Quantum Leap’s Family Style episode gives Ben closure on the death of his mother and Ian figures out that he is a future quantum leaper.
This week’s Quantum Leap episode is called Family Style. It revolves around an Indian restaurant whose owner has passed away recently and his wife Sonali Prasad and 2 daughters Kamini and Manisha are picking up shortly after that. The episode is set in the year 2009.
Scenes at an Indian restaurant
The episode starts with Ben leaping into the body of a young female cook at an Indian restaurant where Sonali is trying to hold on to the menu of her late husband Ram. Manisha however is of a different opinion. She thinks the restaurant can be more creative and exciting by offering local Indian dishes rather than catering to the masses.
Sonali disagrees and wants to continue the old way. Because, why change a winning team and because it is so hard to let go of her husband, who only recently passed away. Sonali and Manisha have been fighting over the new menu for ages now.
When Ben suggests entering the Groupon discount program, the two of them agree. The reservations pile up, and they will soon be at 200 reservations for the same day. It’s going to be a hectic day. Groupon offers discounts for anything you can think of. It was hugely popular back when it launched in the early 2000s.
Being indebted Family Style
This is about the time when Addison shows up. She informs Ben that tonight the restaurant will burn down and Sonali will die shortly after. Manisha will leave the restaurant business forever.
It’s up to Ben to stop all of that as he makes it his main mission. This the kind of Family Style where Ben shines. The human interest stories. The people who are in dire need of an angel, and Ben really is that angel.
As it turns out the Prasads owe about $30.000 to their landlord. The landlord is quite tacky and she threatens Ben behind the restaurant with a big guy choking him. This pretty much explains why the pressure is so high on the women. And why Sonali doesn’t want a new menu. It is too risky to introduce a new menu with so much at stake.
I could understand why she doesn’t want that. You could call it being conservative but paying off debt seems to be a priority before launching a new menu. And with 200 reservations, how could you even try a new menu? If it fails then you are out of business forever. But if you win, then you could be out of debt very quickly.
Manisha quits her job
But the tensions between Sonali and Manisha go so high that Manisha quits leaving behind only Ben and Sonali to cook for 300 guests. Since the Groupon also picked up. Warning Sonali that 300 is too much, she replies with: “So is $30.000…” And she is right but is it worth overextending yourself? I think not. This isn’t the family style we expected mid-episode.
On top of that Sonali also has RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) from doing the same work at the restaurant over and over. Which is an extra handicap when you are cooking for 300 people and she cut her hand. With bad luck like that, the uphill battle just became a mountain to climb rather than a hill.
Family Style also means being too stoic to accept help
While Ben tries to convince Sonali to get Manisha back to the restaurant, Sonali’s stoic reply is a no. She left and wants to do her own things. To be honest, I can’t actually wrap my head around this.
You know that it is going to be crowded at the restaurant and yet you run away because you can’t wait a couple of days with your own new menu. I mean, give your mother and sister a break.
Meanwhile, a few friends enter the restaurant and reach out to Sonali. But Sonali is too proud to accept their help. That doesn’t help either.
Ben tries to get an investor instead to help with the restaurant’s finances. The man agrees to come to the restaurant and hopefully, the investor can save everything. Ok so, I know it is a desperate time for everyone involved but why do they keep insisting on putting all eggs in one basket? If this is the family style, the Prasads are going for then I fear for the rest of the episode.
Ben goes out to find Mishani in order to convince her to help out anyway. The pressure is too great to cook for 300 people with only 2 cooks. Ben finds her at their father’s favorite pizza restaurant.
They chat and Ben asks if she wants to come back. But then Sonali is there as well. And there are fireworks, but not the kind you would expect. Sonali offers Mishani to have one of her new dishes. Just one and Mishani agrees to come back.
Finding hope after the restaurant burns down
The women reminisce about their father, Ram, and how he found that pizza was the epitome of the American kitchen. They have a laugh about the awesomeness of their father and it’s not long before they get back to the restaurant to start working on the busiest night of their life.
And just when they arrive, Kathy, the landlord, has lit the restaurant on fire. Telling the firemen that you can’t trust the foreigners, she intends to cash in on the insurance and still get the $30.000 from the family. So she cashes 2x. Which is really fraudulent. At this point, you can’t expect the police to suspect anything of fraud.
But Ben comes up with a brilliant plan and the night still happens. He gets a wedding venue and guests show up. The investor doesn’t, ironically he’s down with food poisoning.
The group of friends show up and offer to help in all kinds of ways. Financially, a new location for a restaurant, and one of them is a cop who will eventually arrest Kathy on grounds of fraud.
It is almost time to leap but Ben insists on having one last conversation. As we saw in the previous episode, Ben is hampered because he has pent-up anger from the death of his mother. Sonali is the surrogate mother in this episode and Ben tells her everything he wants to and eventually has closure of the death of his mother.
Meanwhile at Team Quantum Leap
Ian is confronted with the drawing of him made by the barista of the previous episode. Ian doesn’t recognize himself but rather thinks that it is him from the future who leaped into the barista.
This is interesting, it shows that time in the Quantum Leap universe is non-linear. Ian went back from the future to make Ben leap in order to save Addison’s life.
The question is what does this mean for the show? Will we see more of the current Team Quantum Leap traveling back and forth to help the team in the present? The non-linear time travel is a brilliant find of the writers and in line with quantum physics where time is merely an approach rather than something you can define. I am loving it!
It opens up an infinite amount of possibilities for both the Quantum Leapers and Quantum Reapers. I think that the Quantum Reapers are involved with the death of Addison and Ben’s been sent to fix that. But I also think that the recruitment of Ben is for something that’s bigger than the death of Addison and that she is just the catalyst for that.
All in all, I enjoyed the episode. As I have said many times before, Quantum Leap shines when it does human interest episodes. And this is a good one.
