Timeless 1.13: Meeting, Mating, and Predictability

An altogether excellent, tip-top Timeless 1.13 tonight, in which Wyatt in classic grandfather paradox mode goes back to 1983 to stop the parents of a serial killer from mating, to save the love of his life who was one of three women murdered by said serial killer.

Several appealing points about this set-up.  From the outset, Wyatt realized that he doesn't have to kill either of the serial killer's parents.  As I've often said, to get the grandfather paradox going, all you have to do is prevent your grandparents - or parents, who will also do - from meeting.  You don't have to kill them, and, actually, you don't even have to stop them from meeting - just stopping them from mating will do the trick.

Wyatt, decent person that he fundamentally is, however, plans just to stop the serial killer's parents from meeting.  But because things can often go wrong in time travel, and so often do in Timeless, he's soon down to no choice but to stop them from mating.

He manages to do that, just barely, but then as he's chasing the guy (played by Drew Roy - good to see him back from Falling Skies), the father of the serial killer hits his head on the curb and ... dies. So Wyatt has now, through no fault of his own, gone to the brutal essence of the grandfather paradox and killed one of the progenitors.

I had a feeling Wyatt's love wouldn't be saved anyway.  My theory was that killer's mother ended up sleeping that night with the other guy in the bar who wanted her, and those two were the serial killer's real parents (which fact got jumbled in the birth certificate or whatever that Wyatt saw).  Who knows, maybe that was in an early draft of the script.  But what happens is actually better.  Two of the three women killed originally by the serial killer are alive when Wyatt returns to the present.  Just not his true love.

What this tells in a sad but eloquent way is that changing events in time is more complicated than even a grandfather paradox story can accommodate.  Who knows why Wyatt's wife was killed - and by whom.  The universe is fundamentally unpredictable - even for the time traveler.

But I predict Timeless will be on next week, and I'm looking forward to it.

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

Falling Skies 4.5: Cloudy

Well, I took a break from reviewing Falling Skies last week, hoping my opinion of this season would rise, but it hasn't.  Indeed, when the news broke that Falling Skies was renewed by TNT for its fifth and final season a few days ago, I wasn't surprised, given the weak and cliched story lines the series has descended to this season.

The biggest action for Tom in episode 4.5 was his falling in with a pair of brothers who seem to be good, but raise his suspicions when they talk about getting booze from a Mormon home (Mormons refrain from drinking).  They soon turn out to be not so good, lie to Tom about killing Matt, and in the end get killed themselves after coming pretty close to killing Tom.  Sound familiar?  This is the exact same thread already spun a dozen times on The Walking Dead, and spun much better, because sometimes the bad humans do lasting damage on that show to our heroes, which makes for a much more compelling story.

Meanwhile, the Lexi story is proceeding at such a snail's pace that I'm beginning to think there's some alien snail DNA at large in the people who make the show.  We've suspected to the point of knowing since last season that Lexi's father was an alien.   Anne had to know it, too.   So the big reveal last night was ... what?

Hal continues to be a somewhat interesting character, if only because it's unusual to have a son be almost exactly like his father in voice intonation and delivery of lines.   Drew Roy, who plays Hal, is seriously a good Noah Wylie (Tom) study.

As I've said before, this is sad.   Although post-apocalypse stories are as common as dandelions on television these days, alien invasion stories are not, and Falling Skies started out as something much better than Defiance.   Optimist that I am - about our ultimately beating the aliens in story lines, and about failing series beating the odds and coming up with a good resolution nonetheless - I'm still hopeful that Falling Skies can somehow come up with a good ending this season and next.

See also Falling Skies 4.1: Weak Start ... Falling Skies 4.2: Enemy of my Enemy ... Falling Skies 4.3: Still Falling

And see also Falling Skies 3.1-2: It's the Acting ... Falling Skies 3.3: The Smile ... Falling Skies 3.4: Hal vs. Ben ... Falling Skies 3.6: The Masons ...Falling Skies 3.7: The Mole and a Likely Answer ... Falling Skies 3.8: Back Cracked Home ... Falling Skies Season 3 Finale: Dust in Hand

And see also Falling Skies Returns  ... Falling Skies 2.6: Ben's Motives ... Falling Skies Second Season Finale

And see also Falling Skies 1.1-2 ... Falling Skies 1.3 meets Puppet Masters ... Falling Skies 1.4: Drizzle ... Falling Skies 1.5: Ben ... Falling Skies 1.6: Fifth Column ... Falling Skies 1.7: The Fate of Traitors ... Falling Skies 1.8: Weaver's Story ... Falling Skies Concludes First Season

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Falling Skies 1.7: The Fate of Traitors

An excellent Falling Skies 1.7 last night, the best so far in the series.  I've said that before, which means the series is getting better and better.  Among the main things we learned last night -

• Ben is thoroughly with us.  His time harnessed has given him greater than his previously human endurance - in running as well as push-ups - but his loyalties are still with his family and species.  Indeed, he's one of the heroes in last night's story.
• Not so much Mike's son Rick, who was also liberated from the harness, but, apparently, only physically.  At the end of last night's episode, he reveals his continuing alien loyalties - especially disquieting, in view of his father's death at the hands of the humans in business with the aliens,
• But Pope is back in action, and he's heroic, too, as he saves Hal from death.  (Fine acting by Drew Roy as Hal, by the way - his intonations are just like Noah Wyle's, who plays his father.)

But back to the humans doing business with the aliens - giving them our children in return for the traitors' own safety - one thing I didn't like at the end of last night's episode was letting them go free.  In reality, I'm against the death penalty (because of the danger of innocent people wrongly convicted).  But in this fiction of an alien invasion, they - the human adults we saw working with the aliens - deserved the firing squad.

Looking forward to the last two episodes of this season.

See also Falling Skies 1.1-2 ... Falling Skies 1.3 meets Puppet Masters ... Falling Skies 1.4: Drizzle ... Falling Skies 1.5: Ben ... Falling Skies 1.6: Fifth Column

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

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