Date of airing: November 21, 2016 (NBC)
Nielsen ratings information: 4.714 million viewers, 3.0/5 in Households, 1.17/4 with Adults 18-49, 0.7/3 with Adults 18-34, 1.6/5 with Adults 25-54
After half a baker’s dozen episodes, the writers have come to realize that Connor and Jiya were main characters as well. Finally, they were given some screentime, and their appearances were meaningful as well, now that the writers have given Connor something else to do than being the mysterious boss in the background, and turned Jiya into someone with more to do than sitting in front of a computer and be the scientist or tech guy or whatever position she is occupying in this practical office of Mason Industries. And with Jiya being part of Rufus’s life now, even if just romantically, he has something to fight for from this episode on. Lucy wants to get Amy back, Wyatt wants to get Jessica back, and Rufus, who didn’t have anything in that regard before, now wants to get back to Jiya every time, which means he will put even more effort into the missions, turning him into an even greater fighter when the occasion arises. It will have the positive outcome of Rufus being less of a bitchy person in nature, although that character trait has been amusing so far and is bringing diversity into the three-headed group of time travelers trying to keep history from breaking apart.
It was a pretty good episode, though it seemed a bit easy that the trio was able to get home after it seemed awfully obvious they were stranded in the past. I can’t imagine that just patching the hole in the side of the lifeboat was everything Rufus needed to do to get the machine back in action, and it surprises me that the French were continuously shooting at the lifeboat and not seriously damaging it at all, while one of Flynn’s men needed just one shot at one precise spot to damage it. Granted, some explosives helped in that regard, but my point still stands: Many bullets can’t harm the lifeboat, but one small explosion can? Second, Rufus considered the damage as “heavy,” which in my dictionary means “serious.” Yet, it took him only one trip to a French fort to get the things he needed for a little fixer-upper, one hour (probably) of being a blacksmith with no experience, and in-between, the French were able to track them to the fort and back to the lifeboat... And I wonder whether the trio was stranded for three days or something or maybe even longer, or if the writers didn’t care enough to establish a more realistic timeline in which Wyatt, Lucy, and Rufus had to survive.
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| What's the message of the past saying? |
I mean, they were stranded for days, maybe even a week. I guess they could have hunted an animal and eaten it to survive, for this episode to prove that the characters indeed had to be survivalists for a while and not just for an off-camera scene. It was part of a dialogue exchange between Rufus and Wyatt, but that exchange was written into the script to make Rufus sound nuts and angry again, and I never thought the characters (and therefore the writers) were taking the survivalist part of the premise seriously. And it could have been a great premise for this hour, instead of easily going into a plot that had Rufus fix up a heavily damaged ship within seconds, while also following protocol. I loved that part, by the way – it reminded me of the second TimeRiders novel, although in it, the message had to survive a couple of tens of millions of years to reach the present timeline. It didn’t just need to be buried in a suburban neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Also, I would really love to see a screen adaptation of TimeRiders one day. I am kind of surprised no one has done it yet.
This episode had something of an issue, however. Nonhelema (whom I have never heard of before – Wikipedia, here I come) was seemingly easily persuaded into letting those English-speaking people live, even after she and her clan came to realize that pretty much every non-Indian was ready to kill them without hesitation. The Natives were in the middle of a war with technologically advanced people from the other side of the ocean, but she let those two white people and one black man go free, just because the black man, whom Nonhelema considered a slave (they knew about that concept and knew that the Americans were living it?), was telling them that he was, in fact, not a slave. Wyatt, Lucy, and Rufus’ capture was a nice idea to have them share moments of joy and fear of death in a bleak situation, but the entire story, which came out of nowhere and then disappeared into nowhere again, should have been more meaningful. Maybe the capture should have been the only premise in the episode, besides the trio getting stranded. Maybe there was more meaning behind the premise of Lucy having to connect to a chieftainess of history, introducing the person of Nonhelema to the audience a little better. While I was happy to see that most of the capture was used to paint a more complex picture of the characters and make them more approachable for the viewers, all of it looked like a story that was rather put into the script to fill airtime with, when the writers should have focused on turning it into the main storyline.
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| If you get stuck in the past, start making a career as a brewer. |
In the meantime, Jiya and Connor were sharing some emotional moments in the present timeline as well. This means this was the first episode in which the writers decided to follow up on the present timeline while the trio was on a mission, telling the audience that both timelines happen somewhat simultaneously. Maybe they should do that more often, now that they made human characters out of the two most important people in Mason Industries, proving that they are irreplaceable. Jiya and Rufus’s kiss at the end was a nice moment to create a shipping nickname for Tumblr and the rest of social media (Ruya? Jifus?), as well as a reason for the younger viewers to stay engaged with the series, in addition to giving them a sexy and action-packed history adventure hour.
