S01.E14: The Lost Generation

[henripootel]

3 hours ago, Dowel Jones said:

8 hours ago, kariyaki said:

Flight school is mostly about teaching regulations, how to navigate and accumulating flight hours for experience.

And what to do when things go wrong.

Indeed.  As a comparison, I know folks who've been certified as scuba divers in a day, and true, you can get the basics pretty fast.  But if something goes wrong, you want to know how to deal with it.  My diver certification took two semesters, most of which we spent practicing not to panic.  Heck, we spent 4 classes just diving down, removing our gear, swimming to the next pile of gear and putting it on.  Diving is dangerous, as are flying and time travel - not a time to skimp.  

I too am a bit tired of Rittenhouse.  They're super-evil but they're not super-evil, they're almighty and woven into the fabric of American aristocracy but they're letting some not-Rittenhouse yahoos use their time machine, they control everything but they don't control anything ...  I'm lost.  And I don't care.  Nice to see Jim Beaver getting work but I'm not sure he adds much to the proceedings.

Also thought it odd that Flynn put all this stock in getting Lindbergh out of the way.  Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Lindy ended up on the wrong side of history with brush with Nazism.  Here was a huge American hero who ended up regretting saying nice things about Hitler, and didn't have much of an impact other than tarnishing his own name.  If Rittenhouse had huge plans for Lindbergh swaying public opinion, they didn't work out, and while Rittenhouse didn't know that in the '30s, Flynn certainly does so why bother getting rid of Lindy?  I know, it's our entryway into this Midnight in Paris episode, but it's not like this show needs to be any more crepuscular.  Oh, and if anyone wants to see how Hemingway should have been done in this show, I suggest watching the aforementioned Midnight in Paris.  In that, Hemingway talks exactly like you'd expect Hemingway to talk, if he'd been written by Ernest Hemingway.  This show's Papa was okay, that guy was perfect.  

Edited February 9, 2017 by henripootel

[dubbel zout]

4 minutes ago, henripootel said:

Also thought it odd that Flynn put all this stock in getting Lindbergh out of the way.

Flynn always seems to think that this is the one who will finally bust up Rittenhouse. If the group is so entrenched in American/world establishment, why is Flynn continually going after individuals?

[rove4]

Surprised at all the love for Wyatt's replacement. I found him so forgettable I never even caught his name.  I quite like Wyatt and I think the chemistry between the trio is pretty great. The team is supposed to avoid any alterations to the timeline so in that sense, they're all coming up short, not just Wyatt. His rogue mission to save Jessica (who I am wholeheartedly sick of hearing about btw) was misguided but I guess it was something he had to at least try. And Wyatt and Lucy helped him do it so they're not free from any blame there IMO.  But now hopefully that's out of his system and the story can move on, not that I hold out much hope at getting a second season. 

[ketose]

My new theory on Rittenhouse is that Flynn's relentless Terminator-like hunting of them throughout history turned them into the paranoid control freaks they are. In short, Flynn created them, and that's why he can't remove them from history.

A "pilot" for the eyeball apparently has to have a great degree of computer / physics knowledge. That's kind of the opposite of "Seven Days" where the pilot had to have a feel for the control stick and be able to withstand the painful process of going through time.

Now that Rittenhouse has taken over Mason Industries, maybe Lucy will use the journal to communicate information to Flynn.

[KaveDweller]

10 hours ago, dubbel zout said:

Oh, that makes sense. I don't know why I thought the diary would be any different from the photo of Amy.

As long as Flynn carries the journal with him on his time travel trips, it shouldn't change (at least not based on the rules we've seen). 

[green]

14 hours ago, dubbel zout said:

If Lucy was given a new, blank journal in this episode, what does that mean for the one Flynn already has?

 

4 hours ago, KaveDweller said:

As long as Flynn carries the journal with him on his time travel trips, it shouldn't change (at least not based on the rules we've seen). 

Ah but what if Lucy carries the journal now on her trips in time chasing Flynn and, as usual, runs into Flynn and the now two journals cross it's own timeline.  Will it implode?  Disappear?  Fill-up with random Scientology junk?  Or will they duel with swords until one is beheaded (the journal equivalent of same) because there can be only One.

Edited February 10, 2017 by green

[CooperTV]

34 minutes ago, green said:

Or will they duel with swords until one is beheaded (the journal equivalent of same) because there can be only One.

[benteen]

12 hours ago, green said:

 

Ah but what if Lucy carries the journal now on her trips in time chasing Flynn and, as usual, runs into Flynn and the now two journals cross it's own timeline.  Will it implode?  Disappear?  Fill-up with random Scientology junk?  Or will they duel with swords until one is beheaded (the journal equivalent of same) because there can be only One.

I don't see what's stopping Lucy from NOT WRITING THE JOURNAL.  Just right "**** you, Flynn!" on it.

[iMonrey]

Quote

Getting rid of Flynn doesn't necessarily remove Rittenhouse from the equation, so the team could still go after it.

In theory their new mission could be going back in time to take down Rittenhouse themselves, but there are only two ways that can go. One is that they fail miserably on each attempt, just as Flynn is doing now, and the other is that they manage to alter history only to return to their own time and find the people there have no memory of the mission. So it's sort of a dead end either way. 

The premise where Flynn is chasing Rittenhouse and Lucy, Wyatt and Rufus are chasing Flynn isn't altogether unworkable, it's just that the writers aren't ambitious enough to really explore the ramifications of it. Nothing they ever do seems to make a lick of difference so it's lather, rinse and repeat week after week. Think how much more suspenseful the show would be if we knew (and they knew) that every time they returned to their own time, history would be altered in some noticeable way. There would be an undercurrent of stress and apprehension with each mission, not knowing what they'd be coming home to. 

In a way this episode gave us a taste of what that might be like, if for instance they came home to find another agency altogether in charge of their mission. They even initially thought that's what had happened - that they had changed history too much. This is where the show should be going.

[TheGreenWave]

On ‎2‎/‎7‎/‎2017 at 1:45 PM, CooperTV said:

The Illuminati Dad and Lucy scene was sooo bad. I mean, I liked Abigail Spencer's acting is great and everything but that scene was atrocious. And now I think her mother is also Rittenhouse, which would explain a lot about her and her emotional manipulations of Lucy (and the creepy journal).

I so totally agree with this!!  That scene was so bizarre.  Dad's weirdly serious statement like, "yes, daughter, I too wanted to flee from my legacy of being a part of Rittenhouse, but, alas, I could not."  So why would he have wanted to flee?  Unlike Lucy who did not grow up in it (consciously, anyway), wouldn't the news that you are part of the most powerful group in all of the known universe seem super cool at first (besides Lindy's task from his dad about being a Nazi sympathizer in the future)?  I'm not sure what family elders tell their offspring when they are "ready" to know they are part of Rittenhouse, but that scene was just so over-the-top.

Also agree about the mom when Lucy told the story about following in mom's footsteps vs. indie college position.  Something foreshadowing about that story.  And, as has been stated here earlier, why can't she just choose to write nothing in it??

[Hanahope]

See the whole journal thing is why I hate poorly written time-travel shows.  Lucy only writes the journal because she's having all these trips and has to get it out on paper.  But the trips are only because of Flynn's attempts to change the past.  And he's going by information contatined in the journal , which is about Lucy's trips to events she has to deal with because of Flynn.  And if Flynn is following the journal, about things that happened involving him, how could he still go back - wouldn't he run into himself again?  And wouldn't he do something differently since Lucy's journal tells about all the Flynn-problems they thwarted?  Or at least wouldn't Flynn anticipate her actions more?  It makes no fucking sense whatsoever.

And seriously another episode where people interact with others in the past and it doesn't change a damn thing.  Lindenberg ends up acting exactly the same way.  Hemingway never writes a book even fictionalizing this event.  Its just frustrating to see a show with such promise be so poorly executed.

[tvfanatic13]

^^ You just gave me a headache! LOL

[rove4]

Timey wimey headaches inevitably happen to me too with time travel shows.

[ketose]

I have to wonder what the creators of Timeless thought they wanted to do here. It seems like they wanted to go back to various decades and dress the actors in period-specific clothing and interact with famous people. That alone wouldn't make sense, so the Rittenhouse plot line seems tacked on to give them a reason to travel around. Worse than that, they decided keeping information about Rittenhouse from the audience would keep them watching. Reality says otherwise.

Spending most of the season making Rittenhouse sinister but not really showing why they think they're right just turns them into a cartoonish, mustache-twirling villain. It makes me think of the show Continuum and how they did a dozen things different and better than Timeless, and they didn't even have to time travel every week.

[TobinAlbers]

I had to laugh at Wyatt mentioning the Force since Lanter is the voice of Annakin in The Clone Wars animated series and Annakin was a crazy mofo who wanted to protect people and Leia and ended up killing billions. So...yeah...crazy Wyatt with a cause could end up like Flynn with a cause...causing a lot of mayhem.

I'm still mad on Bam Bam's behalf. Left dead in an alley in Paris 1929.  Can Rufus's First Aid skills be awful and he actually be alive, and be nursed back to health by a French honey and live happily ever after?

It'd be hilarious if Emma was a double agent and she takes out Flynn on behalf of Rittenhouse and becomes the S2 big bad. He's wound up tight but she's wily and smart and playing her cards close to the vest.

You don't bring on Susannah Thompson and not have her play a bigger role than mom. She's either Rittenhouse or part of one of those outlier rebel groups.

Barash was great as Hemingway. So much fun.