S01.E12: The Murder of Jesse James

[CooperTV]

6 minutes ago, Sandman said:

Not for nothing, but if the Lone Gunmen had access to a time machine? Hoo boy! (Pretty sure you meant to type "Lone Ranger," above, CooperTV.)

I'm of course was having mental image of this

when I was writing, and I was afraid I was gonna mixed it up! Ha!

[KaveDweller]

3 hours ago, JackONeill said:

Then Wyatt becomes obsessed about killing Jesse James. Well, if Wyatt killed Jesse, doesn't that change history? Not to mention, when the team got there, Jesse had already outlived his "actual" death at the hands of Ford. So, history had ALREADY changed. Sure, it would have continued to change with Jesse living, but do we actually know that for sure?? 

And I thought Wyatt's sole mission was to stop and kill Flynn...not everybody else he runs into that he doesn't Iike.

and the whole thing with Wyatt's wife -- how the hell does that fit into anything? (I guess next week may tell us.)

Their job is to stop Flynn and preserve history as much as they can. History already changed when Flynn saved Jesse, Wyatt wanted to kill him to get it close to what it had originally been.

26 minutes ago, withanaich said:

I don’t know that Lucy did the right thing, because she doesn’t even argue her case. When Wyatt brought it up, it seemed like she was leaning more toward Rufus’ way of thinking. Then: BANG! She shoots an unarmed, injured man in the back. Um, why? Because she was sad about her sister’s birthday? And it did nothing to “fix” the timeline. It may have prevented it from getting even more out of whack (we'll certainly never know), but the extra people Jesse James killed were already dead and still are.

Maybe I’m just struggling with it not because it was “wrong” but because Lucy seemed in no position to be making any kind of decisions this episode. Was she grieving, or was she drugged? She should have called in sick. I’m sorry, but I don’t care about Lucy’s sister. We never got to know her. (Seriously, we got to know Jesse James – the BAD GUY – more in this single episode than we got to know Lucy's sister or Wyatt's damn wife.) We never hear about her unless Lucy’s throwing a temper tantrum or going catatonic because she had a bad dream.

Exactly. I don’t know who I’m supposed to root for or even like anymore, except Rufus. Lucy used to be likable, but they’re turning her into the same kind of whiny useless baby as Wyatt.

When I saw the right thing, I don't mean it was a "good" thing. Killing someone is never good. I'm someone who doesn't believe in the death penalty. But when you factor in time travel, it gets messier. I just meant I think this was a case where it was the right move to do something wrong. Bass was probably thinking about it as going to prison would stop Jesse from killing more people, and Wyatt/Lucy were thinking about it as staying alive risked more lives than the original timeline.

I don't think it had anything to do with her being upset about her sister

[blackwing]

I really enjoyed this episode.  Loved the old West, the characters, the buildings, the set decoration, the clothes, everything.  So great to see Annie Wersching. I mark the death of Renee Walker as one of the missteps of "24".  They could have built a show around her after Kiefer didn't want to do it anymore.

Wyatt wanted to kill Jesse James because James represented everything he was against.  Letting bad people get away with killing good people.  His belief is that if James was dead, then more innocent people wouldn't die.  Just as if someone had snuffed out his wife's killer some time in the past, then his wife would be alive.  I think Lucy came around to the same belief.  Either she knows what Wyatt's reasoning is, or that she now believes the same thing.  Her sister is gone, she doesn't know why, and yet other innocents will be killed by bad people that could have been stopped.  And besides, history says that James was killed.  Flynn changed history.  She brought about the same result.

Some nitpicks:

1)  The show didn't really explain why it was that Flynn had to go and get Renee Walker.  I'm assuming Anthony is still with him... it was said before that Anthony and Rufus were the only ones who could pilot the ship.  Flynn wouldn't have been able to pilot the ship to 1882 without Anthony.  So why does he need her?  Didn't really understand why she stranded herself in time.  What was her endgame?  I know she was trying to hide from Rittenhouse but why the 19th century?  And how did Flynn know where and when she was?  If Rittenhouse couldn't find her, how did he?

2)  Last episode, Lucy knew a lot of details about H.H. Holmes yet couldn't even recognise him despite talking to him for quite a bit.  This episode, she knew a lot of details about Jesse James.  She enters his house, sees two dead bodies on the ground and instantly declares that they are Robert Ford and Other Ford, despite not even getting a good look at their faces.  I guess it's Convenience Fairy for that one.

3)  Renee said she had been living in that shack for 10 years, yet she had a paperback copy of "The Hunger Games".  That book came out in hardcover in 2008, there's no way she would have been able to get a paperback version.  

[iMonrey]

Quote

However, this was actually a step in the right direction for the show. We actually had some forward motion! I am just glad Flynn had a plot this week other than just killing random Rittenhouse guys or just randomly screwing with history

Which raises another question - when exactly did Flynn learn about this other pilot? If he's known about her all along why wasn't she his first stop 12 episodes ago? If he's only recently learned about her how did he come across that info? It looked like he was referring to Lucy's journal to find her house . . . hasn't that info been in there all along?

Edited January 24, 2017 by iMonrey

[withanaich]

Quote

1)  The show didn't really explain why it was that Flynn had to go and get Renee Walker.  I'm assuming Anthony is still with him... it was said before that Anthony and Rufus were the only ones who could pilot the ship.  Flynn wouldn't have been able to pilot the ship to 1882 without Anthony.  So why does he need her?  Didn't really understand why she stranded herself in time.  What was her endgame?  I know she was trying to hide from Rittenhouse but why the 19th century?  And how did Flynn know where and when she was?  If Rittenhouse couldn't find her, how did he?

Flynn wants Renee (was that her name?) because she has even more dirt on Rittenhouse than Anthony does. Anthony knows they're bad, but it's not clear if that's a conclusion he reached on his own or if Flynn was able to convince him they were Pure Evil and that's how he swayed him to his cause. It's also not clear exactly what info Renee has on Rittenhouse that would be useful to Flynn, but presumably she knows enough that he thinks he needs her to take them down. (What I found interesting is that Flynn chose to appeal to Renee rather than threaten or kidnap her, as he's done with other people he wanted to get something from.)

 She faked her death and stranded herself in time to hide out from Rittenhouse, presumably until the end of her days, because she knew enough for them to want to kill her. Maybe she didn't want to go along with them (the way Rufus won't), and she didn't have any family for them to threaten. Flynn learned about the pilot and the cabin from Lucy's journal. Yes, the info has been in there all along, but Flynn doesn't know what the most relevant bit of information is or what he should act on first. There are quite a few pages in there. And it looked like the sketch of the cabin was toward the middle of the journal, so maybe he's starting at the beginning and working his way through.

Quote

 Renee said she had been living in that shack for 10 years, yet she had a paperback copy of "The Hunger Games".  That book came out in hardcover in 2008, there's no way she would have been able to get a paperback version.  

It would be awesome if Anthony had made a couple of trips to bring her care packages ... but I'm thinking it's just sloppy set design/writing.

Quote

When I saw the right thing, I don't mean it was a "good" thing. Killing someone is never good. I'm someone who doesn't believe in the death penalty. But when you factor in time travel, it gets messier. I just meant I think this was a case where it was the right move to do something wrong. Bass was probably thinking about it as going to prison would stop Jesse from killing more people, and Wyatt/Lucy were thinking about it as staying alive risked more lives than the original timeline.

That's just it, though. I get moral relativism, and I can see both sides of the argument here, but we never see Lucy argue that she was concerned that James would escape and kill more people. She doesn't say anything like that, before OR after she shoots him. She's just stumbling around uselessly the entire episode (both Rufus and WYATT -- of all people -- comment that she's out of it), she seems to be agreeing with Rufus that it is bad to kill Jesse James, and then ... she shoots him from behind. And then ... no one speaks of it. So weird.

Edited January 24, 2017 by withanaich

[Shanna Marie]

I really liked this one -- gorgeous scenery, some meaty moral dilemmas, character development and team development, a bit of humor (the scary version of Blazing Saddles) and highlighting real but mostly forgotten people from history.

Is the actor who played Bass Reeves the one who does the NBC promo voiceovers? It was driving me crazy all episode trying to place him because there was something really familiar about him and especially about his voice, like I'd heard him narrate documentaries or commercials. Then there was a commercial break with a promo for another NBC show, and when we returned to the show, it clicked for me. I half expected the Lone Ranger to turn to the camera and say, "This week, on an all-new Grimm."

What I love about this show is that it's a kind of silly, fun show that makes me want to go look stuff up and read books.

[benteen]

2 hours ago, DoubleUTeeEff said:

Is there anyone for whom a time machine wouldn't be a massive temptation?  Most people have regrets and many have had someone close to them die. Imagine being able to go back and spend time with someone you love who has passed away.  And then there would be people who had good intentions, like changing some event in history that killed a lot of people.  Not to mention the people who would be greedy and want to profit.  Maybe there should be some sort of screening process.  Wyatt would definitely fail, considering his wife died prematurely in a violent way.  Plus the fact that the last moments he had with her were contentious.  Lucy might pass as a historian who would want to preserve history.  It's interesting that Lucy only wants to go back and change things back to what they were after they had already changed things.

True.  You'd need a team of Vulcans not to be able to become emotionally compromised.  But it should be drilled into their heads every time they are not on a mission that they can't alter the timeline.  The fact that they start doing that immediately should have gotten them dismissed from the assignment.

About the Hunger Games paperback, I took it that she went into hiding in 2015 and had been in the mid-19th century for over a decade.  Not 10 years in our time.

Edited January 24, 2017 by benteen

[SyracuseMug]

30 minutes ago, blackwing said:

3)  Renee said she had been living in that shack for 10 years, yet she had a paperback copy of "The Hunger Games".  That book came out in hardcover in 2008, there's no way she would have been able to get a paperback version.  

If she has been living in the cabin for ten years, doesn't she mean that she arrived in the past in 1872, ten years before the death of Jesse James? It may have been much less than ten years since she travelled back through time to get there.

[basiltherat]

And HOW did she travel back in time?  Did Trashcan drop her off, or did she have another Eyeball?

Lucy needs to stop and think that if her sister comes back, her mother will be once again on her deathbed.  Also, will she ever find out that she has Rittenhouse blood in her?

[CooperTV]

51 minutes ago, blackwing said:

 Renee said she had been living in that shack for 10 years, yet she had a paperback copy of "The Hunger Games".  That book came out in hardcover in 2008, there's no way she would have been able to get a paperback version.  

As one person said that one time, "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of

[Bort]

46 minutes ago, withanaich said:

Flynn wants Renee (was that her name?)

No, her name is Emma. The actress played a character named Renee on 24.

[tennisgurl]

22 minutes ago, benteen said:

True.  You'd need a team of Vulcans not to be able to become emotionally compromised.  But it should be drilled into their heads every time they are not on a mission that they can't alter the timeline.  The fact that they start doing that immediately should have gotten them dismissed from the assignment.

That's really my biggest issue with Wyatt on this team. I like him alright, as a character, but its been clear for awhile that he should not at all be on this mission. He compromised the mission in the very first episode when he saved that women who reminded him of his wife! I guess the idea was that he was a soldier who could be the action guy and knew how to follow orders and stay focused, but, as we have seen many times, he sucks at both, being unable to shoot the guy he keeps trying to kill, and the fact that he constantly screws up history, unless he decides its important to keep to the timeline because of his own issues. He is clearly not a guy who is good at letting bad people go free or good people get hurt, which is very admirable for most jobs and missions, but its a little more complicated here. Its a miracle that none of the characters have been erased from time with all the changes that Wyatt and Flynn have made, and Wyatt is the guy who is supposed to be stopping this! Lucy and Rufus have done questionable time related stuff too, certainly, but at least they usually pretend to care about the time stream. And, most importantly, he has his dead wife baggage. This is a guy who clearly has tons of regrets and has not even gotten close to getting closure for Jessica's death, and now has access to a time machine! What did they think was going to happen? As you said, its a totally human reaction, and anyone would be tempted to want to spend more time with a deceased loved one, but couldn't they find someone who just had relatives who died of natural causes that couldn't be helped? Or didn't have any dead relatives or big regrets? No perfect wife who was tragically murdered after he fought with her, and who never got justice? Do all military types come with their own tragic Dead Wives?

[Shanna Marie]

47 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

Do all military types come with their own tragic Dead Wives?

I think that's a requirement in the TV Armed Services. I'm trying to think of a TV military/ex military character who doesn't have a dead wife. There's Gibbs on NCIS (ex marine) whose first wife and at least one ex were murdered, the wife of the Gary Sinise character (ex marine) on CSI NY who died in 9/11, the wife of Riggs (some kind of special forces) on Lethal Weapon, and didn't Reese (some kind of special forces) on Person of Interest have a serious significant other who was killed? When you join the military on TV, you're issued a uniform, a weapon, and a dead wife.

[blackwing]

Steve McGarrett of Hawaii 5-0.  He's an ex-Navy Seal and he doesn't have a dead wife.  He's never been married.  He has an ex-girlfriend who was in the Navy and is now offscreen with the CIA.  Although he does have a dead dad.

Harmon Rabb of JAG also didn't have a dead wife.

Edited January 24, 2017 by blackwing

[meep.meep]

2 hours ago, withanaich said:

 

It would be awesome if Anthony had made a couple of trips to bring her care packages ... but I'm thinking it's just sloppy set design/writing.

The show has been really sloppy all along.  This is like during the moon launch episode, everyone in Houston is wearing light jackets even though it's July.  And Katharine Johnson worked at Langley not in Houston.  This isn't history, it's teevee.

Although, unlike Steven Spielberg, they haven't tried to convince the public that it is history.

Loved Lucy sliding over the horse.  And Goran finally got to ride.

[saber5055]

I'm still irritated Lucy didn't save Abe Lincoln because it would "change history," yet neither she nor Wyatt think anything about killing anyone who happens to be in their way. While I liked this episode, I was greatly irritated that Jesse James was portrayed as a wild crazy guy who went around murdering any and everyone, and was "the quickest draw in the west." No mention of his wife or kids and his family life on the farm. My BIG HOPE for this show is Wyatt's wife turns out not to have existed at all, that Wyatt killed her great grandfather back when, on one of his journeys. Boo hoo, Wyatt! And while it does snow in Missouri, there aren't a lot of mountains around St. Joseph (where Jesse lived), and even less in Kansas. But I did like the authentic outfits for both people and horses. (Tonto. Ha.)

[KaveDweller]

3 hours ago, blackwing said:

I really enjoyed this episode.  Loved the old West, the characters, the buildings, the set decoration, the clothes, everything.  So great to see Annie Wersching. I mark the death of Renee Walker as one of the missteps of "24".  They could have built a show around her after Kiefer didn't want to do it anymore.

Wyatt wanted to kill Jesse James because James represented everything he was against.  Letting bad people get away with killing good people.  His belief is that if James was dead, then more innocent people wouldn't die.  Just as if someone had snuffed out his wife's killer some time in the past, then his wife would be alive.  I think Lucy came around to the same belief.  Either she knows what Wyatt's reasoning is, or that she now believes the same thing.  Her sister is gone, she doesn't know why, and yet other innocents will be killed by bad people that could have been stopped.  And besides, history says that James was killed.  Flynn changed history.  She brought about the same result.

Some nitpicks:

1)  The show didn't really explain why it was that Flynn had to go and get Renee Walker.  I'm assuming Anthony is still with him... it was said before that Anthony and Rufus were the only ones who could pilot the ship.  Flynn wouldn't have been able to pilot the ship to 1882 without Anthony.  So why does he need her?  Didn't really understand why she stranded herself in time.  What was her endgame?  I know she was trying to hide from Rittenhouse but why the 19th century?  And how did Flynn know where and when she was?  If Rittenhouse couldn't find her, how did he?

2)  Last episode, Lucy knew a lot of details about H.H. Holmes yet couldn't even recognise him despite talking to him for quite a bit.  This episode, she knew a lot of details about Jesse James.  She enters his house, sees two dead bodies on the ground and instantly declares that they are Robert Ford and Other Ford, despite not even getting a good look at their faces.  I guess it's Convenience Fairy for that one.

3)  Renee said she had been living in that shack for 10 years, yet she had a paperback copy of "The Hunger Games".  That book came out in hardcover in 2008, there's no way she would have been able to get a paperback version.  

She had a time machine. If she got the book today, went back to 1870, and then Flynn went to 1880 it would have been ten years for her. The lifeboat can't seem to go back before Flynn, does, but Flynn has more freedom.

3 hours ago, withanaich said:

That's just it, though. I get moral relativism, and I can see both sides of the argument here, but we never see Lucy argue that she was concerned that James would escape and kill more people. She doesn't say anything like that, before OR after she shoots him. She's just stumbling around uselessly the entire episode (both Rufus and WYATT -- of all people -- comment that she's out of it), she seems to be agreeing with Rufus that it is bad to kill Jesse James, and then ... she shoots him from behind. And then ... no one speaks of it. So weird.

Does she have to say it? Wyatt was making the argument the whole time, her actions suggest she agreed.

[Tara Ariano]

In case you missed it, here's the Previously.TV post on the episode!

Timeless Travels To The Wild West For A Lesson in Moral Relativism

But screws it all up by letting bad boys play with big guns.

[ketose]

9 hours ago, JackONeill said:

Yeah, I'm quoting myself. I'm lonely, what can I say?

About a point I raised, about how I had a Lost flashback watching this episode, and how the show could be made better (IMO). 

Here's what I mean:  what happens if there had been a number of earlier pilots, and many of them didn't come back (crashed or maybe stayed on purpose)? Then Headquarters notice a lot of strange anamolies. So, they theorize that it's the pilots (or pilot) who got stuck in the past that's causing things to change. So, they send our team back to find the pilots (or pilot). And they have to also try to "correct" the timeline.

if it's just one pilot, they can have that person know that the team is coming to get them, so he/she "jumps" to a new time. And since the battery is weakening the jumps have to be short, a year or two, or maybe only months. So, the team would has to stay, say, in the cowboy era until they found the pilot.

maybe our team could have some kind of a communications device so that they can keep in touch with modern times, only to find out more and more bad stuff is happening. Of course, the unltimate bad thing would be if our team calls into headquarters only to hear: "Who are you and how did you get this frequency?"

I think the "how did you get this frequency?" line was actually used in Continuum's pilot.

For good or ill, Timeless is set up with shades of gray. Stopping Flynn means letting Rittenhouse have a time machine and Emma confirmed they want to rewrite everyone's history because influencing all of American history isn't enough. However, letting Flynn continue means massive, crude alterations in history that change all of life as we know it, especially if Rittenhouse is as big as it seems. Then again, this is the reason why I hate big conspiracies as the villain. Does Rittenhouse just hate everyone, or do they really think they can do good?

Time machines are often shown as inherently bad and many movies and TV shows (Back to the Future, Butterfly Effect, Paycheck, Continuum) end with a time travel method being destroyed. It seems like the same thing should happen to the eyeball.

[JackONeill]

If Rittenhouse is so big and bad how come he hasn't killed Flynn?

Is "our team" actually working (wink, wink) with Rittenhouse, and Rittenhouse expects them to kill Flynn? If so, how come they haven't been fired yet because they've been nothing but incompetent?

And, lastly, why was Wyatt even hired given his baggage? Seriously, who would hire him to do what they want him to do if he can only think about his dead wife? I would think having a dead wife would be an automatic "Thanks for coming in, but we think we're going with Pee Wee Herman over there."

[Shanna Marie]

4 minutes ago, JackONeill said:

And, lastly, why was Wyatt even hired given his baggage? Seriously, who would hire him to do what they want him to do if he can only think about his dead wife? I would think having a dead wife would be an automatic "Thanks for coming in, but we think we're going with Pee Wee Herman over there."

We know there's a Rittenhouse-related reason Lucy's on the team (her bio dad). There may be some reason for Wyatt being picked that has nothing to do with his qualifications or baggage. At least, I hope so. It would make things make a lot more sense, like the revelation about Lucy, where we know it's not just because she's the best historian ever, regardless of what they tell her.

[dubbel zout]

25 minutes ago, JackONeill said:

why was Wyatt even hired given his baggage? Seriously, who would hire him to do what they want him to do if he can only think about his dead wife?

With a dead wife, Wyatt is leaving no one behind, so he might take more risks.

Daniel Lissing really is a doppelgänger for Evan Lysacek. It's uncanny.

[LoneHaranguer]

5 hours ago, blackwing said:

Renee said she had been living in that shack for 10 years, yet she had a paperback copy of "The Hunger Games".  That book came out in hardcover in 2008, there's no way she would have been able to get a paperback version.

The great thing (from a producer's POV) about a show where you have time travelers who tromp through history without regard to the effects they have is that you can blame almost anything on a timeline change. That book could have come out years earlier in the timeline where she got it.

[Ripley68]

I had no problem with Lucy killing Jesse James.  He was supposed to have died 2 days before, and he proved he was going to just keep killing. I just figured with all the stuff in the cabin, she had(Emma) to have planned her "death" so packed accordingly.

Besides saving the reporter, what other changes has Wyatt made?  I see the team doing their best to keep history from changing, and any changes that have been made by them have been in trying to right what was changed. The biggest changes have been made by Flynn. My biggest nitpick with the show is that there was no fallout from the Benedict Arnold episode - and that no one else appears to have any changes made in their lives - and oh year....it doesn't equate with Lucy if sister comes back, Mom will probably be sick again.

We didnt' see everything Jiya saw, the last thing we see her looking at is Emma looking concerned/upset.  Also, I don't think the guy in jail killed Wyatts wife - just how he said what he said.

I would love it if Lucy's problem with the horse was something that really happened and they just kept it in the show and filmed reactions after. I really love the teams dynamics, how they joke with each other and look out (usually) for each other.  I agree they should have shown more concern for what Lucy did.

[Dowel Jones]

21 hours ago, green said:

It should bother you that Lucy killed Jesse James in cold blood.

Not to mention that for the rest of history she will be "that dirty little coward, that shot Mr. Howard, has laid poor Jesse in his grave."  (Added before I saw the other posts).

 

21 hours ago, green said:

in the "old west" of Missouri. 

I wasn't paying the closest of attention, but didn't they say that James and Flynn went into Indian Territory?  Missouri was a state by that time, and the Marshalls patrolled west of there.

Just for reference, after James's death, Frank James worked out a surrender deal with the governor of Missouri.  He was put on trial and acquitted.  He died in 1915.

[Shanna Marie]

27 minutes ago, Dowel Jones said:

I wasn't paying the closest of attention, but didn't they say that James and Flynn went into Indian Territory?  Missouri was a state by that time, and the Marshalls patrolled west of there.

Supposedly, there were times when the James Gang hid out in the mountains of Oklahoma. Mind you, those "mountains" aren't very mountainy, more like big, rocky hills, but they do sometimes get snow. There's a state park with a cave in it that's believed to have been a James Gang hideout, since it has carvings from about the right time period that show symbols and initials related to the gang. That would have been Indian Territory at that time.

What we saw didn't look much like Oklahoma, but if we're grading on a curve, that was more realistic than people in the Clear Lake area of Houston wearing coats in July for the moon landing, so it's kind of a win.

[KaveDweller]

2 hours ago, JackONeill said:

If Rittenhouse is so big and bad how come he hasn't killed Flynn?

Is "our team" actually working (wink, wink) with Rittenhouse, and Rittenhouse expects them to kill Flynn? If so, how come they haven't been fired yet because they've been nothing but incompetent?

And, lastly, why was Wyatt even hired given his baggage? Seriously, who would hire him to do what they want him to do if he can only think about his dead wife? I would think having a dead wife would be an automatic "Thanks for coming in, but we think we're going with Pee Wee Herman over there."

Rittenhouse is trying to kill Flynn. They just can't catch him because he stole a time machine and they hired a military hit man who can't get the job done. I guess they didn't know about him before he stole it?

It's a good point about Wyatt. You would think they would screen for people with a tragic past. Everyone would be tempted to make personal changes, but a guy with a recent dead wife seems much more likely than most.

50 minutes ago, Ripley68 said:

We didnt' see everything Jiya saw, the last thing we see her looking at is Emma looking concerned/upset.  Also, I don't think the guy in jail killed Wyatts wife - just how he said what he said.

She must have seen more than we saw. She must have already known a previous pilot died, right?

[LittleIggy]

I'm surprised Denzel hasn't starred in a movie about Bass Reeves. Get on it, Denzel.

Flynn is so reprehensible. He doesn't care what carnage he creates as long as he gets his family back. On the shallow side, Goran looked so hot in his western wear!

[methodwriter85]

23 minutes ago, LittleIggy said:

I'm surprised Denzel hasn't starred in a movie about Bass Reeves. Get on it, Denzel.

Flynn is so reprehensible. He doesn't care what carnage he creates as long as he gets his family back. On the shallow side, Goran looked so hot in his western wear!

Magnficient 7 underperformed. I can't see him doing another western anytime soon.

I really do hope they continue with the idea that there are other pilots, possibly hiding out in the past.

[green]

On 1/24/2017 at 7:43 AM, Randomosity said:

...

Does anyone know how many episodes this season will have? (And how things are looking regarding possible renewal or cancellation?)

According to the reviewer here this week who is Sam Huff: "It looks like there's a push on to save our favorite (sorta, kinda) time travel show. One of the show's creators, Erik Kripke, took to Twitter earlier this week and offered some advice on how to get the ratings up." 

Last week the reviewer here was saying it looked like it might get cancelled and that the network would be (had already? I forget and too lazy to look it up) ordering up 3 more episodes for this season.  The rumored reason being to wind up the show's plot before cancellation.

On 1/24/2017 at 0:26 PM, rose711 said:

Does this show remind anyone else of something that might have been written in 1960? The writing just feels really old and tire to me. It's another show that could have been good.

In defense of 1960, The Twilight Zone was on that year.  It arguably, despite things getting more "sophisticated" or whatever, remains the most intelligently-written TV show ever broadcast on network TV.

 

21 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

We know there's a Rittenhouse-related reason Lucy's on the team (her bio dad). There may be some reason for Wyatt being picked that has nothing to do with his qualifications or baggage. At least, I hope so. It would make things make a lot more sense, like the revelation about Lucy, where we know it's not just because she's the best historian ever, regardless of what they tell her.

I always just assumed Rittenhouse was involved in his wife's death and that Wyatt was selected for some Rittenhouse-related reason.  I mean I can see no other way an unstable, depressed idiot like that would have been selected by the military to take on this job.  He must have been requested by Rittenhouse (via Mason) from the very beginning.

I don't buy the argument that Lucy gets off morally scot-free for murdering Jesse James because he was suppose to die anyway.  Who made her God to police a timeline by killing someone.  At this point that timeline is already a zillion trillion times compromised via the butterfly effect let alone the obvious major changes already seen on the show.  She is now morally no different than Wyatt or Flynn to me. 

Only Rufus reluctantly killed someone to save another person and he is deeply effected by it and knows that to kill is a horrible thing.  He said something like it should be much harder to kill a person when he was talking to Wyatt about whether killing someone bothered Wyatt.  And Wyatt is all nay it doesn't bother me to kill people left and right.  To me there are only three good guys left on the series.  Rufus, his girlfriend and the Homeland Security lady.

Edited January 25, 2017 by green

[CooperTV]

58 minutes ago, green said:

I always just assumed Rittenhouse was involved in his wife's death and that Wyatt was selected for some Rittenhouse-related reason.  I mean I can see no other way an unstable, depressed idiot like that would have been selected by the military to take on this job.

Rittenhouse seems like hapless idiots themselves if they thought hiring one of their bosses' love child and a traumatized and retraumatized Navy Seal would be a great idea for their purpose of killing Flynn in the first place. None of them are exactly qualified for the job, not even Rufus, who straight up refused to spy on them, even after they threatened his family in the most sinister creepy way possible.

[rose711]

This show is no Twilight Zone. If it were,  it would be insanely popular instead of most likely being cancelled.

My point about 1960 is that the show is written at the level of sophistication that I think was prevelant decades ago (though the acting and direction is worse.)There is nothing remotely modern, fresh, compelling or interesting about it and the cast has zero chemistry as well as poor acting. Though you may be right and the show wouldn't have been popular even 60 years ago when there were 3  channels.

It probably could have been serialized in radio in 1930 and had similar story lines and writing, though the performances would probably have been less wooden. The big bad Rittenhouse agency? The scientist who was a good guy wasn't really kidnapped?  The cartoonish stories?  The fiancé? The sister? The mother lying about the father? Dead wife? Lincoln's assisination (for christs sake?)  Is there a cliche left unturned in any episode? 

This show is like a 6th grade class had a project to design a tv show about time travel. It's a shame because I wanted to like it but it seems I'm not alone in giving up on it. The cringeworthy Lincoln episode confirmed the shows lack of redeeming qualities- though none of the episodes were above mediocre. 

Its probably not the worst show on TV so that's something.

Edited January 25, 2017 by rose711

[CooperTV]

15 minutes ago, rose711 said:

Its probably not the worst show on TV so that's something.

Spoiler

The worst show on tv is currently Teen Wolf, where characters tend to know stuff other characters know and never talked about with others because the writers have seen those characters' conversations written on script. Or characters remember information from flashbacks different characters had seasons ago and also never talked about them with anyone. My explanation is confusing because nothing on Teen Wolf makes any sense whatsoever.

[rose711]

I found there was a short lived tv show about time travel in the 1960s so I wasn't far off!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Tunnel

it sounds like they got to go to the future(!) as well as the past. And they went all over the world not just the US! Also they went back to the ancient past like Ancient Greece.

Does this sound familiar: "Most episodes involved the capture or detention of Doug, Tony, or both, their escape, their recapture, and their escape again, before their move to the next episode."

It was cancelled despite being very popular because some ABC executive thought another show would be better. I guess tv programming has changed since then! 

Edited January 25, 2017 by rose711

[Randomosity]

2 hours ago, green said:

Only Rufus reluctantly killed someone to save another person and he is deeply effected by it and knows that to kill is a horrible thing. 

It wasn't laid out as explicitly as it was for Rufus (one of my gripes in a post earlier up the thread), but I'm still quite sure Lucy was reluctant and deeply affected. They didn't have her staring pensively at herself in the old photos for funsies.

 

2 hours ago, green said:

Who made her God to police a timeline by killing someone that is now already a zillion trillion times compromised via the butterfly effect let alone the obvious major changes already seen on the show.  She is now morally no different than Wyatt or Flynn to me. 

Well, Homeland Security did. That's why she's there. Knowledge of the history for context and to "try not to change anything". And I do think she's different from Wyatt and Flynn. She's trying to get back to the 'true' timeline - with Amy. Wyatt and Flynn are dead set on undoing the 'true' timeline (deaths of loved ones that actually happened).

Regarding the timeline already being compromised, why shouldn't she still try to mitigate the effects? If they were concerned with the butterfly effect, they wouldn't be able to do any of this at all, so that's kind of moot. As far as larger changes, in any sort of disaster situation, you don't just give up because some damage has already been done - you do the best you can to salvage as best a result as you can. I suppose with time travel, one could argue that there's no way to know if you're actually preserving the same future you're intending to, but having done my own work in true life natural disasters as part of my career, I know I wouldn't be able to just stand by and let things snowball even more out of control, even if my efforts eventually turn out to be futile, even if those well-intentioned efforts inadvertently ended up causing additional harm, even, perhaps, if it meant killing in the name of the greater good. (Could I actually kill another human? I have no idea. I'd like to think no. It's one of those situations where you can talk up your hypothetical behavior to no end, but I firmly believe you can't truly know until you're actually in the specific situation and faced with the decision.)

[CooperTV]

38 minutes ago, rose711 said:

I found there was a short lived tv show about time travel in the 1960s so I wasn't far off!

Moved my reply in Time Travel Shows and Movies: Compare and Contrast thread.

[dubbel zout]

3 hours ago, Randomosity said:

I'm still quite sure Lucy was reluctant and deeply affected. They didn't have her staring pensively at herself in the old photos for funsies.

She was moping all episode about her sister, and I don't think killing Jesse James overrode that.

[Riplet68]

I forgot to put in my post, Jesse James had a second gun, he only took one off, and he was keeping his left hand down by the other one. They made a point of showing him drawing 2 guns every time he shot prople( or wanted to shoot people)

[JackONeill]

22 minutes ago, Riplet68 said:

I forgot to put in my post, Jesse James had a second gun, he only took one off, and he was keeping his left hand down by the other one. They made a point of showing him drawing 2 guns every time he shot prople( or wanted to shoot people)

I knew that he had two guns, but I didn't notice that he'd only taken off one at the end. Maybe what we're bitching about is because TPTB didn't make it clear (through direction or writing) that Lucy saw he still had his other gun and was making "a move" for it. If that is what happened, then argument over. She was justified. (IMO)

[Sandman]

20 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Also, Flynn had some incredible timing, managing to walk into the house at the split second Jesse James was about to be shot. That's incredibly lucky on his part, considering the fact that the exact time of day James was shot is probably not a matter of historical record. The day? Sure. Approximate time? Maybe. Split second? I don't think so.

 I agree that the last-second timing of the shots was lucky, but Flynn did say that he'd been following the brothers all afternoon.

As long as I'm up: what the hell kind of a name is "Garcia Flynn" anyway? And what is the show making Visnjic do with his voice? I can't parse the accent that Flynn was attempting to use in the scenes with Jesse James at all. The obvious fakery of Flynn's garbled accent and marble-mouthed voice isn't helping the character seem authentic or compelling -- or even all that rational.

[JackONeill]

14 minutes ago, Sandman said:

 I agree that the last-second timing of the shots was lucky, but Flynn did say that he'd been following the brothers all afternoon.

As long as I'm up: what the hell kind of a name is "Garcia Flynn" anyway? And what is the show making Visnjic do with his voice? I can't parse the accent that Flynn was attempting to use in the scenes with Jesse James at all. The obvious fakery of Flynn's garbled accent and marble-mouthed voice isn't helping the character seem authentic or compelling -- or even all that rational.

Yeah, I noticed his accent, and how odd it was. But then, over the course of the show, it seemed to modulate back to near-normal (for him)(no offense meant).

[Sandman]

I wondered if Flynn was trying to sound like he belonged in "the Wild West" for James's benefit, but then couldn't be bothered anymore once he found Emma. Or once he decided that he'd had enough of James's insults about his "cause." Or maybe Kripke & Co. just want Menacing Goran and don't really sweat details like consistency of characterization.

[Ripley68]

A thing I like about this show is that they don't spoon feed us every....single....plot....point.  They seem to be believing their audience has a brain and can make some leaps on their own.  We don't need to see what happened to the big gun...we've seen in the past the team grab anamolistic things, so we can assume they grabbed the gun.  We don't need Flynn to explain how he found Emma, because he's already explained about the diary, and they showed him looking at it at the cabin.

[benteen]

17 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I think that's a requirement in the TV Armed Services. I'm trying to think of a TV military/ex military character who doesn't have a dead wife. There's Gibbs on NCIS (ex marine) whose first wife and at least one ex were murdered, the wife of the Gary Sinise character (ex marine) on CSI NY who died in 9/11, the wife of Riggs (some kind of special forces) on Lethal Weapon, and didn't Reese (some kind of special forces) on Person of Interest have a serious significant other who was killed? When you join the military on TV, you're issued a uniform, a weapon, and a dead wife.

Bravo with that last line.  It's so true.

[LadyArcadia]

22 hours ago, CooperTV said:

As one person said that one time, "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of

If I weren't already married, I'd ask you to marry me.

[saber5055]

As for the people Wyatt has killed, anyone remember the WWII ep where he shot a German soldier before he barely got out of the Eyeball? That surely changed that guy's history. As for Indian Territory: Jesse James lived in St. Joseph, Mo., that's where he was shot in real life and his two partners were shot in this episode. Just across the river is Kansas, a bit north, Nebraska. There are lots of Native American reservations there now, after the white man stole their lands. Kansas: Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Sac Fox, Chippewa, Shawnee. Missouri: Shawnee, Cherokee. Nebraska: Sioux, Ponca, Omaha, Winnebago. No shortage of Indians anywhere around Jesse's house, they didn't have to go near Oklahoma.

[possibilities]

23 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

What I love about this show is that it's a kind of silly, fun show that makes me want to go look stuff up and read books.

That's awesome.

I loved the "Lone Ranger" scoffing that "this isn't 1820!"

I miss Agent Christopher. They looped her into the Rittenhouse shenanigans and then we haven't really seen her since. It was my favorite development so far, and I wish they hadn't dropped it in favor or Mason menacing Jiya. In fact, the should brief Jiya now, too. She's in too deep for ignorance to be protective.

I was quite surprised when the closed captions confirmed that Rufus said "dick." Not because of the anachronism, but because of NBC.

I think there are many valid criticisms of the show, but I disagree that the cast lacks chemistry. Sometimes I think they have too much chemistry. But they always seem to me to have chemistry.

[dubbel zout]

31 minutes ago, possibilities said:

I was quite surprised when the closed captions confirmed that Rufus said "dick." Not because of the anachronism, but because of NBC.

The show is on at 10 p.m., and it's not being used instead of "penis."

[Sandman]

I wouldn't swear to it, but I can imagine that "dick" has been a slang term for male genitalia for more than two hundred years; whether it has been used for all that time as a term for an obnoxious person I couldn't say. But I don't think it's the worst verbal anachronism / misuse of the modern vernacular we've seen. (What if Rufus changed the time stream by accelerating the introduction of slang?!)

[iMonrey]

Quote

It would be awesome if Anthony had made a couple of trips to bring her care packages ... but I'm thinking it's just sloppy set design/writing.

Agreed - the visual of all the computer and cell phone tech was shorthand for "this person comes from the future." Even though it makes no sense whatsoever. In the first place we already know there isn't a whole lot of room in the time machine (and Emma was clearly using the original "life boat" model in the flashback) - why would she have brought a bunch of electronics with her if she was traveling into the past? There's no internet or cell phone service in the 1800s. What possible use did she think she'd have for any of it? Especially since she didn't seem to be interested in returning to her own time.

Quote

I found there was a short lived tv show about time travel in the 1960s so I wasn't far off!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Tunnel

it sounds like they got to go to the future(!) as well as the past. And they went all over the world not just the US! Also they went back to the ancient past like Ancient Greece.

Does this sound familiar: "Most episodes involved the capture or detention of Doug, Tony, or both, their escape, their recapture, and their escape again, before their move to the next episode."

That's actually a much better comparison than the Twilight Zone one. Timeless is about as ambitious as an Irwin Allen "sci fi" show from the 1960s like Time Tunnel or Land of the Giants.