This was the original intro narration for the first season and a half of Quantum Leap. It’s a bit of breathtakingly clunky copy that reads like it was dashed off by a hungover PA while Scott Bakula waited impatiently in a recording booth:
It all started when a time travel experiment I was conducting went…”a little caca”. In the blink of a cosmic clock, I went from quantum physicist to Air Force test-pilot. Which could have been fun…if I knew how to fly. Fortunately, I had help – an observer from the project named Al. Unfortunately, Al’s a hologram, so all he can lend is moral support. Anyway, here I am, bouncing around in time, putting things right that once went wrong, a sort of time traveling Lone Ranger, with Al as my Tonto. And I don’t even need a mask… (“Oh Boy”)
Yes, it’s pretty egregious to use the phrase “a little caca” in the very first line of a primetime network show supposedly aimed at adults. And yes, that “Fortunately/Unfortunately” couplet is the stuff of grade school forensics. But I think maybe the worst offense is starting the sixth sentence with “Anyway,”— the prose equivalent of the writer shrugging and going “Welp, I got nothing here.”
“Anyway”?! In a professionally written/produced intro? Did no one ever bother to RE-READ THIS??? Because there’s a very good reason Law & Order doesn’t open up with: “In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. Anyway, these are their stories.”
“ANYWAY”?!
Oh boy.
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