Tuesday, 14 February 2017

Timeless Review: “Public Enemy No. 1”

Brotherly love
(This review contains spoilers!)

          In the 14 episodes preceding this one, Timeless has had some serious ups and downs. While the show has been consistently fantastic in the sets and costuming departments, much of the first half of the season was spent running around in circles, more or less doing the exact same thing week after week after week. Then, out of nowhere, something seemed to click. Gone were the boring episodes where nothing seemed to happen, replaced by fantastic action and drama as well as an extremely engaging overarching plot that made me look forward to watching it every Monday night.

          This episode, despite being the second-last one of the season, feels like the ultimate culmination of the entire season’s journey up to this point, creating easily the best episode yet.

          The Rittenhouse guys have fully taken over the time travel base, and they’ve concocted a plan to stop Flynn once and for all: jump back to 1962 and kill his mother before he’s born. Naturally, our heroes aren’t so hot on the idea, so they’re assigned another new soldier to actually pull the trigger. I’m not sure if he had a name, but he sure was a friendly looking fella.

          So it looks like this week is going to take place in 1962, until Rufus pulls a tranquilizer on the soldier and they escape by the skin of their teeth. Rufus covers their tracks by sending a Dennis Nedry from Jurassic Park-esque virus to home base, shutting down their power. Then it’s off to 1931 to track down Flynn and see what he’s up to!

          Flynn has decided to team up with notorious gangster Al Capone, saving him from being convicted due to tax evasion as a means of getting a favour from him. It succeeds, and he uses Capone’s connections to track down a local Rittenhouse member. The Rittenhouse guy tells Flynn that the next time all the Rittenhouse bigwigs will be in a room together is at a meeting in Washington in 1954, so I’m guessing that’s where next week’s season finale will be taking place.

          Meanwhile, Lucy, Rufus and Wyatt try to find someone who would be able to lead them to Capone. They meet up and ally themselves with Elliot Ness, but Flynn tips of Capone before they can do anything, killing Ness before long. Out of options, Lucy leads them to Capone’s long lost brother James, who takes them to the mobster himself.

          It’s at this point that things go completely off the rails. While Capone does tell the group where Flynn went and why. But surprise! Still owing Flynn one more favour, he goes and shoots Rufus in the chest, prompting James to kill his own brother. The episode ends on a cliffhanger with a severely wounded Rufus blacking out in the time machine before they are able to jump back to 2017.

          And that’s not all! While all this is happening, there’s a B-plot focusing on Jiya back at home base and how she’s being blamed for what Rufus is doing. While it’s not much, it does add some great background to what Mason is doing and if he is truly worse than either Rittenhouse or Flynn.

          Speaking of that, I feel like I need to say that Timeless is doing a better job than ever in creating a morally grey storyline, with no clear good or bad guy. The big question right now is whether it’s truly better to side with Flynn or with Rittenhouse. In my opinion Flynn is definitely the lesser evil of the two, despite still being not a great guy to work with. I love that the characters are torn between the two right now, and I’m sure that’ll come into play next week.

          I do have some concerns, though. While not a problem with this episode at all, I do have to wonder how they’re going to wrap up all the plot threads started this season in just one episode. I don’t know if it’s going to be a two hour finale (I haven’t heard anything explicitly saying it will or won’t be), but I kind of hope it will be considering there’s so many loose ends right now. I have heard that this show has a good chance of being renewed, so maybe they’re saving stuff for a potential Season 2, but I just hope they end the season with a bang.

          This episode was easily the best thing Timeless has made to date, and has truly cemented it for me as something worth tuning in to every single week. All aspects of the show were at their best, creating a fantastic storyline that sets up next week well while still being able to stand on its own.

          And, staying true to the episode, I’ve decided to end this review on a cliffhanger.

          WILL I give this episode Timeless’s first 10/10!?

          DIDN’T I just give an anime episode a 10/10 yesterday!?

          IS this joke already getting old!?

          Yeah, it probably is.

FINAL SCORE
10/10

Legendary

No comments:

Post a Comment