Oh, the humanity!
(This review contains
spoilers!)
Surprisingly, I’m not the type of guy
who watches every new show that starts up in the Fall. I usually just pick one
or two that interest me and go with that. The new show that caught my attention
the most this season had to be Timeless. As I’ve said before, time travel can
be a hit or miss for me. More often than not, I have to suspend my disbelief to
enjoy a show like this, because there’s so many easy outs if the concept isn’t
properly thought out.
While it’s not perfect (not by a long
shot), the first episode of Timeless is a fun adventure through the day the
Hindenburg crashed. The plot is that a terrorist has stolen a time machine, and
is travelling through the past, changing history for his own sinister
machinations. So the team that built the time machine has sent a strike team of
three after him, using a prototype they built.
The characters are unfortunately the
weakest part of the show thus far. The female lead is fun and the terrorist is
very interesting, but the other two major characters never really get off the
ground. As interesting as it is to see a black man having to deal with racism
in the 20th century, he can get a bit annoying at times. And as
for our male lead, he’s the stereotypical “retired soldier with a sad past”.
There’s nothing much unique about him. However, he’s quickly propelled from boring
to insufferable, once you realize he doesn’t care whether he changes history or
not. He’s going around, flirting with important historical figures, trying to
save this one lady from the path of the Hindenburg, and when he’s confronted
about this, he’s just like “eh, accidents happen”. Yeah, accidents like causing
the Hindenburg to survive an extra day.
I do like that the characters can’t
return to any past events they’ve already visited, due to the dangers of
meeting themselves. Apparently showing a 1930’s era guard a modern day pistol
and telling him about Michael Jordan and Barack Obama is okay for the
space-time continuum, but I think they’re kind of making up their own rules for
this one.
Although the actual meat of the
episode can be pretty weak at times, the first episode establishes some plot
threads that are interesting enough to warrant continuing. Plus, it’s pretty
clearly demonstrated before the end of the episodes that their actions can have
severe future consequences, which ultimately makes that male lead even more
frustrating with just how ignorant he is.
I’m looking forward to seeing exactly
where they take this concept, because there’s a really good idea here. If they develop
the characters more (and hopefully drop the male lead not giving a crap),
Timeless could turn out to be something really special.
FINAL SCORE
7/10
Good
No comments:
Post a Comment