Theorizing that one could time-travel
within his own lifetime,
Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap Accelerator
and vanished.
He woke 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.
Hey, man, watch out!
Hey, get away from me!
What're you doin', dirtball? Look out.
Oh, boy.
Man, that stunt was crazy.
Yeah, well. Thanks.
Mad Dog, you should've seen your face.
A joke? You trying to kill me for a joke?
Hey, he crashed, not you. Isn't he hurt enough already?
No.
It wasn't a joke. I just lost control.
Oh, like you never rode a bike before.
Well, actually, no.
I'm gonna make sure you never do it again.
Hey, Mad Dog, cool it.
Cool it!
Mad Dog, Becky wants him to have a pass.
Oh, now she's the boss?
No, I'm the boss.
You got a problem with that?
Hmm? Hmm?
Get out of my way.
Here.
Thanks.
Come on, let's blow.
Oh, yeah, come on.
Hey.
The guy rides with us a week, and this is the way you welcome him?
Yeah.
Now he's stuck out here.
He's a big boy.
There's a diner about 20 minutes down the Coast.
We'll have some cold brew waiting for you.
You mess with me again, you're gonna get jacked.
Japped?
You dig, dirtball?
Dig.
Quantum leaping around in time,
I've assumed many characters,
but this was my first leap back as a dirtball.
Not exactly Brando.
But you kind of look like a wild one.
I'm a biker, Al.
Yeah, and somebody cut your fuel line.
I know.
Turn that petcock right there to stop it from...
Right there, where your hand is. Good.
Look at this.
This is a classic Harley Sportster 1957,
55 cubic inches, overhead valves.
Sam, you are stylin'.
Don't tell me you were a biker, too?
Uh, my first car was a bike.
I had a '48 Harley Knucklehead.
Named after you?
I'll pretend you didn't say that.
I used to love to ride girls on the back of that thing.
Those were the days, and nights.
Is there anything you haven't done, Al?
Well, there's one thing that's impossible to do on a bike.
What am I doin' here?
Uh, don't know.
Just heard that you leapt into a biker,
so I rushed to check out your wheels.
What's that? Oh, that's nice.
You know, a good caricature can tell you really a lot about a person.
And I'd say that that person likes to be free.
Shane's pretty good.
Shane?
Yeah, uh, Shane 'Funny Bone' Thomas, that's your name.
It's September 1, 1958,
and you're somewhere about an hour south of Big Sur, California.
And, according to Ziggy, you're the new kid on the block.
You joined the Cobras a week ago,
and your M.O. Is gang...
Clown. Gang clown.
Oh, gang clown. That's kind of funny.
Al, I don't know how to ride this bike.
I don't have a clue. I just wrecked it in front of everybody.
Well, there's nothing to it.
Your rear brake is with your foot over there.
Uh, here's your front brake, throttle,
there's your clutch over there, there's your gear shift.
One down, three up, neutral's between one and two,
you kick-start it with this thing right here
only when it's in neutral. And get it washed.
Al, I can't be a biker.
Where's your sense of adventure?
Don't you know what it feels like?
Yeah, like playing Slip 'N Slide on asphalt?
I mean, look at my legs...
No, I'm not talkin' about that.
I'm talkin' about the way it feels
when the... the sun blasts into your skin, if you got sunscreen on,
and wind waves by your face,
and you sail off into the blue
on your chrome-plated, candy-colored, flaming-red dream machine.
You never know what's around the next corner.
Probably a head-on with a semi.
Hey, pop, step on it, will you?
Right now. Right now. All right.
We missed you, buddy.
You know what you need right now?
A shower.
No man, some brew.
Come on, slam some with us.
Go.
Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go. Go.
Go. Go. Go!
All right!
I've got to sit down and slip into a coma.
What about more beer, old man?
Let me see.
No.
Come on, let me see. Come on, I like your stories.
I like, uh, The Petrified Forest
when we met the Navajo Indians.
Yeah.
I like that one. Come on.
No, I'm not finished yet.
Read it. Come on.
Okay.
"Stirring the pool from its glassy sleep, I drank with cupped hands
"the ripples swirled and slipped away.
"Until, at last I gazed into the still water, and froze.
Drowning in a shadow of myself."
"A shadow of myself." What does that mean?
That means a reflection, you know, like in a mirror.
So, why don't you just say that?
Why don't you say "she saw her own reflection"?
If you don't like my writing, then...
Now, come on, baby. Come on.
I like your writing,
I'm just trying to figure out what it's all about. That's all.
It's metaphoric.
Oh, yeah? What's that, Bone?
Yeah, like he knows.
Well, it, ahem, it means, I think, that sometimes the words
have a meaning beyond what they're saying.
Right.
It's not just the words.
It's also what's behind the words.
What's behind the words?
Yeah.
Like when we were in Korea.
They told us it was a police action.
It was actually a war.
We were out there.
We were freezin' our asses off and we were gettin' shot at.
That ain't metaphoric.
So, uh, you were in Korea?
Not 'cause I wanted to be.
My son's a Marine.
Won himself the Navy Cross fightin' over there.
Got yourself a hero.
Oh, yeah, yeah, man.
Fought the enemy single-handed
when his battalion got surrounded at the Chosin Reservoir.
Probably get himself the Congressional Medal of Honor
when he comes home.
The war's been over for five years.
Oh, well, he's still missin'.
But I got his '49 Vincent Black Shadow waitin' for him.
Man, that's quite a bike.
Uh-huh.
Hey, you mind we come by, we check it out?
Sorry, man, it's in storage at his uncle's.
How much you want for it?
Hey, that bike's not for sale.
Anybody's still over there is either dead or a commie turncoat.
His son's not a communist.
Don't matter, old man, he ain't comin' back. He's dead.
No, he's not.
He's dead.
Hey, shut up.
You're talkin' about the old man's son, okay?
My Daryl is not dead and he ain't no commie.
Hey, what's this?
Oh.
Dillon. No, no, no. What's that?
Supposed to be Dillon's old lady, huh?
Dillon.
Bone drew a picture of your old lady.
It's not bad.
Do me.
I can't.
Why not?
Do him.
It's gonna be good.
Yeah.
All right, draw him, Bone.
Come on, Bone.
It's your spittin' image, Mad Dog.
Come on, man.
Dillon. Stop him.
Easy. Easy. Easy. Easy. Easy.
Lay off! Lay off, man!
Save it, Sam.
Come on, come on, we came here to down a few brews.
You want to blow the gig or what?
Come on, Mad Dog.
Mad Dog.
Down, Mad Dog.
Why don't you clean some of the dirt off.
Maybe you'll feel better.
Here's a towel. The sink's in the kitchen.
You okay, Sam?
Yeah. I mean, aside from almost getting in a shuffle
with some guy who wanted to jack me, I'm great.
Would you mind just tellin' me what I'm here to do
so I can get out of here
because so far this leap has not been a heck of a lot of fun.
You're here to prevent a murder.
Oh, great, I've got to save...
Don't tell me it's Becky?
One of those creeps is gonna kill her?
She's found stabbed to death on a beach about 30 miles north of here.
Ziggy says it's gonna take place in the next 24 hours.
Hey, Ernie, welcome back.
You okay?
Hey, you look like you did that before.
Oh, it was in another life.
Get some more beer over here, old man.
Here, let me help you.
Boy, your buddies can be a pain in the behind.
They're not my buddies.
Beer. Beer. Beer.
I bet that Black Shadow's cherry.
I bet that old coon's got it stashed around here somewhere.
Hey, check out the new waitress.
Hey, sweetie.
Well, sweetie?
I'm going for a walk.
That's good grub.
Hmm.
Hey, where are you goin', man?
I lost my appetite.
Funny Bone isn't so funny.
If he can get her, he can have her.
Oh, I never realized how beautiful the ocean is.
You've never seen the ocean?
Well, there isn't much beachfront in Wichita.
So Dillon came around
and saved you from a boring life in Nowheresville, huh?
Something like that.
How about your folks?
Well, my mom took the easy way out.
She died when I was seven.
Your dad?
My dad died, too.
He just never sobered up long enough to realize it.
Becky...
Hey, I got out.
I'm riding with Dillon.
Now I'm as free as he is.
I'm not sure that you can call being with Dillon "free."
Jack Kerouac would.
I'm on the road like Kerouac was.
Livin' life. Seein' what's out there.
I don't think that means that you have to follow Dillon?
Don't you see?
Dillon's one of the mad ones.
He's living life on the edge.
He's just gonna take you down with him.
How do you know?
Because I've known types like Dillon before.
Becky, you've got to get away from him.
Don't go.
Shane?
Well, looks like you two had a little heart-to-heart?
That's right and I want her to stay here.
Is that right, cowboy?
That's right, Marshal Dillon.
She's my girl now.
Well, well, looks like you belong to Cowboy Bone now.
Is that right, Ms. Becky?
Dillon, stop him.
Stop Mad Dog? Why?
Cowboy Bone's tryin' to steal my girl.
It's not funny anymore, okay?
Let's go, Dillon.
All right, drop it, Mad Dog.
You crack me up, man. You crack me up.
You gotta go after her.
I've got some spare fuel lines in here somewhere.
Right.
Now, hold on, I want you to see somethin'.
Vincent Black Shadow, she's beautiful.
Yeah, I keep her cleaned and polished for when Daryl comes home.
He must be real proud of her.
Oh, man.
Now let me take care of you.
Thanks a lot.
You ain't like them other boys.
How in the world did you get hooked up with them?
I just sort of fell into it.
I tell you what, I don't trust 'em.
Well, that's okay, 'cause I don't either.
Strange, ain't it?
Hmm.
I mean, how boys like that come back from Korea.
And my son's still there.
Now, look, I don't wish harm on nobody in this world
but that just don't seem right.
You ever lost anybody?
Yeah, but I got him back.
Here, I want you to listen to this.
See here.
This is about where an American boy came back from Korea
that they thought was dead.
There's still some boys over there, too.
Sure, some of them stayed because they was young and brainwashed.
It's true, Sam. Some American P.O.W. S
stayed over there after the war ended.
What about Daryl?
Oh, no, no, no. Not my Daryl.
He wouldn't do anything like that.
He's smart, the boy's honest.
Besides, until I see him one way or another,
I gotta believe he's coming back alive.
Daryl Tyler was listed missing in action.
His remains are going to be returned
to the United States in two years.
And Ernie dies a few months after that.
Maybe I should have told him the truth, Al.
No.
Believing his boy is going to come back
is his whole reason for living.
Where are you going?
Dillon took Becky to some place called Carrillo.
That must be Carrillo.
Carrillo, that's where she gets murdered.
That bike belongs to his son!
Who's dead.
You don't know that!
Hey, I was over there, okay!
I saw guys blown apart around me, all right!
So don't you talk to me about it!
Stop it.
Hey. Hey. Hey.
I just don't want to see a cherry bike like that rot
while some old coot waits for a ghost, okay?
You're drunk.
Come on baby, let's play, huh.
You're drunk!
You don't even know what's happening.
Hey, write about it. I'll read it in the morning.
Stop it. You're hurting me.
Hey.
Go ahead.
What's the matter, man? Your old lady turned you to mush?
Dillon, no.
Come on, do it, man.
Hey, do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it!
No!
Becky, come here.
Get on.
Come back here. Come here!
Come back here! Come back!
Let's go!
What a bunch of geniuses I've got.
They're both dead.
Get the hell out of here! Get the hell out of here.
Unless you wanna taste some buckshot.
Hold on, old man.
Now, look, I called the sheriff.
They're gonna be here soon.
For what?
To arrest all of you for stealin' my boy's bike.
We didn't steal it.
No, you sent that scrawny one to go and do it for you.
Bone stole the Black Shadow?
Boy, don't play no fool with me.
Listen, I don't know anything about it.
I want him as bad as you do.
Well, you ain't never gonna catch him,
'cause he's halfway to the border by now.
We'll catch him, don't you worry.
We'll get your bike, too.
Come on, let's go.
All right.
They're gone? They're gone.
They're headed south.
Guess you and her will be headin' north, huh.
Yeah. Listen, thanks, Ernie.
Oh, my pleasure.
Now, you take care of yourself, honey, all right?
Let's go. I can't.
What?
You go.
Becky, if Dillon comes back...
He'll hurt you.
He was just drunk.
I mean, he'll sober up and he'll be okay tomorrow.
Sooner or later he's gonna hurt you.
It's just a matter of time.
I told you, I'm not going.
Well, if you ain't goin', I guess you're stayin'.
I got this spare room above my garage.
It's yours for the night.
And maybe if you get some sleep,
you'll wake up with some sense.
But I doubt it.
Someone's birthday?
And Christmas.
My God.
He's saved his son's gifts all these years.
He's probably dead.
Listen,
you can't go back out with Dillon, you know.
I have to.
Becky, come on, he was going to rape you.
No, it was my fault.
I embarrassed him in front of all his friends.
Shane, Dillon needs me.
Yeah, he needs you all right.
He needs to own you.
No, he doesn't.
You don't know him the way I do.
The war, it did things to him.
You know, sometimes, in the middle of the night, he wakes up crying
and lost.
And it scares me.
All I can do is just hold him, until he feels safe again.
Shane, they hurt him.
That doesn't give him the right to hurt you.
Don't you see what's happening to you?
Your father abused you, and Dillon is abusing you
and if you're not careful,
the next guy's gonna be some jerk
who drinks too much and beats you
and then what are you gonna do?
Good night, Shane.
She talks about On the Road like it's, like it's the Bible.
Well, hey, it's a great book.
That book changed my life.
You, too?
Yeah.
Sam, you're too young to remember the '50s,
but let me tell you.
The '50s were conformist,
materialistic, repressive, boring, and stupid.
And On the Road rebelled against all of that.
And for a lot of us, Kerouac started a whole new world.
It was a world of adventure
and spirituality, jazz, and the coffee shops.
And then rock and roll.
And then free love.
Free love?
I can see why he was your hero.
Yeah, and, like, I knew Kerouac.
Okay, all right, I didn't really know him.
Uh, it was '58.
Plebe year at Annapolis.
And he gave a reading at St. John's College.
A bunch of us went and we partied with him afterwards.
What was he like?
Well, he was a little sad.
He was very drunk.
But when he talked, he lit up the room.
He had a charisma like comes along once in a generation.
I think that Kerouac's probably the only guy
who could get her to change her mind right now
or at least get her to think about things.
Well, he's just 10 miles up the road.
What?
Yeah, I looked it up.
All his biographies mention this cabin where he used to write.
There's even a letter from there
to Allen Ginsberg, dated September 1, 1958.
Who's that?
Uh, another guy on the road.
You want me to talk to her,
speak out against the road?
Well, yeah, if... if that's what it takes.
Hey, man, I can't lie.
I speak for it.
I speak out for freedom.
I speak out for experience.
I speak out for life.
I speak out for all the roads crisscrossing America
in one immense, infinite dream
that collides in one infinitesimal,
holy honey of creation.
That vast sea of the brotherhood that underlies the essence,
the unborn essence of everything.
I speak out for the road,
Zen, apple pie,
hustlers, pimps, crazy jazz,
truck stops, cops, criminals,
and all the things that blast past you
while you're bebopping down that old highway to heaven and hell.
Yeah, well, listen, she, she bought that.
She bought all that and she ran away 'cause she was in trouble
and, see, now she's in bigger trouble.
And l... I... I just need you to talk to her.
She's not my problem, man.
Well, no, yeah, she is.
Why? When did every kid become my problem?
When you wrote that book.
Dig it.
If it gets people to get up and live,
then I did what I was supposed to.
The rest is on her.
She's 18. She's just a kid.
She believes every word you wrote.
And she's gonna destroy herself trying to live your life.
And all I want you to do is just tell her to find her own.
I can't help her.
I'm not a hero.
Ernie?
Ernie.
I'm playing your song, Bone.
Get in.
Get in there.
Here, Bone.
You wanted Bone?
Why? Why, Ernie? Why did you lie to us?
L... I... I don't know what you're talking about.
Yeah, right, old man. I made him.
I forced him to put us up here last night.
He didn't want to, and l... I... I made him.
Bone.
Bone. Bone. Bone. Bone. Bone. Bone. Bone. Bone. Bone.
You should be halfway to Mexico by now, Bone.
What happened? Huh?
What happened?
Did you lose your sense of direction?
Yeah, I, uh...
We got a little... I got turned around and I, um...
I was just kind of boneheaded thing to do, you know.
Kind of boneheaded.
Why don't I find you funny anymore?
Come on, Dillon, let's get out of here.
What? And skip the morning coffee?
Particularly, I mean, now that I'm here
with all my friends, and all my loved ones?
Come on Becky, don't you think that would be a little rude?
Hey, hey, look, why don't you just
take everything that's in the cash register and just go? Okay?
Crush me, you crush me, Ernie.
You think we would rip this place off
after you've been so nice to us?
Hmm?
Why, that would be inhuman, Ernie.
Don't do that.
Huh?
Oh, sweeten him up.
But
lying is, too,
Yeah.
And, you haven't been totally honest with me.
Dillon, Stop!
Oh, sweetie, what?
What, hmm, what?
You, Bone, not only lost your sense of direction,
you, you lost your sense of respect.
Hmm? Hmm?
Just let them go.
That's an option? Isn't it?
I say we waste them.
Come on, baby. I'm sorry.
I'll never do it again. I promise.
I don't know what got into me.
I think I do.
Or maybe who got into you.
Look, listen to me, nobody did anything to anybody. Okay?
Why, why,
why would I believe a single thing you say now?
Because it's the truth.
Oh, no. It's not the truth.
That is the truth.
Hey, hey, you, you, get off that bike, that's my boy's bike!
That's Daryl's bike! You get off that bike!
That's my son's bike!
What'd you say?
I said please get off my son's bike.
Stay there, old man.
You're a pretty tough guy, aren't you, picking on an old man?
Come on.
How about you? Come on.
Come on, buddy, it's time.
Let him go.
Come on. Come on.
Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.
Mad Dog, Mad Dog, Mad Dog.
Damn, son.
You okay?
Get him out of here.
So...
The Bone knows a little tae kwon do.
Don't fight him.
He won't hurt you if you don't fight back.
Come on, Bone. Let's see what you got.
If you don't fight, he can't do it. Shut up.
He can't even do it in bed unless you fight him.
Shut up.
Sam.
Al?
Come on, duck. Kick.
Uh-uh.
Come on, Sam, you can take this guy.
Let's go. Let's get out of here.
You know, Sam, I hate to say it,
but this doesn't look like it's workin' out right.
What?
It put Mad Dog in the hospital
for three weeks and then he got out.
Then he hooked up with his buddy Dillon again.
Oh, in jail. Hooked up with him in jail.
What about Becky?
Uh...
I guess you'll be going home now, huh?
No, I can't go home.
I don't know what I'm gonna do.
See, it don't have any information on Becky.
She just kind of disappeared.
Ernie, uh,
didn't you say somethin' about
needing an extra hand around here?
Me? Oh, yeah, I did. I did.
I got that spare room over my garage,
and it's piled full of books.
Ernie, I can't.
I've got to live life if I'm gonna be a writer.
I've got to stay on the road.
Being on the road
doesn't mean that you literally have to be on the road,
I don't think.
I mean I think it's more about the journey of life, maybe.
And... and you can start that right here.
No.
No, I've got to see, I've got to do.
I've got to move, I've got to groove.
Away from the rumbling hooves
of suffocating mediocrity.
That's what you were thinking, wasn't it?
Oh, my God.
You're Jack Kerouac.
It's Jack Kerouac.
I was talking to a friend the other day about this very subject.
He was illuminating.
Like a thunderstorm at midnight.
And when I overheard your dilemma,
on my quest for a cup of coffee,
I couldn't help but be reminded of it, and other things.
On the wheel of life we all go around,
we are many people at many times.
We all go through phases of motion,
of ocean, of the notion of living on the edge.
Of life. Or of a continent.
But the road is not made of asphalt,
but of the people we meet.
And each of us is on a different journey.
And that's okay.
So sometimes it's okay to get off the road we ride on wheels
and just stay.
Something will come of it.
'Cause that's a world worth writing about, too.
Say... say, my man, how about that cup of coffee?
Well, I'll come back later, when it's hot.
Bye.
What did you say to him last night?
I guess more than I thought I did.
What?
I was just thinkin' that when... when he said "coffee"
it reminded me
that I wanted a cup of coffee more than I thought I did.
Which reminded me,
that Ernie still has a job opening here for someone.
Yes, indeed.
I mean, I, I really like having young folks here again.
Go on, take it.
Okay.
You got yourself a waitress.
All right.
A friend, too.
Ernie's still alive, so she probably helped him
through the news of his son's death.
She makes it as a novelist.
She's got a nice house in Carmel
with an incredible ocean view.
Thanks.
You're welcome.
And welcome home.
All right, just hold on to your pants.
Thank God, I thought you were...
Oh, no, not you.