Timeless 1.14: Paris in the 20s

An excellent episode 1.14 of Timeless tonight, which does just what this kind of time travel series does best.  I mean, where else can you find Lindbergh, Hemingway, Picasso, and Josephine Baker, not to mention a cameo of the Fitzgeralds, all in one episode?  Having just watched Z: The Beginning of Everything, it was especially good to see Scott and Zelda again.

One of the charms of Timeless is the attention to historical detail in every episode, including not only environments and people, but even off-the-cuff but accurate blurbs on the popular philosophies of the time.  Tonight we got a thumbnail description of "The Lost Generation" as not vanished but directionless.

Unfortunately, though Timeless is no danger of being the latter it is at much risk in being the first - that is, vanished as in not renewed by NBC.   Which would be a shame.   Because, again, the history is so vividly rendered that the series could flourish on the History Channel, PBS, or any number of other places.

The right mix of history, metaphysics, and adventure is tough to achieve in a time travel series.  12 Monkeys of SyFy has more metaphysics - a lot more - and less history in its mix, and that works for that series.   But Timeless is in a class by itself in terms of the sheer cavalcade of historical portraits, each a little gem of a story in itself, that go back centuries.

I'm looking forward to the final two episodes of this season, and hoping I can get to enjoy my weekly cocktail of literary, scientific, political, otherwise cultural history in a second season later this year.

See also Timeless 1.1: Threading the Needle ... Timeless 1.2: Small Change, Big Payoffs ... Timeless 1.3: Judith Campbell ... Timeless 1.4: Skyfall and Weapon of Choice ... Timeless 1.5: and Quantum Leap ... Timeless 1.6: Watergate and Rittenhouse ... Timeless 1.7: Stranded! ... Timeless 1.8: Time and Space ... Timeless 1.9: The Kiss and The Key ... Timeless 1.10: The End in the Middle ... Timeless 1.11: Edison, Ford, Morgan, Houdini, and Holmes (No, Not Sherlock)! ... Timeless 1.12: Incandescent West ... Timeless 1.13: Meeting, Mating, and Predictability