Date of airing: February 13, 2017 (NBC)
Nielsen ratings information: 2.993 million viewers, 2.0/4 in Households, 0.69/3 with Adults 18-49, 0.3/2 with Adults 18-34, 1.0/3 with Adults 25-54
written by: Matt Whitney, Anslem Richardson
directed by: Guy Ferland
It was a better episode than the previous ones. An element of a famous person in history that I have never known came to light for me (like Al Capone having a brother who was a cop, although that could have been an invention the writers came up with just for this episode), the writers created some tense drama in both timelines (gunshot wounds in the past, evil corporations running time travel programs in the present), and Connor Mason’s idea of tracking every single human being on this planet with a little bit of help from seemingly future tech has been so clumsily established that it was funny as heck – all storylines that brought me some fun.
I have to say that the show has been developing nicely for the past couple of episodes. Mason embraces being the villain at this point and even decided to “pressure” Rittenhouse to do his own bidding, so that he can get his hand on very fancy tech and probably get into Rittenhouse’s good graces that way (in return, he will most likely ask to run the new spy program), Jiya decided it was best to be the silent hero in the background and risks her life to help her boyfriend and her friends (by assembling a computer, crashing an entire factory, and then disassembling the same computer to erase all evidence), not to mention that the NSA is involved in this mess now, and I am not sure they want to continue being involved in it when it us revealed that they are as evil as Rittenhouse. Or maybe they are involved because they are as evil as Rittenhouse. Edward Snowden was right all along.
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| Lucy and her pistol are taking charge of this mission. |
The episode began in an attractive way. When Neville came with the mission to execute Flynn’s mother, I was already thinking how this episode was about to mirror “Karma Chameleon,” but I was surprised to see that Rufus was able to put the assassin to sleep and immediately jump back into the present to team up with Agent Christopher and Liam. Basically, the trip to Houston 1962 was only a five-second trip, turning the time and location header on screen into a hilarious fakeout, especially considering that the episode did not use a location and time header for the trip to 1930s Chicago at all. It was even more of a funny sidestep because the episode’s “Previously on” part mentioned Flynn’s mother, meaning that the hour must have been partly about the character. But in the end, the writers tricked us all, and the story was killed as fast as the idea to kill someone’s mother in the past came to be. Although I wonder what Flynn will be thinking when he learns that Rittenhouse wanted to go after his mother, and Wyatt, Lucy, and Rufus were not having it, because no innocent human should be the target. Except you are Skynet, then it is okay to travel to the past to kill a 19-year-old woman who is destined to become the mother of the resistance leader.
I am getting annoyed by Flynn at this point of the show though. He has one goal and one goal only, and that is stopping Rittenhouse, but this has stopped to explain why he is doing what he is doing in the first place. Trying to screw up America and her history, and burning it down to the ground by majorly changing history seems like it was not part of the anti-Rittenhouse plan, and instead just the original premise of the show the writers developed before they had the idea of Rittenhouse running the show in all timelines. In this episode, Flynn only had one mission: to get some answers about a Rittenhouse meeting. But if this episode had been one of the first few of the series, Flynn would have assisted Al Capone in doing whatever he wanted to do, and they would have loved each other for being so criminal and evil. Yet after three handfuls of episodes, Flynn just needed Capone to get to the Mayor of Chicago to ask him some questions, which, by the way, Flynn could have had access to in any way imaginable. He is from the future, he could have gotten the Mayor out of his office at any given time. Flynn’s interest in changing America still seems big though, but I cannot understand why it would be anymore. Why is there no difference between Flynn changing American history and wanting to stop Rittenhouse, so that his family never gets killed? Because I do not see these two goals together at all, they could not be more different from one another. Maybe TIMELESS should have changed the premise halfway into the season, because changing history this drastically cannot just be a thing Flynn shrugs off like he just ran over a bird with his car. By the way, where is the butterfly effect?
I never knew about Al Capone’s family history, and I kind of liked the idea of his big brother taking him down, but I would have loved to see the story taking the more deserved turn and getting Capone to jail, which might have helped establish Jimmy as not only a good cop, but as a righteous man. That Capone would just be shot and killed this easily seems a bit easy though, and not just because there were five guns in the room. One gun was in Capone’s hand and two in Frank’s, while Wyatt and Jimmy each had one gun as well. But it was Wyatt who easily shot Frank (who apparently never pulled the trigger when Capone got shot), and not before Jimmy shot Capone – it was something of an absurd “shootout” scene, and it ended quite conveniently. Plus, it is almost certain that Capone dying here will not change history at all, which the writers kind of cleverly constructed, considering he was supposed to be in prison anyway and his days as Chicago’s greatest criminal were already over.
But hey, Rufus got shot in the two-second chaos, so there is that. It did lead to a nice cliffhanger that almost created uncertainty as to where the lifeboat will land with Rufus being unconscious and unable to navigate the time machine, although it is clear where the next episode will begin. Somehow, they will land safely in the present and off they go on their next adventure, because in TIMELESS, there can never be an episode not attempting to go into a lesson about American history.
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| The new and revised Untouchables go for the big fish. |
Meanwhile, in the present timeline, Jiya became a mechanic and an electrician in no time, managing to build a computer in her little cell, able to hack into Mason Industries and shut it down with only a few strokes, because the NSA and Mason were dumb enough to lock her in a room with a bunch of spare parts for computers. It was kind of funny how easy it was for Jiya to do it, but I loved Mason’s pissed-off face when his lab went down a second time, and he knew exactly what was going on. His plan to get the NSA server farm sounded like the writers were about to push the show towards more of a spy thriller written a la ALIAS or PERSON OF INTEREST, and I am not sure if a time travel show is suited for an idea like this. Also, I cannot believe that Mason would use Ben Cahill and the connection to Rittenhouse to get what he wants, without thinking about the legacy he built for himself or thinking about what Cahill is going to do as soon as he controls the time machine. It cannot be that he has no problems seeing Rufus get killed by Rittenhouse, or Jiya getting tortured for being a rebel. Does Mason have no friends among the people who have not been Rittenhouse, or is he just out for power as well? If it is the latter, then he can die in the finale and I will not cry a tear after him.
