Al Calavicci
| Al Calavicci | |
|---|---|
| First appearance | "Genesis" (March 26, 1989) |
| Last appearance | "Mirror Image" (May 5, 1993) |
| Created by | Donald P. Bellisario |
| Portrayed by | Dean Stockwell |
| Information | |
| Full name | Albert Calavicci |
| Species | Human |
| Gender | Male |
| Title | Rear admiral |
| Occupation | Pilot Companion/Assistant to Dr. Sam Beckett |
| Family | Unnamed father (deceased) Unnamed mother Trudy Calavicci (sister, deceased) |
| Spouse | Beth Calavicci |
| Children | Four daughters; youngest is Janis Calavicci |
| Relatives | Jack (uncle), Stawpah (uncle), Trudy (sister) |
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Rear Admiral Upper Half Albert Calavicci, USN, is a fictional character on the 1989 to 1993 science fiction television series Quantum Leap, played by Dean Stockwell.
Biography[edit]
Al was born on June 15, 1934. His father, who worked in construction, immigrated from Abruzzo, Italy and his mother was a Russian immigrant. Al had a younger sister, Theresa "Trudy" Calavicci, who had Down syndrome. During his childhood, Al's mother left the family and married another man. His father tried to keep the family together, but when his work required him to move to the Middle East, he was forced to put Al into an orphanage and Trudy into a mental institution, which was common practice for the mentally handicapped in the 1940s. A few years later, Al's father returned and the family was reunited until Al's father developed a serious case of cancer. After the death of their father, Al and Trudy were once again sent to the orphanage and the institution, respectively.
Al was a troubled, but by no means dangerous, youth. To keep himself out of trouble, he explored many hobbies, including acting and boxing. Al speaks fluent Italian. At one point, Al ran away from the orphanage and lived on the road with an African-American pool shark, but after his mentor and friend was arrested, Al was returned to the orphanage. When Al was 19, he went to the mental institution so he could be reunited with his sister, but discovered that she had contracted pneumonia and died, likely due to the institution's negligence.
As a young man, Al joined the United States Navy, and became an officer and a Naval Aviator. Al was also a starting pitcher for the Navy Midshipmen where he once had the lowest earned run average in the league. His friend Chip Ferguson nicknamed him "Bingo" after a line he had used when caught with triplets. In 1957, Al had a brief relationship with a Navy trauma nurse, Lieutenant Lisa Sherman, who was already married. It was during this time that Al was accused of raping and murdering his commanding officer's wife (she had in fact been accidentally killed by Chip during consensual sex but he never came forward). Al was cleared when Sherman provided his alibi and was left heartbroken when she died later that day, and by the gossip people made about her. (One of Sam's leaps would later alter the timeline, preventing both Sherman's death and the wife's accidental killing.)
Later he met his first wife, Beth, a Navy Nurse Corps officer. Al and Beth were married, though due to various duty assignments, they spent little time together. It was during these years that Al would be involved in the Apollo Program and was a member of the crew of Apollo 8. Al also had become involved in the civil rights movement of the late 1950s and 1960s, going on marches and suffering beatings; he implied in "The Color of Truth" that he had been part of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march.
In the late 1960s, Al began a series of tours in the Vietnam War, and the distance between him and Beth started to put a strain on his marriage. In one mission, he saw Chip get shot down. In early 1969, Al was captured by the Việt Cộng and would be a prisoner of war until 1973. The torture he went through convinced him that there was a Devil. By the time of his release, the Navy had declared Al as missing in action and presumably killed in action; after a period of mourning, Beth remarried, which a heartbroken Al learned after his repatriation.
In the years that followed, Al would rise through the naval ranks, eventually becoming a rear admiral. Much of his later military career is unknown. The two-star flag rank is the highest permanent rank in the US military during peacetime, explaining how he is able to retain his naval rank while devoting the majority of his time to Project Quantum Leap. Over the years, he would marry four more times, each marriage ending in divorce, as he sought to fill the gap left behind by the great love of Al's life, Beth.
(His increasingly large backstory often gave him skills and knowledge that would be relevant to the latest episode. By the fourth season, the show would sometimes let Sam Beckett lampshade things, such as snapping "don't tell me you were a gunslinger in the Navy" in "The Last Gunfighter")
As his personal life started deteriorating, Al started to abuse alcohol. While working on the Starbright Project, Al first met Dr. Sam Beckett when, in a drunken rage, Al was beating up a vending machine. The two became fast friends, and Sam started to help Al turn his life around. Sam and Al became best friends over the years. When Sam was lost leaping around time; Al was Sam's constant companion and source of support, doing whatever he could to help Sam and at times, thinking of creative solutions to problems that Sam had not.
After the Starbright Project, Sam and Al worked together on Project Quantum Leap (PQL), a time travel experiment based on Sam's own theories about time and space. Apart from his role as Sam's observer/assistant, Al's specific role and responsibilities within PQL are never clearly discussed. Given Al's military status, it is likely that he occupies a senior leadership position within the project; possibly as a government liaison since he is seen attending government oversight and budget hearings petitioning for continued project funding. It is implied that Al has taken over day-to-day operational leadership of the project in Sam's absence.
While Al is intelligent and vastly experienced in many areas of life, the greatest asset he brings to Sam's various leaps is a fresh perspective to the problems he faces as well as providing valuable information and a source of emotional support to Sam. These things aside, Al has also proved himself capable in other ways. For example, when a killer Sam had leaped into and exchanged places with escaped the PQL facility and gotten into the nearby city; Al went after him and was able to subdue him successfully.
When Sam prematurely activated his time machine and was propelled into the past, it was Al's duty to remain in contact with him through holographic projections tuned into Sam's brainwaves (it was revealed over the course of the series that Al's hologram can also be seen and heard by animals, small children - who "see the truth" - and the mentally ill; one leap also saw them dealing with a man whose brainwaves were remarkably similar to Sam's own, allowing him to see Al and other holograms despite being a mentally stable adult, although he never saw Sam as anything other than Sam's current "host").
Over the next few years, Al worked with Sam, providing him with information from their historical database about the people that he was there to help, and lending Sam advice and moral support. Al also seems to be able to remember events the way they used to be after Sam has changed them. For example, when PQL was in danger of losing its government funding and leaving Sam in the past without assistance, Sam changed history so that the Senator in charge of the review was replaced by an older version of the woman Sam had saved because he had helped her pass her law exams on the first try by correcting her on an important piece of information. Al, in turn, showed surprise at this change when the original Senator was replaced by the new one, apparently remembering things the way they used to be.
During one of Sam's Leaps, Al tried to get Sam to change the fate of his marriage to Beth, but to no avail; indeed, Al's actions nearly endangered the person Sam was actually there to help, albeit through Al's ignorance rather than deliberate neglect as he simply never ran other scenarios.
At one point, Al and Sam's positions were switched, and Al leaped back in time to 1945. During this mission, Al was injured and placed in imminent danger, but Sam saved him by exchanging places with him again, replacing the unconscious Al with Sam's fully conscious self. During another leap, when circumstances required Al to pursue Sam's current host outside the Project, the system was briefly reprogrammed to allow technician Gooshie to serve as Sam's hologram in case he needed updates while Al was away, but the resulting projection was transparent and glitched until Al returned.
During one leap, Al revealed to Sam that he did not think gay men should be allowed into the military. The experiences of watching homophobic violence first-hand made Al change his mind and admit he had been wrong.
Though separated by decades, Sam and Al continued to work closely together until the people at Project Quantum Leap lost contact with Sam. In the series' final episode ("Mirror Image"), Sam is caught in a strange leap wherein he meets strangely parallel versions of people he had met on other adventures. The bartender likens the strong friendship between Sam and Al to that of Don Quixote and his trusted squire, Sancho Panza, saying that one would do anything for the other.
Also, in the final episode, Al describes his Uncle Stawpah, who worked as a coal miner. Sam had met Stawpah during the episode, but does not learn of the connection until the end when Stawpah, having saved two other miners from a cave-in, leaps out and disappears; as Al pointed out, his uncle had been dead for some time by now. One of the other miners also asks Sam how he could have known Stawpah. This is followed by the bartender revealing to Sam that he could control his leaping if he so chose; Sam leaps back to Beth and explains that Al was alive and would someday return home. This event changed Al's past as he and Beth would remain together and have four daughters. How the change affected his friendship with Sam, or if Sam and Al ever met or if/how Project Quantum Leap was affected remains unclear.
In the revival, Al is mentioned to have died in 2021, in reference to Stockwell's death in real life. When Doctor Ben Song, the new head of Project Quantum Leap, starts time-travelling himself, the remaining staff speculate that his unknown partner is Janis, one of Al's daughters, who was rejected for a position in the project as her emotional ties to Al and Sam made her a potential liability.
Alternative Project Quantum Leap[edit]
In one episode, Sam leaps into Al himself at an earlier period, when Al is on trial for the rape and murder of a commander's wife. Although in the original history, Al was acquitted, Sam's actions cause the case to begin turning against Al when he prevents a key witness from testifying because he believes he is there to stop her from ruining her life (since Al was spending time with his younger self, he failed to inform Sam that it didn't matter what the witness did as she was later killed in a car crash after testifying). Partway through the episode, when Ziggy projects that the odds are 100% that Al will be convicted and executed, Al disappears mid-sentence and is replaced by a man named Edward St. John (with only Sam remembering that Al was the Observer), who reports that "Ensign Calavicci" was convicted and executed for the murder.
In this new continuity, the staff at Project Quantum Leap appeared less emotionally involved with Sam's various hosts—it is implied that they have little to no contact with the leaper, and Sam and Edward have no apparent connection beyond a professional relationship; Edward even calls Sam "Samuel," a name that Sam hasn't been called since he last saw his great-aunt. Other differences include Ziggy now being known as "Alpha" and Tina and Gooshie being married. Fortunately, as soon as the odds jump back to 80% in favor of Al surviving—after Sam discovers a cigar in the car where the murder was committed; Al didn't smoke cigars at this point, so he couldn't have left it there—Al is restored, with only Sam remembering that Edward St. John was ever even there. This confirms that PQL would still exist without Al, though it would be radically different from the project as we know it.
Personal relationships[edit]
Al is known as quite a womanizer on the show, and has been so for years. When Sam asked if Al had enjoyed being sixteen because that was when he lost his virginity, Al made it clear that he was offended at the idea that it had taken him that long to lose his virginity. He constantly talks about his five former wives, current girlfriend, and various other conquests, occasionally attributing his surprising knowledge of things, such as Jewish customs, by claiming that he learned them from his wives (humorously sometimes forgetting exactly which wife provided him with the relevant knowledge).
The first wife, Beth, was a naval nurse. She and Al honeymooned at Niagara Falls. She loves Calla lilies, Mexican food and Ray Charles' "Georgia On My Mind". When Al was reported missing in Vietnam she had the Navy declare him dead after two years and remarried lawyer Dirk Simon (Al returned to the States seven years later).
The second wife was Hungarian and liked to throw small appliances at Al. That is all we ever find out about her.
The third wife, Ruthie, and Al also honeymooned at Niagara Falls. Ruthie was Jewish and her father owned a funeral parlor. At one point she charged Al with emotional abuse for singing the song "Volare" in his sleep.
The fourth wife, Sharon, wore pink babydolls. She would cut Al's meat for him, which is the reason he gives when he says he is a vegetarian. She also gained their dog, Chester, in their divorce.
The fifth wife, Maxine, and Al met at a tattoo parlor in Jersey City. Maxine tried to be both a professional roller derby girl and an ice skater but was unsuccessful. They also honeymooned at Niagara Falls. The marriage ended when Al accused her of cheating even though she hadn't. In the end, she ended up running off with the bricklayer whom Al accused her of cheating with anyway. In "A Hunting We Will Go", Al compared Diane, the woman Sam's host was taking back for trial, to Maxine, stating that the two women were practically identical.
Other women Al mentions being with during the series include a girl named Danessa while he was at M.I.T., a girl named Martha he met at a Lakers game, a girl named Brenda who works on Project Quantum Leap in the coding department, a girl named Denise who wants to write his life story, another co-worker named Louise whom he encounters at a Project Quantum Leap Christmas Party, a stewardess named Oolie, an Egyptian girl who thinks she is the reincarnation of Cleopatra, he mentions making out with Hannah Gretz in the 4th grade and taking Myra Poinchik to an abandoned house in his neighborhood that was supposedly haunted, had a fling with a beauty queen while in flight school who was named Ms. Flight Gunner 1955, he had a serious relationship with a married naval nurse named Lt. Lisa Sherman in 1957.
During the show he gives many references to his current girlfriend in 1999, Tina, who also works on Project Quantum Leap. They met over a Las Vegas poker table. She does leave Al at one point in the show, having a fling with Gooshie, the Project Quantum Leap programmer, but eventually goes back to Al.
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