Timeless again (finished watching)
Sep. 8th, 2019 09:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowscastAfter a quick binge, I've finished watching Timeless.
Overall impressions: I enjoyed the series. I liked season 2 more than season 1, and I did like season 1. I'm not head-over-heels in love with the series, and I'm probably not going to do anything with it fannishly, but it was an enjoyable experience. The end wrapped things up pretty satisfactorily (which I gather was not a foregone conclusion; apparently twice it was cancelled after cliffhanger endings and then fannish uproar brought it back).
I love time travel stories in general—that's definitely what drew me to this series. Being Canadian, I maybe don't have a sufficiently strong emotional connection to American history to have enjoyed Timeless to its full extent—it might have been more fun for me if it had been a little more global. But within the story, it made sense that the trips were limited to the past three hundred years or so of American history, with even more emphasis on the most recent 100 years; the various bad guys were trying to affect current events in the U.S.A. and they had to work with history that they themselves were familiar with, and events where they felt like they could figure out what the cause-and-effect sequence would be.
I do think that the show underestimated the butterfly effect of changing various events, although we did see a big one in the very first episode when saving the Hindenburg (oops!) led to Lucy's sister never being born. I can understand why the show didn't do a lot of that (it would have been really hard to manage!) so I forgive them.
I think that it's good that the show ended when it did; I thoroughly enjoyed the second season doubling-down on timeline changes involving the main cast, but we really were getting to the point where every member of the team was remembering a different version of their own timelines, including their relationships with each other, and it was getting pretty hard to keep track of. (You'd need a spreadsheet. I bet Rufus or Jiya would have made one!)
I respect Lucy's decision, late in the final episode, to let go of her sister Amy (in the sense of not trying to revise the timeline again to bring her back). Lucy had already seen how the timeline changes that saved Jessica had lost them Jiya, and saving Jiya had resulted in Rufus's death, and then to get Rufus back they had to lose both Flynn and Jessica. Moral of the story: stop messing with the damn timeline!
A quibble: after Flynn went back to kill Jessica and save Rufus, Wyatt concluded that the reason Jessica's killer had never been found was because it must have been Flynn all along. But that doesn't make sense; that's not the way time paradoxes work in this show. Flynn had no reason to kill Jessica before she became a Rittenhouse operative, and she only became a Rittenhouse operative after Rittenhouse overwrote the original timeline where she died.
Speaking of Flynn: poor Flynn. He definitely gets the short end of the time loop stick. It was heartbreaking to watch Lucy (already deep into her own happily-ever-after) travel back in time to give him the journal and set him on his path. Future-Lucy knows that by doing so, she is dooming him. And also, how fucked-up is it that all through season 1, she's fighting to stop him from doing the mission that future-her gave him? And hating him for it? Time travel, man. *shakes head slowly*
And speaking of Flynn and his bleak fate: you might recall that in my previous post, I had seen up though episode 6 of season 2; Jessica was back from the dead but we didn't yet know that she was evil, and I was rooting for her and Wyatt to rekindle their love, and for Lucy and Flynn to get together. So, well, if you've seen through to the end of the series, you know how that turned out.
Lucy and Wyatt getting together was the one part of the ending that I didn't like. Unfortunately, I got completely turned off Wyatt during the period while he was torn between Jessica and Lucy. Specifically: I was completely squicked by the way he was jealous and possessive of Lucy even while he was supposedly working on fixing his relationship with Jessica (again, this is before we knew that new-Jessica was evil). And I was super duper ultra-squicked by the scene where, upon seeing Lucy leaving Flynn's room in the morning, Wyatt went to Flynn and threatened him and told him to stay away from Lucy. (To which Flynn completely properly and correctly responded that Lucy was perfectly capable of making her own choices. Thanks, Flynn! Sorry about how it all turned out for you!) Anyway ... ew, Wyatt. Ew, ew, ew. Please stop getting your toxic masculinity cooties all over this beautiful, otherwise quite progressive show.
Anyway, like I said, I did enjoy the show overall and found its ending satisfying. And I think that it does provide its own version of an answer to the question "If time travel is possible, where are all the time travellers?" Answer: in the back alley, in period costume, murdering each other. :-P
Overall impressions: I enjoyed the series. I liked season 2 more than season 1, and I did like season 1. I'm not head-over-heels in love with the series, and I'm probably not going to do anything with it fannishly, but it was an enjoyable experience. The end wrapped things up pretty satisfactorily (which I gather was not a foregone conclusion; apparently twice it was cancelled after cliffhanger endings and then fannish uproar brought it back).
I love time travel stories in general—that's definitely what drew me to this series. Being Canadian, I maybe don't have a sufficiently strong emotional connection to American history to have enjoyed Timeless to its full extent—it might have been more fun for me if it had been a little more global. But within the story, it made sense that the trips were limited to the past three hundred years or so of American history, with even more emphasis on the most recent 100 years; the various bad guys were trying to affect current events in the U.S.A. and they had to work with history that they themselves were familiar with, and events where they felt like they could figure out what the cause-and-effect sequence would be.
I do think that the show underestimated the butterfly effect of changing various events, although we did see a big one in the very first episode when saving the Hindenburg (oops!) led to Lucy's sister never being born. I can understand why the show didn't do a lot of that (it would have been really hard to manage!) so I forgive them.
I think that it's good that the show ended when it did; I thoroughly enjoyed the second season doubling-down on timeline changes involving the main cast, but we really were getting to the point where every member of the team was remembering a different version of their own timelines, including their relationships with each other, and it was getting pretty hard to keep track of. (You'd need a spreadsheet. I bet Rufus or Jiya would have made one!)
I respect Lucy's decision, late in the final episode, to let go of her sister Amy (in the sense of not trying to revise the timeline again to bring her back). Lucy had already seen how the timeline changes that saved Jessica had lost them Jiya, and saving Jiya had resulted in Rufus's death, and then to get Rufus back they had to lose both Flynn and Jessica. Moral of the story: stop messing with the damn timeline!
A quibble: after Flynn went back to kill Jessica and save Rufus, Wyatt concluded that the reason Jessica's killer had never been found was because it must have been Flynn all along. But that doesn't make sense; that's not the way time paradoxes work in this show. Flynn had no reason to kill Jessica before she became a Rittenhouse operative, and she only became a Rittenhouse operative after Rittenhouse overwrote the original timeline where she died.
Speaking of Flynn: poor Flynn. He definitely gets the short end of the time loop stick. It was heartbreaking to watch Lucy (already deep into her own happily-ever-after) travel back in time to give him the journal and set him on his path. Future-Lucy knows that by doing so, she is dooming him. And also, how fucked-up is it that all through season 1, she's fighting to stop him from doing the mission that future-her gave him? And hating him for it? Time travel, man. *shakes head slowly*
And speaking of Flynn and his bleak fate: you might recall that in my previous post, I had seen up though episode 6 of season 2; Jessica was back from the dead but we didn't yet know that she was evil, and I was rooting for her and Wyatt to rekindle their love, and for Lucy and Flynn to get together. So, well, if you've seen through to the end of the series, you know how that turned out.
Lucy and Wyatt getting together was the one part of the ending that I didn't like. Unfortunately, I got completely turned off Wyatt during the period while he was torn between Jessica and Lucy. Specifically: I was completely squicked by the way he was jealous and possessive of Lucy even while he was supposedly working on fixing his relationship with Jessica (again, this is before we knew that new-Jessica was evil). And I was super duper ultra-squicked by the scene where, upon seeing Lucy leaving Flynn's room in the morning, Wyatt went to Flynn and threatened him and told him to stay away from Lucy. (To which Flynn completely properly and correctly responded that Lucy was perfectly capable of making her own choices. Thanks, Flynn! Sorry about how it all turned out for you!) Anyway ... ew, Wyatt. Ew, ew, ew. Please stop getting your toxic masculinity cooties all over this beautiful, otherwise quite progressive show.
Anyway, like I said, I did enjoy the show overall and found its ending satisfying. And I think that it does provide its own version of an answer to the question "If time travel is possible, where are all the time travellers?" Answer: in the back alley, in period costume, murdering each other. :-P
