"I went to a place to eat. It said 'breakfast at any time.' So I ordered french toast during the Renaissance". --Steven Wright ... If you are a devotee of time travel, check out this song...

Monday, April 16, 2018

Timeless 2.5: JFK



Well, I'll just come right out with it and say that Timeless 2.5 was easily the finest episode of the series so far - across one and a half seasons - and that's because the episode was one of the best JFK and time-travel narratives in any medium, page or screen, of any length that I've seen.

JFK in 1934 is whisked into the present (2018). Before the hour is over, every gambit of that time travel is explored, including Nixon's face on the dollar coin (before young JFK is saved in the future) and Rufus warning young JFK not to go to Dallas on November 23, 1963 - after JFK has already learned about his and his siblings' deaths, and his Presidency, courtesy of an iPad.

JFK having knowledge of the time and place of his assassination posed an interesting problem for Timeless - a problem that makes all time-travel about tragic events, or trying to change tragic events, so compelling as a narrative on page and screen.  The most daring result could have been JFK living to old age, but that would have required a major overhaul of history that could have completely derailed the series and the stories it is telling.  That's why, when Fringe showed JFK still alive in the early 21st-century, they did little more than just show this, and didn't explore any of the legion of possible consequences.

And that's no doubt why Timeless played it by having JFK, alerted to his assassination in Dallas, killed in another city in Texas - Austin - thus making this episode another expression of O'Henry's favorite moral of you can't escape your fate.  Timeless has gone this route before - indeed, as early as its second episode (1.2), "The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln"- so doing this for JFK was true to the Timeless metaphysic (though, I'd someday like to see a TV series or movie in which JFK lives and we see all the consequences).

But tonight's episode of Timeless also deserves credit for being true to JFK's real history, ranging from his attraction to women to the ills of the flesh he was prone to suffer, with fine acting in the part (and great accent) by Grant Jordan, and one of the best opening scenes of any episode in the series with Flynn rescuing young JFK, guns blazing in some vice principal's office (he was about to kill the young man who would become President).

And tonight also featured some powerful development of the Lucy-Wyatt-Jessica story, which I don't think is resolved quite just yet.  And even a brief but telling debate of atheism vs. faith with Rufus and Jiya, and how it relates to time travel.

So that makes two fine shows tonight about Presidents - a real one on Timeless and a fictitious one on Homeland - and I may or may not now look at what James Comey has to say about another President, and may or may not "review" it.   These days I much prefer drama to news.

See also Timeless 2.1"Mein Kampf, by Philip K. Dick" ... Timeless 2.2: The Nod ... Timeless 2.3: Orson, Hedy, and Lucy ... Timeless 2.4: Striving to Avoid the 'I Made It Happen' Loop in Time Travel

And 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 ... Timeless 1.14: Paris in the 20s ... Timeless 1.15: Touched! .... Timeless 1.16: A Real Grandfather Paradox Story


                    more time travel about JFK

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