Date of airing: November 28, 2016 (NBC)
Nielsen ratings information: 4.778 million viewers, 3.0/5 in Households, 1.10/4 with Adults 18-49, 0.6/3 with Adults 18-34, 1.5/4 with Adults 25-54
It was no accident that this episode and HIDDEN FIGURES were released around the same time, highlighting Katherine Johnson’s life at NASA and her importance in the space race. Maybe TIMELESS wanted to make sure that the unsung heroes of American history were portrayed adequately, even if the way they were portrayed was mostly fictional and the future they were living in was mostly different. Okay, a movie about Katherine Johnson does exist in our real life as well, but I am pretty sure she was more famous for her county-saving deeds in the new TIMELESS timeline than in ours – another manipulation of historic events that led to a butterfly effect in the present timeline.
And this time around I was wondering if Katherine’s front-page save of the Apollo mission would have been a lot more important for history than it would have without Anthony trying to kill the astronauts on the Moon. Because if 1970s children were aware of Katherine Johnson and what she did to save the mission, chances are some of them would have decided to live their dreams and change the world just as she did. And some of these people would have changed the world (just look at Rufus). It would have made Katherine a cornerstone in history, and while I accept that someone like Katherine would not be that huge of a cornerstone (only people who declared war on the world are), I would have accepted that the world looked at least a little different with Katherine’s fame in the 1970s. CSI brought people to forensic science, and jobs were filled. BONES brought people to anthropology, and jobs were filled. These are just two TV shows that changed the market of science a tiny bit. Give someone like Katherine Johnson attention in scripted media, and maybe rocket science will fill jobs.
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| How boring are Moon landings when two random people are fighting during one? |
Anyway, it was a somewhat good episode. I am a sucker for all things related to the space program and the exploration of the solar system and the universe, and for a time in my young teens, I was even obsessed with the Apollo program, thanks to one famous movie titled APOLLO 13. Unfortunately, the episode never really got into it all because it focused too much on the individual parts: Rufus connecting with Katherine to save the astronauts, Flynn doing whatever he was doing, and Wyatt being a passive FBI agent on a mission. I would have hoped that a lot more chaos was to be seen in the control room, considering Houston lost contact with the astronauts, and there was a chance they might die, so Nixon was using his chance to televise his infamous “the mission went bad” speech. I had hoped that the world would be glued to their television sets and follow the news because the Eagle landed, and then the astronauts were about to die. But people were out on the streets, playing with their kids in the park, getting some ice cream. This episode never seemed to have gone into how much of a historic event the Moon landing was to the people in this particular timeline, because people were barely glued to their TV sets and watching the landing.
Yes, they were following some of the news, but it never seemed to be traumatic. A kid like Gabriel, who should be fascinated by all this stuff, was rather interested in playing in the park all by himself, getting ice cream, and getting stung by a bee. Even someone like Maria, who works for a defense contractor and was interested in building machines that would give other people a chance for their own moonshot, was not interested at all in the Moon landing. I find it peculiar that the world in TIMELESS was not crazy about what was happening here. Then again, maybe there were not enough extras to show the Moon craze America had on June 20, 1969.
I was also surprised to find out that Flynn was putting Anthony in charge to destroy Apollo 11, and left him in charge after he learned from Anthony that their pursuers have followed them as well. Flynn knew about Anthony and Rufus’ past, so he should have expected that Rufus might get through to Anthony at some point. Granted, it did not happen in this episode, and Anthony seemed more traumatized about time travel than expected (why though? Did he travel into the future and see the darkness of time travel and decide it would have been best if time travel had never been invented?), but Flynn taking a step back in this mission tells some things about what might be going on: Flynn turned Anthony (or so he thinks he has). Anthony is super traumatized and bought into Flynn’s anti-Rittenhouse agenda. Flynn’s nameless goons were pushing Anthony like he was either a hostage or a conflicted villain in the making, and Anthony was pretty much unable to do anything well. The latter sounds extremely dumb, since Flynn’s men cannot even protect themselves against the bullets that fly from either Wyatt or Rufus’ gun, but this episode made sure that Anthony became a central figure in the fight against Flynn. Though I would have wished for Anthony to either tell what Rittenhouse wanted to do with the time machine (I guess Mason Industries is under Rittenhouse leadership?), or for Rufus to kill Anthony and end that story. But neither twist happened, because the writers still wanted to use the angle of Rufus being Anthony’s protege.
Plus, Rufus not feeling anything after killing a person was not a surprise for me. It’s an emotional response that most characters have in scripted TV shows when they kill for the first time, but are supposed to be the heroes of the show. And this episode went past that, simply because the writers couldn’t waste time in having Rufus live through nightmares about killing people. It is not the tone of the series.
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| This is the handshake of a generation. |
Meanwhile, Flynn continued to be humanized in the show, and this time around he did not kill a person, but he saved someone. Halfway through the episode, I figured that Gabriel might have been Flynn (yes, I forgot about the “rule” that you cannot travel back to a time in which you already existed), and the trip to 1969 was just Flynn’s way to meet his mother, so when Gabriel was revealed as Flynn’s half-brother, I was not that disappointed. It was a predictable twist, but it was also one that furthered his character. Wyatt saw with his own eyes that Flynn saved someone, so he follows an agenda that was not just all about destroying America. It might be a good starting-off point for Wyatt to try and follow Flynn in the present. Because if he cannot capture him on the missions through time, maybe the present has to be the battlefield for the two men.
