King of the Mild Frontier
(This review contains
spoilers!)
After watching this episode, I think I’ve
found the perfect analogy for what Timeless has become in the weeks since the
pilot. Think of it as the shell of a Ferrari. It looks really pretty and flashy,
but once you open up the hood, you’ll find there’s nothing going on inside.
You’d think that a trip back to the
Alamo would be the set for a real game changing episode. One of the biggest
bloodbaths in American history should really
shake things up with our characters, or at least give them some new conflicts,
right?
Nope.
The Alamo is yet another inconsequential episode in the long run, just as the Abe
Lincoln, Vegas, and Nazi Germany episodes didn’t have any lasting consequences
before it. For those keeping track at home, only one episode thus far has had
any lasting impact on our characters, that being the pilot. It’s hard to take a
show like this seriously when it’s clearly trying
to have an overarching plot, when ultimately everything just seems
episodic.
But onto the episode itself, Timeless
continues to shine in what it does best, that being the costumes and set
design. It really does feel like the time period of Davey Crockett, with
cowboys and adventure around every turn. Add in the growing dread of the armies
outside and the inevitability of what happens at the Alamo, plus some brewing
internal conflict with Wyatt, and you’d think this would be an exciting
episode.
Which, again, brings me back to my
first point. Timeless seems to be fighting tooth-and-nail to ensure that no fun
is had. Regardless of what our trio does in the past has little to no major repercussions
in present day. Fortunately, they don’t do anything here as egregious as last
week’s episode where they killed dozens of World War II soldiers, so that’s an
improvement. But as I said last week, it’s still immensely frustrating to have
each episode continue to have little to no lasting impact on the characters or
the world around them, especially after the first episode made it blatantly
clear that even the smallest change can have very significant effects.
Wyatt is the central character this
episode, and I really wish he was written better. Matt Lanter is a great actor,
and he’s doing the best he can with the script he’s been given. The showrunners
have pulled out every clichéd “old soldier” trope in the books in an attempt to
make us like this guy (including a dead family member and him losing his entire
squad) but it all fails miserably because he’s a completely unlikeable
character. Lucy’s big speech to him at the end of the episode about how she
needs him because she’s the only one she can trust rings completely hollow once
you realize that no one in their right mind would trust this guy! All he’s done
is go out of his way to mess up the timeline (but considering how little things
have changed in the past four episodes, maybe he knows it doesn’t matter) in
his single-minded pursuit of Flynn.
I really, really wanted to like this
episode, and in many respects I did. The set design and costumes were great as
usual, as were the actors. Ultimately, though, Timeless fails when it comes to
the backbone of the show, that being the overall story. You could miss this
episode with nothing having been lost, considering Wyatt’s story arc wraps up
before the episode concludes, and Lucy and Rufus’s arcs continue to only inch
forward at a snail’s pace. Perhaps because this episode aired on Halloween they
didn’t want it to have much of an impact, but that’s not an excuse after three
episodes of barely any plot development. If Timeless doesn’t give us something
new soon, I fear this show may become ancient history.
FINAL SCORE
4/10
Mediocre
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