The Great Escape
(This review contains
spoilers!)
As the impending threat of Rittenhouse
(as well as the end of the season) looms closer and closer, it’s time for our
heroes to choose what side they want to be on, while at the same time
continuing their trips into history.
And what a great job this episode does
at painting the morally gray area Lucy finds herself in right now. Joining up
with Flynn is obviously still a big no-no, but she’s also torn after the
meeting with her father and having him tell her she’s a member of Rittenhouse
whether she likes it or not. Obviously she doesn’t want to join this alliance
of people who just want to screw up everything for everybody and remake history
in her image, leaving her between a rock and a hard place. Does she team up
with Flynn to try and stop Rittenhouse, or continue following Flynn in the time
machine and try to salvage as much of history as she can?
Those are questions that will be
answered…probably some other time, because this episode was mostly the
characters coming to grips with Rittenhouse worming its way into their daily
lives. Things are even worse back at home base, as Rittenhouse agents have
taken full control of everything involving the time machine, going so far as to
remove Agent Christopher from the operation, which at this point is basically
the most unforgivable thing they could do.
Wyatt is still being held prisoner after
his actions last week, so this week Lucy and Rufus are being accompanied by a
new soldier as they chase Flynn back to 1920’s Paris. I think his name was Dave?
Honestly, his name doesn’t really matter, because all he did was comment about
how cool time travel was, stand around for a bit, and then halfway through the
episode walk out into the middle of a firefight that he instigated like an
idiot and die. He didn’t serve much of a purpose except for a bit of
unintentional humour with how useless he was, and the episode probably could’ve
been made without him.
As always, the team met up with
several important figures from history who they need to interact with. Most
important this week is Charles Lindbergh, the guy who made the first transatlantic
flight and also a budding Rittenhouse member. Flynn was able to put an early
stop to his flight (through some of the worst CGI we’ve seen out of Timeless
yet, I honestly don’t know what went wrong there) and kidnapped him, leading
Lucy and Rufus to follow him back in time and try to figure out what he wants
with Lindbergh.
Less interesting is them teaming up
with Ernest Hemingway, who spends the episode both very drunk and very
annoying. He doesn’t do much except pop in and out of scenes adding his two
cents to conversations, and then encourage Rufus through a speech at the
climax. Maybe that’s historically accurate to what Hemingway was like, but I
just found him to be a nuisance the entire episode.
While Rufus and Hemingway are
searching for Flynn in an abandoned warehouse, Flynn’s goons kidnap Lucy and
take her to Flynn and Lindbergh. Lucy convinces him to let her talk to
Lindbergh to try and convince him to leave Rittenhouse and live his own life.
It’s a good scene that follows up Lucy’s story of her dealing with her father’s
identity and her legacy. Unfortunately it turns out that Lindbergh didn’t
actually listen to her, continuing on to be a major loser in his later life.
Meanwhile, Agent Christopher helps
Wyatt escape his prison and he rejoins the team at the end of the episode. There’s
really not much to say about that storyline except that it’s a thing that
happened.
The most interesting thing we saw this
week is the very tail end of the episode. As mentioned before, Lucy’s been
grappling with who’s side she wants to be on all day, and her mother notices
how much stress she’s under. She gives her a journal to write her thoughts down
in…which is the exact same journal Flynn has with her notes on history in it. It
hasn’t been made clear yet why she joins up with Flynn, but her Rittenhouse
legacy feels like a good starting point.
This week’s episode of Timeless is a good one, but never quite goes
above and beyond to make it better than it is. The characters are as good as ever, and the
growing presence of Rittenhouse is legitimately threatening. Easily the best
part of the episode is the moral decisions Lucy had to make, that being the
choice of Flynn or Rittenhouse. While it’s not fully explored this week, the
first appearance of Lucy’s journal tells me that we’ll be seeing where her
loyalties truly lie before the season comes to an end.
FINAL SCORE
7/10
Good
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