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