12 Monkeys: Ends and Begins with Sunsets

Well, I'm a sucker for happy endings, and I never would have forgiven 12 Monkeys if ended with Cole and Cassie apart, or dead - which indeed is the worst kind of apart - and I'm very glad I don't have to.   That is, forgive, 12 Monkeys.  Because ... [spoilers ahead]

Well, obviously there are spoilers ahead, and I know the first paragraph is of course a spoiler, but what else can I do?   The series ended with one hell of a satisfyingly happy ending, and after all it and we the audience have been through, that was manifestly the right thing to do.

Of course Jones would find a way a way of not only saving her grandson, but saving him for a happy life with the woman he loves.  And what I especially liked about the ending was the way that Cassie played an active role in this, by acting on her instincts and premonitions in the original and final timeline, and going to that house in Binghamton.  (Did we already know it was in Binghamton?  I'm not sure - but I also like that that's where it was.  I've been there at least 12 times.)

It was also appropriate that Jones engineered this, while Cassie and Cole and everyone around her reluctantly consented to go their own different, separate ways.   In fact, the only thing I didn't much care for in the ending is something I didn't like as soon as she became the villain of the series.  The Witness was too much of a cartoonish, fairytale, whatever the right word is here, villain.  And the people around her were even more so.

Still, that red leaf at the end shows the red forest -- i.e., the end of time and existence -- is ever nigh.  As Cole rightly says more than once in this two-hour finale, it's the reality of endings that makes what comes before them so meaningful.

He offered the metaphor of a sunset.  Here's a picture I took of one earlier tonight over Cape Cod Bay, which I enjoyed before seeing the finale of this outstanding series, and proved an apt prelude. And here's one of the best-known songs from my 1972 LP, Twice Upon a Rhyme - Looking for Sunsets (In the Early Morning).  Thanks everyone for a great four seasons of time-travel television.

See also 12 Monkeys 4.1-3: Which Way You Goin'? ... 12 Monkeys 4.4-6: Warnings, Redemptions, and Deft Workings of Time ... 12 Monkeys 4.7-9: One-Bettering the Movie

And see also 12 Monkeys 3.1-4: "The Smart Ones Do" ... 12 Monkeys 3.5-7: "A Thing for Asimov" ... 12 Monkeys 3.8-10: "Up at the Ritz"

And see also 12 Monkeys 2.1: Whatever Will Be, Will Be ... 12 Monkeys 2.2: The Serum ... 12 Monkeys 2.3: Primaries and Paradoxes ... 12 Monkeys 2.4: Saving Time ... 12 Monkeys 2.5: Jennifer's Story ... 12 Monkeys 2.6: "'Tis Death Is Dead" ... 12 Monkeys 2.7: Ultimate Universes ... 12 Monkeys 2.8: Time Itself Wants Time Travel ... 12 Monkeys 2.9: Hands On ... 12 Monkeys 2.10: The Drugging ... 12 Monkeys 2.11: Teleportation ... 12 Monkeys 2.12: The Best and the Worst of Time(s) ... 12 Monkeys 2.13: Psychedelic -> Whole City Time Travel

And see also this Italian review, w/reference to Hawking and my story, "The Chronology Protection Case"

And see also 12 Monkeys series on SyFy: Paradox Prominent and Excellent ...12 Monkeys 1.2: Your Future, His Past ... 12 Monkeys 1.3:  Paradoxes, Lies, and Near Intersections ... 12 Monkeys 1.4: "Uneasy Math" ... 12 Monkeys 1.5: The Heart of the Matter ... 12 Monkeys 1.6: Can I Get a Witness? ... 12 Monkeys 1.7: Snowden, the Virus, and the Irresistible ... 12 Monkeys 1.8: Intelligent Vaccine vs. Time Travel ... 12 Monkeys 1.9: Shelley, Keats, and Time Travel ... 12 Monkey 1.10: The Last Jump ... 12 Monkeys 1.11: What-Ifs ... 12 Monkeys 1.2: The Plunge ... 12 Monkeys Season 1 Finale: "Time Travel to Create Time Travel"

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12 Monkeys 4.7-9: One-Bettering The Movie

I've been saying for years - well, since 1995, when Terry Gilliam's movie, starring Bruce Willis and Madeleine Stowe first came out - that 12 Monkeys (based on the 1962 short, La Jetée), is the best time-travel movie ever made.  This gave the television series, which came out in 2015 and I've been reviewing here ever since, a lot to live up to.  Up until tonight's penultimate three episodes (4.7-9), the best it did was sidestep the movie, and tell us other time-travel stories.  Especially in this final season, some of these stories were as good, in their own ways, as the movie.

Tonight the tv series did something very different.  It took the mind-blowing, gut-wrenching, paradox-respecting ending of the movie [spoilers ahead] -- in which time-traveler James Cole, haunted all of his life by something he saw happening at the airport, discovers that what he saw as a little boy was his own death, of his older self, trying to stop the plague, as a horrified "Kathryn" Railly who loves him holds him in her arms and can do nothing more than exchange glances with the little boy - and daringly throws this ending in our faces and turns it on its head.  By which I mean: in the three hours on tonight (actually, the third hour, 4.9, which was one superb hour of television), Cole and "Cassandra" Railly (the same character as in the movie, with a new first name) realize that in order to stop the Witness and her plan to end all of time and existence, they must not stop the plague but make sure it's set loose in the airport (changed in the TV series to JFK from whatever the name of the airport in Philadelphia in the movie).  The Witness knows this and tries her best to stop this by killing Cole - which she fails to do because Cole's mother takes the assassin's blow and dies in his stead.  So, Cole dying in Railly's horrified arms in the movie is replaced by Cole's mother dying in Cole's arms and Railly looking on horrified in the TV series.  Now that's what I call a pretty good twist - with sensitive acting by Amanda Schull as Railly, Aaron Stanford as Cole, and good work by Brooke Williams in the pivotal Hannah role.  (Ok, maybe not better than the movie's, but certainly in the same league.)

The other part of this twist is that Hannah not Emma is Cole's mother.  I did see this coming.  I'm not sure why, but when Hannah and Emma were making their escape (again, from the Witness's assassins), it popped into my head that, hey, if Emma is killed it could well be that Hannah is Cole's mother.  This of course makes for a much more meaningful and satisfying lineage, with Jones being Cole's grandmother.

So here's where we are for the two-hour finale next week.  Deacon and Hannah are gone (with heroic deaths by both).  The plague was released and kills seven billion.  And Jones doesn't have much longer to live.  I'm routing for the plague not to be released (I'm with Cassie and her reticence to release it - she's a doctor, but any normal human being should feel that way), and for Jones to somehow recover.   That, of course, in addition to the Witness being stopped.

And I'll be back here next week to let you know what I think of how this all turns out.

See also 12 Monkeys 4.1-3: Which Way You Goin'? ... 12 Monkeys 4.4-6: Warnings, Redemptions, and Deft Workings of Time

And see also 12 Monkeys 3.1-4: "The Smart Ones Do" ... 12 Monkeys 3.5-7: "A Thing for Asimov" ... 12 Monkeys 3.8-10: "Up at the Ritz"

And see also 12 Monkeys 2.1: Whatever Will Be, Will Be ... 12 Monkeys 2.2: The Serum ... 12 Monkeys 2.3: Primaries and Paradoxes ... 12 Monkeys 2.4: Saving Time ... 12 Monkeys 2.5: Jennifer's Story ... 12 Monkeys 2.6: "'Tis Death Is Dead" ... 12 Monkeys 2.7: Ultimate Universes ... 12 Monkeys 2.8: Time Itself Wants Time Travel ... 12 Monkeys 2.9: Hands On ... 12 Monkeys 2.10: The Drugging ... 12 Monkeys 2.11: Teleportation ... 12 Monkeys 2.12: The Best and the Worst of Time(s) ... 12 Monkeys 2.13: Psychedelic -> Whole City Time Travel

And see also this Italian review, w/reference to Hawking and my story, "The Chronology Protection Case"

And see also 12 Monkeys series on SyFy: Paradox Prominent and Excellent ...12 Monkeys 1.2: Your Future, His Past ... 12 Monkeys 1.3:  Paradoxes, Lies, and Near Intersections ... 12 Monkeys 1.4: "Uneasy Math" ... 12 Monkeys 1.5: The Heart of the Matter ... 12 Monkeys 1.6: Can I Get a Witness? ... 12 Monkeys 1.7: Snowden, the Virus, and the Irresistible ... 12 Monkeys 1.8: Intelligent Vaccine vs. Time Travel ... 12 Monkeys 1.9: Shelley, Keats, and Time Travel ... 12 Monkey 1.10: The Last Jump ... 12 Monkeys 1.11: What-Ifs ... 12 Monkeys 1.2: The Plunge ... 12 Monkeys Season 1 Finale: "Time Travel to Create Time Travel"

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12 Monkeys 4.4-6: Warnings, Redemptions, Deft Workings of Time

12 Monkeys 4.4-6, which I saw last night, was so good on so many levels that I wanted to let it simmer, at least overnight, before posting a review.   At this point, and on the basis of both these three and the first episodes of this final season, 12 Monkeys is well on the way to cementing itself as the best - most thoughtful and at the same time entertaining and exciting - time-travel series ever on television.

To start with a minor point, the dialogue is sparkling.  Jennifer, interrupting Cassandra and Cole in flagrante delicto, warns them (on the dangers of having another child), "Butt stuff only!" - which draws a suitably outraged, slightly horrified mouth-open expression from Cassie.  Jennifer, in general, had a great three episodes, highlighted by her serenading the Nazis in 4.6, which, by the way, was in itself one of the best standalone episodes in the entire series.  Jennifer, true to her nature, can't resist killing Hitler.   Good for her!  Not only is changing history be damned, given that all existence and time and space themselves are now at stake, but in a nice narrative touch we see in a headline that Himmler has taken over, which shows that history was not (or would not) be all that changed, after all.

It was also great seeing Agent Gale back in action.  As we saw in the first three episodes, a keynote of this concluding season is bringing deceased characters back to life, and this was possible with Gale without even any temporal manipulation.  Not that there wasn't plenty of that in these episodes, as Cole, Cassie, and Jones (and Jennifer) deftly, sometimes accidentally, ply the levers of time travel to pursue their worthy goals.  As a set piece, Cassie's saving of Cole from the poison in 4.5 will go down as a textbook case on how this can and should be done without running into yourself.

But, as I felt after seeing the first three of these concluding episodes last week, Jones was in many ways the most galvanizing character in this part of the narrative.  Her performance with the Nazis in Paris was brilliant, and reminiscent of A French Village.  Her sacrifice at the end of 4.6 - getting Deacon to take her as a prisoner to the Witness - can change everything. (Barbara Sukowa, by the way, is doing a great job as Jones, as is Amanda Schull as Cassie, Emily Hampshire as Jennifer, and Aaron Stanford as Cole - and, hey, great to see Christopher Lloyd inimitably back on the screen.).

And speaking of Deacon (well played by Todd Stashwick), though I found his joining the Witness in the first three episodes a little trite, Deacon was redeemed in these second three episodes completely - he's now a more powerful character than he ever was.  (And good to see Jennifer earlier signaling this deeper alliance with a lingual click.)

As we move into third set of three - the final episodes in the series before the final set of two - the biggest interpersonal question is whether Cassie will work to save the world or her relationship with Cole.  I'm hoping she'll manage to do both, and it will be fun to see how this happens.

See also 12 Monkeys 4.1-3: Which Way You Goin'?

And see also 12 Monkeys 3.1-4: "The Smart Ones Do" ... 12 Monkeys 3.5-7: "A Thing for Asimov" ... 12 Monkeys 3.8-10: "Up at the Ritz"

And see also 12 Monkeys 2.1: Whatever Will Be, Will Be ... 12 Monkeys 2.2: The Serum ... 12 Monkeys 2.3: Primaries and Paradoxes ... 12 Monkeys 2.4: Saving Time ... 12 Monkeys 2.5: Jennifer's Story ... 12 Monkeys 2.6: "'Tis Death Is Dead" ... 12 Monkeys 2.7: Ultimate Universes ... 12 Monkeys 2.8: Time Itself Wants Time Travel ... 12 Monkeys 2.9: Hands On ... 12 Monkeys 2.10: The Drugging ... 12 Monkeys 2.11: Teleportation ... 12 Monkeys 2.12: The Best and the Worst of Time(s) ... 12 Monkeys 2.13: Psychedelic -> Whole City Time Travel

And see also this Italian review, w/reference to Hawking and my story, "The Chronology Protection Case"

And see also 12 Monkeys series on SyFy: Paradox Prominent and Excellent ...12 Monkeys 1.2: Your Future, His Past ... 12 Monkeys 1.3:  Paradoxes, Lies, and Near Intersections ... 12 Monkeys 1.4: "Uneasy Math" ... 12 Monkeys 1.5: The Heart of the Matter ... 12 Monkeys 1.6: Can I Get a Witness? ... 12 Monkeys 1.7: Snowden, the Virus, and the Irresistible ... 12 Monkeys 1.8: Intelligent Vaccine vs. Time Travel ... 12 Monkeys 1.9: Shelley, Keats, and Time Travel ... 12 Monkey 1.10: The Last Jump ... 12 Monkeys 1.11: What-Ifs ... 12 Monkeys 1.2: The Plunge ... 12 Monkeys Season 1 Finale: "Time Travel to Create Time Travel"

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12 Monkeys 4.1-3: Which Way You Goin?

12 Monkeys was back tonight for its 4th and concluding season on the SyFy Channel with three episodes (there will be three more Friday evenings of episodes).  If these first three are any indication, we're in a for real treat in the weeks ahead.  These three were not only intellectually daunting, like everything in the previous seasons, but about as tight and logically explicable as any I've seen in a series which delights in and seriously pokes every paradox it can, rather than shies away from or paper's over them.  Since paradox is the ever-present, silent middle name of time travel, probing them, in a way that makes sense, is the best you can do in a story like this.  And since time travel is my favorite genre, this means that what 12 Monkeys did tonight is top-notch television of any kind.

(Spoilers follow.)

Among my favorite developments tonight -

• 12 Monkeys dropped its logical but overplayed insistence that the time-travelers have to avoid bumping into themselves in their travels.  They have more important things to worry about - the end of time and the end of existence - so, hey, what's there to risk by running into yourself, more than a little sanity?  Jones' interaction with herself was probably the best, and indeed her part in the first two episodes was outstanding.
• A lot of heroes died early on tonight.  But by making the spatial splintering an unplanned temporal splinting - i.e., time travel - the episodes afforded these characters a chance to live on in their pasts, with present-future Cole, Cassie, and Jones interacting with them.  And, best of all, Cole gets to spend some quality time with Ramse, and expiate at least a little of his guilt.  (Also, in terms of re-seeing the past, there were a lot of satisfying call backs to past episodes of the television series, and even a few to the plague-obsessed brilliant 1995 movie.)
• Jennifer Goines cures herself - i.e., her errant "id" gets hit by a psychic bullet when real shots are being fired at her, and this allows Jennifer to put her second voice to rest.  Good - this will make for an even more interesting character.
• There's an excellent twist, which I didn't see until a few minutes before it was revealed (meaning, it was excellent indeed):  Olivia, whom Cassie is trying to kill (in revenge for Olivia's killing Athan) turns out to be Cassie's mother!  (At least, I think so - you can never be 100% sure in these things).  So, to be clear, Cassie can still kill the older Olivia, but not the younger Olivia, who was pregnant (with Cassie) when Cassie was stalking her. Nice time-travel footwork.
• I'm always a sucker for a good song in a time-travel story.  There was a little of "Happy Together" by the Turtles in the first episode tonight, but the real gem was the Poppy Family's "Which Way You Goin' Billy?" which was huge hit in the U. S. in 1970 (it was released in late 1969 in Canada).  Great song, haven't heard it in years, and it worked perfectly in 12 Monkeys tonight (goin Goines).

The third episode concludes with Cole and Cassie realizing they're stuck in some pretty intractable loops, but vowing to break them.  This means some good storytelling in the weeks ahead, and I'll be here with reviews.  (Now I'm off to YouTube to hear this.)

See also 12 Monkey's 3.1-4: "The Smart Ones Do" ... 12 Monkeys 3.5-7: "A Thing for Asimov" ... 12 Monkeys 3.8-10: "Up at the Ritz"

And see also 12 Monkeys 2.1: Whatever Will Be, Will Be ... 12 Monkeys 2.2: The Serum ... 12 Monkeys 2.3: Primaries and Paradoxes ... 12 Monkeys 2.4: Saving Time ... 12 Monkeys 2.5: Jennifer's Story ... 12 Monkeys 2.6: "'Tis Death Is Dead" ... 12 Monkeys 2.7: Ultimate Universes ... 12 Monkeys 2.8: Time Itself Wants Time Travel ... 12 Monkeys 2.9: Hands On ... 12 Monkeys 2.10: The Drugging ... 12 Monkeys 2.11: Teleportation ... 12 Monkeys 2.12: The Best and the Worst of Time(s) ... 12 Monkeys 2.13: Psychedelic -> Whole City Time Travel

And see also this Italian review, w/reference to Hawking and my story, "The Chronology Protection Case"

And see also 12 Monkeys series on SyFy: Paradox Prominent and Excellent ...12 Monkeys 1.2: Your Future, His Past ... 12 Monkeys 1.3:  Paradoxes, Lies, and Near Intersections ... 12 Monkeys 1.4: "Uneasy Math" ... 12 Monkeys 1.5: The Heart of the Matter ... 12 Monkeys 1.6: Can I Get a Witness? ... 12 Monkeys 1.7: Snowden, the Virus, and the Irresistible ... 12 Monkeys 1.8: Intelligent Vaccine vs. Time Travel ... 12 Monkeys 1.9: Shelley, Keats, and Time Travel ... 12 Monkey 1.10: The Last Jump ... 12 Monkeys 1.11: What-Ifs ... 12 Monkeys 1.2: The Plunge ... 12 Monkeys Season 1 Finale: "Time Travel to Create Time Travel"

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The Man from the Future: Time-Traveling Escobar

This one's from Brazil, in Portuguese, from 2011, by way of Netflix in 2016, and I just watched it as part of my 2017 end-of-year time-travel movie and TV extravaganza.  The Man from the Future - O Homem do Futuro in Portuguese - stars Wagner Moura as an accidental time-traveling scientist who finds himself some twenty years in his past - in 1991 - and in a position to change the course of his personal history, and get the girl (played by Alinne Moraes) he's loved all of these years, but lost for some reason at that crucial moment in 1991.

If Wagner Moura's name sounds familiar, it's because he played Pablo Escobar in Netflix's Narcos.  (Alinne Moraes currently stars in Além do Tempo, a reincarnation TV series that I've yet to see, but will as soon as it's available here.)  Moura is excellent in both Narcos and The Man from the Future, which is praise indeed, since the time-travel movie only has drugs as part of its comedy, which it mostly but not completely is.  As a time-traveling romance, The Man from the Future also bears some kinship with Peggy Sue Got Married and even Back to the Future, though it's somehow a little bit more funny and serious than both of those classics.

Director Cláudio Torres has a good sense of what's needed in a time-travel story.  A smart phone, which looks like a mobile phone to someone in 1991, but one that takes pictures and is also a little computer, is a good way to show someone in that past that you come from the future.  It's of course also easy to carry along with you in your trip through time.

The Man from the Future is also unafraid to have the same character at different times of his life, and from different alternate realities, in the same place at the same time, talking (and screaming) at one another.  Other time-travel narratives, like 12 Monkeys the television series, look at those kinds of impossible meetings as literally destructive of reality, and thus paradoxes to be literally avoided like the plague.  This might make for a strong plot mechanism, but it deprives the story of the fun of three versions of yourself yelling at yourself.

The 1991 music is also good, with R.E.M. and Radiohead in the background at appropriate times.  It's always good to see a time-travel story in which the hero is looking to change his life rather than the world, and The Man from the Future is recommended.

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Synchronicity: Primer meets Predestination

There's something about the end of the year that gets me especially in the mood for time travel.  Fortunately Netflix came along to feed that urge.

I'd say Synchronicity, on iTunes since January 2016 and then Netflix - i.e., for almost two years, so how did I miss it? maybe I was in a parallel universe? - has elements of two classic time travel movies, Primer and Predestination (well, I'm not sure Predestination is yet a classic, but it's based on a stone classic of a science fiction story, Robert Heinlein's "All You Zombies," which makes it based on his earlier "By His Bootstraps," too).  Synchronicity starts out and for a bit and here and there captures that college-kids-build-a-time-machine ambience of Primer, but goes on to pretty decently and with sufficient tension and intellectual complexity get that time-traveler-chasing-his-own-tail story of Predestination.   And just for good measure, there's also something of the time-traveler-chasing-his-own-tale, too.  Really.  (I also have to mention that there's a little tale called Synchronicity which I know well because I wrote it - Buzzymag published in 2014 - but it has nothing to do with time travel.)

Now one of the things about chasing your own tail/tale through time - even just accidentally running into yourself - is you have to be careful when telling the story (making the movie) to sooner or later account for everything the time-traveler encounters in the early and middle parts of the story.  Jacob Gentry (who directed, and also co-wrote this with Alex Orr) did an excellent job of this.  There's a good romantic element, and a bad guy played by Michael Ironside, whom you can't go wrong with in these kinds of stories.

One thing I wasn't wild about was the meme that meeting yourself in the past or the future is bad for your health and even worse.  Obviously, that could and should cause what could be severe psychological trauma, as new memories suddenly start pouring into your later version's head.  But the idea that such meetings are physically destructive is a trope that the 12 Monkeys TV series as well as Synchronicity the movie use as a given, without much real explanation.

All in all, though, I enjoyed Synchronicity, and give it credit for presenting time travel seriously and entertainingly.  Give it a shot if you're a time traveler in fiction like me.

 

It started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ...



 

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ARQ: Here We Go Loop De

Hey, I just finished watching ARQ - more than a year after it was first released on Netflix - a time-loop Groundhog Day meets I don't know, Terminator movie, about a couple in a facility near the end of the world in some desperate battle, obliged to relive a few hours over and over again, because every time they're killed by masked then unmasked intruders, they wake up in the same bed, together, with memories (usually) of what happened to them in the earlier loops.  This is because the guy is the programmer of a machine that can (presumably) run forever because it keeps regenerating its energy, by thrusting itself and those in its vicinity a little bit back into the past.

Got it?  Believe or not, for a variety of reasons not at all related to the movie, it took me a bunch of nights to watch this movie, but there was no need rewind, since no one was attacking me.  And I did recall everything that happened earlier in the movie.

ARQ has a pretty good plot.  The guy loves the woman, and she loves him, though their political affiliations aren't quite what they seem to be.  There's no need to worry about being killed - well, it is an inconvenience, because it can get in the way of their plans - but no huge deal, because the death of either one and especially both seems to trigger the time loop aka the reseting of time by the machine.  Apparently.

By the way, ARQ is the name of the machine - which is an acronym for arcing recursive quine, which is a pretty accurate description of what the machine does, check out what the word "quine" means on Google - and this is pretty neat little movie, though something happens at the very very end which is a little too unclear for my metaphysics.

But if you have a weakness for loops - which I obviously do - see ARQ.  And maybe see it again.  But not again, unless ...  Kudos to director and writer Tony Elliott, who's also done work for 12 Monkeys.


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Omni's Back! And My Reviews of Time Travel TV Are In It

I'm delighted to announce that Omni magazine - last seen in print in 1995, a year after it published my article, "There Are Just Some Things You Can't Do in Cyberspace" (see here for a longer piece based in part on this article) - is back on news stands, in Barnes & Noble, i. e., back in print!  And, it has my reviews of six time-travel shows on some current kind of TV screen:  Dr. Who, 12 Monkeys, Travelers, Somewhere Between, Outlander, and Timeless.   (Click on the tags below for episode-by-episode reviews of all except Dr. Who.)

And pick up your copy of Omni - you'll love it!

12 Monkeys 3.8-10: "Up at the Ritz"

The concluding three episodes of the penultimate season 3 of 12 Monkeys on the SyFy channel tonight - soon to be rebranded in all caps - was as good as the first seven, which is to say, superb indeed, and you can put that in all caps any time.

Jennifer's best line, among many: "fate's a real bitch, rarely puts you up at the Ritz". I've never been to the Ritz, so I can't exactly confirm that, but as for 12 Monkeys, it left us mesmerized, at loose ends, at loggerheads of impossible logic - or, exactly where we want to be for the next and final season in 2018.

This was mostly the story of Ethan Cole, aka the Witness, except, in a nice twist at the end, it turns out he's not the Witness after all.  He witnessed a lot, as he says, but the evil Witness with a capital W is Olivia. Locked up like Irina Derevko in Alias for a lot of this season, Olivia turns out to be even more powerful and sinister than Irina - or Ethan.  And Jennifer called it, or almost, or slightly, did.

Ethan's story was well played and told, and another version of Anakin becoming Darth, because he lost his beloved Padme.  Except, since this is time travel, Ethan tries hundreds of times to save her, in a heart-rending rendition of you can't change fate (which is one kind of fine, classic time travel story).

And the kicker is, although he says he's going to destroy the world as a result of his loss, his parents and/or his innate goodness means he won't, and he instead sacrifices himself to be killed by Olivia.

Except - this is time travel, so who is really dead?  Well, apparently the woman Ethan loved, but does this apply to Ethan to?  (Hey, I'm not even sure it applies to Ranmse.)  Ethan has a lot on his side for the final season, including now Jones back on the same side as Cassie and James, and of course the peerless, timeless Jennifer.

12 Monkeys started out in its first two season as often excellent, but sometimes meandering and too complex for its own good.  In its third season, it has really found itself, and is well on its way to being a masterpiece of a television series.

And I'll see you back here with more reviews of 12 Monkeys, next year.

See also 12 Monkey's 3.1-4: "The Smart Ones Do" ... 12 Monkeys 3.5-7: "A Thing for Asimov"

And see also 12 Monkeys 2.1: Whatever Will Be, Will Be ... 12 Monkeys 2.2: The Serum ... 12 Monkeys 2.3: Primaries and Paradoxes ... 12 Monkeys 2.4: Saving Time ... 12 Monkeys 2.5: Jennifer's Story ... 12 Monkeys 2.6: "'Tis Death Is Dead" ... 12 Monkeys 2.7: Ultimate Universes ... 12 Monkeys 2.8: Time Itself Wants Time Travel ... 12 Monkeys 2.9: Hands On ... 12 Monkeys 2.10: The Drugging ... 12 Monkeys 2.11: Teleportation ... 12 Monkeys 2.12: The Best and the Worst of Time(s) ... 12 Monkeys 2.13: Psychedelic -> Whole City Time Travel

And see also this Italian review, w/reference to Hawking and my story, "The Chronology Protection Case"

And see also 12 Monkeys series on SyFy: Paradox Prominent and Excellent ...12 Monkeys 1.2: Your Future, His Past ... 12 Monkeys 1.3:  Paradoxes, Lies, and Near Intersections ... 12 Monkeys 1.4: "Uneasy Math" ... 12 Monkeys 1.5: The Heart of the Matter ... 12 Monkeys 1.6: Can I Get a Witness? ... 12 Monkeys 1.7: Snowden, the Virus, and the Irresistible ... 12 Monkeys 1.8: Intelligent Vaccine vs. Time Travel ... 12 Monkeys 1.9: Shelley, Keats, and Time Travel ... 12 Monkey 1.10: The Last Jump ... 12 Monkeys 1.11: What-Ifs ... 12 Monkeys 1.2: The Plunge ... 12 Monkeys Season 1 Finale: "Time Travel to Create Time Travel"

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