Tuesday, 25 October 2016

Timeless Review: “Party at Castle Varlar”

The Spy Who Shoved Me
(This review contains spoilers!)

          So I assumed last week’s episode only existed to set up the plot this one. Well, I was sort of right, but ultimately the whole “A-bomb” plot only really existed to add tension. In the end, the villains only seem to be using it to power the time machine, which is a little disappointing.

          The episode itself, while better than last week’s by a longshot, was still not exactly up to the standards as set by the first two episodes. Lucy, Wyatt, and Rufus go back to Nazi Germany, and run into future James Bond author Ian Fleming. Together they try to stop the Nazis from installing the A-bomb in one of their rockets, giving them the firepower to win the war.

          So there’s a few problems I feel like I must address right off the bat. First off, a lot of the cinematography in this episode is laughably bad. There are not one, but two scenes of nothing but Lucy looking at herself in the mirror, while the cameraman has a field day. Zoom in, zoom out, go out of focus, back into focus, cut to a crying shot, cut back to a normal shot, super close zoom in, rinse and repeat. Thankfully the rest of the episode isn’t shot like this, but it’s incredibly distracting when it pops up.

          Secondly, I think the show has completely given up on the whole “your actions in the past have consequences in the future” thing that was so prevalent in the pilot. Remember how even the slightest change to the Hindenburg ended up changing Lucy’s life dramatically? Here they’re killing people left and right with reckless abandon, and nobody bats an eye. What if one of those people, after the Nazis fell, ended up being extremely significant to history?

          But I digress. The rest of the episode was decent, while still not reaching the heights of the Abe Lincoln episode. I liked the espionage element used as they spy around the Nazi launch pad, and how it tied back to Rufus’s current dilemma. Speaking of that, we haven’t had much context for exactly what he’s doing yet, have we? We know he’s recording stuff on their adventures for the secret organization that the villains are trying to destroy, but why? I’m guessing all the pieces will come together in time for the season finale, but I wish they focused a little more on this plot point.

          I think that the writers are currently trying to figure out what kind of show they want Timeless to be. It’s not taking itself seriously at all, but yet at the same time it’s trying to be big and dramatic with the characters and set pieces. You really need to decide on one or the other. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D takes itself seriously, but has a lot of lighthearted moments to keep things from getting too dark. Why can’t Timeless be like that? I can only hope that as the show continues, the showrunners get a better understanding of what Timeless is.

FINAL SCORE
5/10

Average

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