Date of airing: March 18, 2018 (NBC)
Nielsen ratings information: 2.847 million viewers, 1.7/3 in Households, 0.7/3 with Adults 18-49, 0.4/2 with Adults 18-34, 1.0/3 with Adults 25-54
written by: Jim Barnes
directed by: Olatunde Osunsanmi
I started to realize something during this episode, and I wondered if the writers realized the same: Rittenhouse sent agents deep into the history of the United States between before its independence and the 1970s, waiting to be called for whatever suicide mission Rittenhouse decided to activate them for. Considering that Flynn was hunting down Rittenhouse during his big mission in the previous season by traveling through time to kill each and every one of them, it begs the question if Abraham Lincoln was somehow involved in Rittenhouse, which is why Flynn felt it necessary to kill Lincoln. If Flynn was all about eradicating Rittenhouse from history, why did he need to do so by taking John Wilkes Booth's position and pulling the trigger on the 16th president of the United States?
I barely have “The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln” in my memory banks (which is weird, because it was not that long ago when I watched it for the purpose of this blog), but could it be that Lincoln was just another Rittenhouse agent, planted in the 1800s and waiting for a call-up from the higher-ups, and took the opportunity and time to become a prominent and popular politician to be elected president one day? Was his assassination a suicide mission? Does it all make sense in hindsight, after the writers established what Rittenhouse's plan really is this season, and how the logic functions with earlier episodes? Because I am starting to believe that the writers did not quite know what to make of Rittenhouse in the previous season, and now that they did, some retconning was necessary. Not to mention that you do not make one of the most popular historical persons in the history of the country the enemy of a fictional band of villains. That is one of the unwritten rules of scripted television after all.
 |
| For white folks in the 1950s, all black folks look the same |
The episode was okay. I am starting to get bored again, because, at some point, I will not give a damn about the time travel aspect, since the trips to the past continue to be made for cheap because of budget cuts. It was pretty obvious that the TIMELESS version of 1955 was only shot in a dusty and sandy field, with a couple of garages set up as standing sets, and cars borrowed from collectors (probably) with their stunt drivers who were hired for most TV shows and movies – it did not look that complicated for this episode to be set in 1955, which means the attention of this episode had to be refocused on the characters, and when it comes to that, the episode succeeded.
Granted, the stories of Ryan (a fictional character) and Wendell (a real-life person whose history I quickly sped through on Wikipedia) were not interesting to me either, thanks to the fact that I do not care about the racing sport or the people involved with it, but the twist of Ryan being a Rittenhouse agent was neat, while the story of African-American Wendell Scott in 1950s Southern United States is intriguing enough to warrant a television movie of sorts, or something in the realm of 42, the Chadwick Boseman-led film about Jackie Robinson. Plus, the writers managed to create an emotional bond between Wyatt and Wendell, and hearing them talk about their fathers was quite refreshing, in the sense of the show wanting to become more character-focused and give their people a meaningful backstory. I do not mind if the stories become less about the era the trio travels to, and more about how the characters deal with what they have to go through, and how certain real-life personalities fictionalized for this series see the world from a point of view set in a progressive present.
Because really, at some point, traveling through time like that must crack the team. All this time, Rufus has to deal with racism, and the constant fear of being snatched unexpectedly and lynched, because a situation like the 12th Street riots in Detroit 1968 can not be that far away for someone like Rufus, a special agent sent from the future to save the world. At one point, the missions simply have to affect the characters emotionally and physically, or you do not even need the missions any longer, because all they are good for is the main premise of the show (teaching the audience about American history in an entertaining and fictionalized way), but why should I care about what is happening on screen when I am unable to care about the characters? You could see in this episode that the writers really tried to get more focus on the characters, especially on Lucy and Wyatt's romance, although at the end of the day, the premise of the episode was still the frontrunner, and the trio still went into action mode to save the day.
By the way, I have no idea if it was Emma's plan to kill the automobile CEOs with that kamikaze mission, because it sounded like a stupid-ass mission. First of all, you would not even need a suicide driver to kill a bunch of CEOs, because future technology would get you much closer to those rich white guys, and a bomb from the future would get through security undetected. Plant it under their seats, and voila. Not to mention: Just have an assassin with a good rifle snipe them from afar. Secondly, I am unsure that this small bomb would have even created havoc the way Wyatt predicted it would. I was sitting here and thinking that Ryan's death would prove something, that it would change the minds of the CEO's about something somehow, manipulating the history of the automobile industry of America, which Rittenhouse could then take over. And that result of Emma's plan sounds too convoluted to have been a real plan, when there are much easier ways to take over the automobile industry. Just have one of your sleeper agents rise to become a CEO, and you do not even need to kill anyone with a bomb.
 |
| Sorry to interrupt your love story, but we have a bomb to find and diffuse. |
And finally, there was all the present stuff in-between the Daytona stuff, ad I am close to forgetting all about it. Connor's story felt like it was here to give the character screentime and to fill the remaining episode minutes with material, because no one wanted to focus on Jiya. That means Jiya's problems are undefined as of yet, and I could almost be sure that not even the writers knew what she was going through at this stage of the show. Does she flash into the past and future, or are what she experiences visions? Either her mind travels through time and the writers will use it to advance the science-fiction plot, or there is absolutely nothing going on and Jiya is secretly just another weird character with a complex backstory ready to be unveiled. So why even wait for that reveal? Is Jiya not the only interesting plot device at the moment anyway? I mean, if her mind can travel through time, I would definitely want to know more about that. Screw the missions of the week! Focus on Jiya instead!
