he’s there in 24 hours.
• Sam heads out to the bar for a beer and notices a waitress who seems to be regularly ignoring the bartender.
• Otto, the bartender, complains to the manager, Mario, that the new waitress has been ignoring him all night and tells him not to schedule her on anymore weekends.
• Mario tells him not to worry because she’ll be working bachelor parties from now on, implying she’s an exotic dancer.
• Mario and his partner then try to convince Sam to skip his next gig and stay on with them.
• The waitress, Diana, then runs into an issue with a customer, and Sam steps in.
• He introduces himself to her, then gets pulled into a dance with guest star Debbie Allen.
• When Diana joins the dance with everyone out on the floor, Mario gets angry and pulls her away.
• Debbie Allen’s character runs a modern dance company and they’re holding open auditions, inviting Sam to try out.
• As Sam observes Diana more and more, he realizes she’s deaf.
• Al then reappears and tells Sam that she’s the reason he’s here.
• Her parents were killed in a car accident when she was seven and she ran away from the deaf school where she was raised last year.
• She hasn’t been able to keep a job since coming to the city and things will continually getting worse for Diana until she finds herself working as a prostitute and eventually dies of AIDS in 1986.
• Al suggests that Diana gets started into prostitution once she begins stripping for Mario’s parties.
• Sam tries to talk to Mario about keeping Diana as a waitress instead of using her as an exotic dancer.
• He even makes a deal with him, that Rod the Bod will cancel his next gig and keep dancing there.
• Later, after hours, Diana is alone in the club and turns the music up… and the bass way up…
• Sam watches her dance and sees how good she is.
• Diana gets angry that Sam is spying on her.
• When he tries to offer to walk her home, she refuses… but he goes with her anyway.
• They get hot dogs from a street vendor and Sam takes time to get to know her.
• He manages to get her to open up a little about communicating with people and what she experiences when music plays.
• She feels the vibrations… the beat… the rhythm.
• Diana came to New York to be a dancer and she’s waitressing until she gets her break.
• Sam suggests trying out for Joanne Chapman (Allen) and the open audition she has coming up.
• Diana leads Sam to believe she lives in an apartment building.
• Once he’s gone, she comes back out of the building and crosses the street, getting into the beat up VW wagon that she actually lives in.
• The next day at the club, Mario tells Diana that Rod suggested she wasn’t interested in parties, which just angers her.
• Diana turns to Mario’s partner, Valerie, complaining that she can’t make it on tips to get through the winter.
• She tells Diana that she can probably get her a job… But she’s getting her into an escorting type of gig… not dancing.
• Al arrives with info about Joanne Chapman and Diana shows up at Sam’s dressing room and greets him with a hard slap to the face.
• She tells him to stay away from her.
• But Sam then tracks her down and finds out from the property manager that Diana lives in the bus that she keeps moving back and forth to get out of getting towed.
• He tries to convince her that stripping for Mario wouldn’t have been the answer and that trying out for Chapman’s audition could be the answer.
• After practicing with Sam, Diana does well in the first part of the audition.
• But then she misses Chapman’s instructions when she can’t see her lips as the audition continues.
• Sam tries to step in and help Joanne understand that Diana is deaf and just needs to be able to read her lips to get her instruction.
• As the audition continues, Al arrives and warns Sam that things may not turn out the way he’s hoping…
• Unfortunately, Joanne explains that she would not have the time to give Diana the attention she would need because they move very fast in her dance company.
• Embarrassed and upset, Diana takes off…
• Diana gets back to her bus in time to see them towing it away.
• She goes straight to Valerie, desperate for a job.
• Valerie pimps Diana out “just this one time” until she gets a dance job.
• Once Diana accepts the job and leaves to get some clothes for the “date,” Sam asks Valerie where Diana is.
• Of course, she lies…
• When Sam catches her in the lie, he confronts her about the prostitution, asking if she could go back to the first time, would she still make that choice.
• Al helps Sam find Diana in a hotel room with a sleazy guy that had been hitting on her at the club earlier.
• Sam convinces Diana to walk away from this job and make a better choice.
• Then he shows up at Joanne’s and convinces her to give Diana a second chance.
• Diana is given a chance to dance solo and Joanna slaps Sam for almost letting her get away.
• Al confirms that Diana is going to make it and she’ll be just fine.
• Diana signs a thank you to Sam just before he leaps…
• Into a tuxedo wearing man sitting behind a piano in a bar.
• A woman approaches, calling him Chuck, and tells him to play “Somewhere” for her.
• Oh boy.