S02.E01: The War to End All Wars

[shapeshifter]

3 minutes ago, KaveDweller said:

My favorite line was Wyatt's, "We were trying to save Private Ryan." 

Yes. More of that kind of writing is needed if this show is going to last beyond this reprieve season.

[smiley13]

I am so glad this show is back!  And Wyatt and Lucy were adorable when they saw each other.  

I do wish that horrible Emma would go away.  I couldn't stand that actress in a few guest spots on Castle and she is equally grating here,

[Shorty186]

6 hours ago, saber5055 said:

 

Edited March 13, 2018 by Shorty186
Never mind

[Netfoot]

22 hours ago, MzLiz said:

I was so sad for Lucy, killing that soldier. It will haunt her. 

Having discovered that her family is all Rittenhouse, perhaps Lucy will be darker and more driven this season.  It could be an improvement over the School-Marmy character she was before.

[Clanstarling]

2 hours ago, KaveDweller said:

I wonder if grandpa has already has his kid. He looked pretty young. But if they took him to the future, I'm thinking either they bring him back or he'd already had an offspring. Otherwise, wouldn't carol (and by extension Lucy) have disappeared?

My favorite line was Wyatt's, "We were trying to save Private Ryan." 

Loved Wyatt's line too.

I didn't think grandpa looked all that young, and people started their families young back then. Though the generations do seem off to me. If he already had children, which seems likely or as you say, they would have disappeared, Lucy's mother's father (if he was the soldier's offspring) must have been pretty old when she was born. My own family has four generations (and could have had five if I'd gone the "normal" route) within that approximate timeline.

[Netfoot]

Forgot to mention the easter-egg moments when a Sopwith Camel shoots down an Albatros D.V, not once, but twice!  Brought a smile to my face.

(I'm currently reading "Biggles Learns to Fly" by W.E. Johns.  Heh!)

[tennisgurl]

2 hours ago, KaveDweller said:

My favorite line was Wyatt's, "We were trying to save Private Ryan." 

Whats especially funny is that, if I remember right, he dropped that line to the undercover Rittenhouse guy, right? So he totally might have gotten that reference, and was trying not to roll his eyes the whole time.

[legaleagle53]

1 hour ago, Clanstarling said:

Loved Wyatt's line too.

I didn't think grandpa looked all that young, and people started their families young back then. Though the generations do seem off to me. If he already had children, which seems likely or as you say, they would have disappeared, Lucy's mother's father (if he was the soldier's offspring) must have been pretty old when she was born. My own family has four generations (and could have had five if I'd gone the "normal" route) within that approximate timeline.

Why would they have disappeared, if they'd already been born by the time he left 1918?  He would simply have been presumed to have been killed in action, but his bloodline would still continue.

And for those who despise Lucy for killing an innocent man who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, first of all, that can't be compared the situation with Jesse James, because there IS no comparison.  Lucy did what she had to do in Jesse's case in order to preserve the timeline and prevent HIM from killing God knows how many other people once he'd escaped from prison (as he would undoubtedly have done eventually) by shooting THEM in the back, which was his modus operandi.  That's why she felt no remorse over taking him out.  And Emma would have killed both the soldier AND Lucy if Lucy hadn't killed him -- the whole thing was a test to see whether Lucy was really committed to throwing her lot in with Rittenhouse, and as both Carol and Emma pointed out, if she had failed that test, not even Carol could have protected her, and Emma would have considered Lucy to be an expendable liability who was too dangerous to keep alive.  And as Carol also observed, Lucy was prepared to kill their patient AND Carol, Emma, and even herself if necessary by destroying the mothership with everyone on board.  Would she still have been a murderer if she had only killed the patient, Carol, and Emma?  Hell, Emma was even ready to kill Madame Curie and Irène to prevent them from blabbing about the existence of the mothership -- if Lucy had been armed, would you have been as alarmed if she had killed Emma right then and there in defense of the Curies?  Because Lucy wouldn't have hesitated to do so.  Would that still make her a murderer or a wannabe murderer?

The point of the above rant is that not everything can be judged in terms of absolute black-and-white.  Sometimes it just comes down to what needs to be done in the moment, and nobody can really say what he or she would or would not do until that moment actually arrives, when the decision has to be made right then -- there is simply no time to weigh the alternatives or to second-guess oneself.  As a soldier who's been trained to kill without remorse, Wyatt knows this, and so does Rufus after having learned it through his own experiences on the team's missions -- I seriously doubt he got off on setting that sleeper agent on fire in close quarters like that.  Even Agent Christopher knows this -- she was a cop for years before she joined DHS and became the de facto leader of the Time Team, so she's undoubtedly seen her share of "kill or be killed" moments and wouldn't hesitate to take someone out if she had to to save herself or someone else.

Edited March 13, 2018 by legaleagle53

[Manda317]

11 hours ago, saber5055 said:

Lucy fell out of my good graces when she murdered that soldier in cold blood. Because if she didn't, someone else would? Right ... great reason for becoming a murderer. Why not let someone else carry that burden. Plus now she's all verklempt because "she killed someone." Geesh. No kidding. I, for one, am not forgiving you Lucy.

It's also curious how they aren't suppose to change history, yet killing innocent bystanders doesn't change anything? That murdered soldier could be MY grandfather. And if they didn't go back in time to save grandpa, why does everyone exist now? Who saved him in real time the first time? If he had died, none of them would be here now.

I know, stop trying to make sense of this.

She didn't think there was anything she could do to save him, and she needed her mom and Emma to trust her as long as possible so that she could try and stop them. If she was killed or thrown out there wasn't a lot she could do. As she said, her plan was to blow up the ship while they were all on it.

As for the grandfather, he originally died in WWI. I guess his friend was unable to find help or the help didn't have the tools to save him. He must have already had a family before he was sent to war. Because his life was supposed to end that day, removing him to the future doesn't change the timeline.

[Halting Hex]

Lucy doesn't know her own great-grandfather's name? Really?  Some "historian", there.

Grampa Nate must have already had his kid, or Carol and Lucy would vanish from the timeline when he was pulled out of it.  So I guess he was originally KIA and Carol's parent was raised to be a good little Rittenhouser back home while Nate was mourned.  And now Team Evil saw an opportunity to get one of their key "thinkers" back, and working for them again.  Still doesn't explain why they hadn't already mounted a rescue mission, if they'd had time to put Albright (and his iPhone) in place as a sleeper agent, though.

(What good does the iPhone do in 1918, anyway?  Never mind the charging issue, there aren't any towers or satellites for Albright to use for calling, not mention a severe lack of anybody for him to call with compatible technology.  Did Albright bring it only to photograph Nate's manifesto?  But wouldn't they already have a copy if they knew Nate had written it?  And it's not as though contemporary cameras couldn't do a decent enough job of photographing the pages.  Seems like more trouble than it's worth…unless Albright had some downloaded Big Brother episodes on his phone, just to keep from getting bored on those long nights in the trenches…)

Cute bit with Lucy standing back from the X-Ray machine as Marie Curie "assures" her that radiation is harmless.  (Marie dies of radiation poisoning, for those who don't know.)  I guess that's more of a "don't change history" moment than blowing away Doughboy Deadmeat was.

I'm not opposed to Lucy/Wyatt, but it wasn't all that long ago that Wyatt was stealing the lifeboat and running off to try and save Jessica's life.  He may have screwed up that 1983 rescue mission, he may have given up hope of saving Jessica, but the emotions shouldn't be so easily shrugged off.  And Rufus being all "admit it, bro, you looooooooove Lucy" was just gross, IMO.  

Which is why I don't feel bad for noticing that Connor has much better chemistry with Jiya than Rufus has ever had…

[possibilities]

When I think 1918, I think flu pandemic.

[bros402]

7 hours ago, Clanstarling said:

I'm not sure we know enough to assume she isn't the supreme commander, at least in this timeline.

I didn't get the impression that Emma was saying she did that under Carol's orders. But, given everything, it seems likely she would have known about it.

The bunker seemed to be a fall out shelter (even if the windows would negate that purpose - the signs on the walls certainly seem to indicate that it is supposed to be), and so they might be shielded from the scans. I think there might be a connection to the x-rays not working right due to the interference from the Rittenhouse mother ship, but my brain is not quite getting there.

I can't remember now if Lucy's sister was never born because the ancestor of the sister's actual father died when they screwed up with the Hindenburg, or was simply shifted to another place, but I agree. They tend to shrug that off time and again, which does bug.

I don't think grandpa survived originally. The Rittenhouse stuff started well before WWI (if I recall correctly), and I think parts of Grandpa's manifesto may have survived originally (scanning it onto the phone seems to me a way to preserve it). I'm not altogether sure why they'd want him, specifically, since his insights into historical pressure points are a 100 years out of date.

The signs indicated it was some kind of NASA facility

[Dowel Jones]

Seems to me that if Rittenhouse is placing its sleeper cells throughout history, choosing to place one in the Infantry just before WWI might be rather self-canceling.  There would be a chance that he would not return from the war, even without the intervention of Team Wyatt.

Maybe it would have been unlikely for Lucy to kill Emma/Carol, but, damn, Wyatt, you had a gun on both of them and you could have dropped Emma in one shot.  Yet you stood there and backed away as they got into the Eyeball.  Such logic doesn't make for long seasons, though.  The plot has to go somewhere.

Quote

My favorite line was Wyatt's, "We were trying to save Private Ryan." 

Captain:  "What regiment are you from?"  Rufus:  "The black one."

[shapeshifter]

7 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

 

10 hours ago, KaveDweller said:

My favorite line was Wyatt's, "We were trying to save Private Ryan." 

Whats especially funny is that, if I remember right, he dropped that line to the undercover Rittenhouse guy, right? So he totally might have gotten that reference, and was trying not to roll his eyes the whole time.

So would that have tipped the Rittenhouse guy to them being time travelers (assuming the Rittenhouse guy knew the movie), or would he have been thinking it was just a funny coincidence? 
Was "Private" even a classification for a soldier in The Great War?

 

1 hour ago, Dowel Jones said:

Captain:  "What regiment are you from?"  Rufus:  "The black one."

This was amusing, but if Rufus would have probably known to use the term "Negro" instead of "black" in 1918, which would have sounded very dissonant to our 2018 ears—especially the ears of the basic network audience—which is why the writers wouldn't have had Rufus say that.
Anyway, Rufus's use of "black" combined with Wyatt's "saving Private Ryan" would have tipped any Rittenhouse plants, whereas either one of the slips/snarks on its own might not have.
Now that they know that they are likely to encounter enemy time travelers, I hope we will hear some amusing efforts to cover up their blurts of current pop culture or knowledge of modern events. Like maybe Rufus covering up for using the word "carburetor" (when trying to troubleshoot a Model T engine) by turning the word into a sneezing sound that Wyatt explains is "peculiar to his folks." IDK. I just hope the writers are good enough to make comic use of the situation.

Edited March 13, 2018 by shapeshifter

[sjohnson]

Given that Carol lied to Lucy about her father's parentage all her life, I'm not sure how Carol could have told Lucy about her great-grandfather without giving that game away. 

The mystery of what the sleepers are doing is what the team is going to solve with Flynn's help, so at this point I think it is supposed to be unclear what they're doing.

But more and more I am wondering why Carol didn't raise her daughter as a good little Rittenhouse? Do they have their own version of Lucy's journal, information from the future that has come back into the past? 

[Netfoot]

6 hours ago, Halting Hex said:

Lucy doesn't know her own great-grandfather's name? Really?  Some "historian", there.

I know my paternal great-grandfather's name because the first of that line have all been name Thomas, all the way back to the son of Tormod, in the late 13th century.  In the maternal line, I know my grandfather was named Noel because I knew him. I have no idea what his father was called.  

But then, I am not a historian...

[mythoughtis]

1 hour ago, sjohnson said:

more and more I am wondering why Carol didn't raise her daughter as va good little Rittenhouse?

Original timeline Carol didn’t raise Lucy that way. But altered timeline Carol probably did. Since altered timeline Carol ended up with original timeline Lucy, it was all for naught. 

Its quite possible that original timeline Carol wanted nothing to do with Rittenhouse and that’s why Lucy didn’t know anything about it. Amy’s father might have been a good person. 

Edited March 13, 2018 by mythoughtis

[Clanstarling]

9 hours ago, legaleagle53 said:

Why would they have disappeared, if they'd already been born by the time he left 1918?  He would simply have been presumed to have been killed in action, but his bloodline would still continue.

Was responding to someone positing grandpa hadn't had any children yet - therefore taking him out would disrupt the timeline.  I thought he probably had kids already.

[Your Aunt Tilly]

I'm a Rad Tech student so I was nerding out over the portable x-ray machine because one of the first things we learned when we started studying portables was about their invention during WWI. 

Speaking of the war and the timeline, I'm turning 45 soon and my grandfather was a WWI vet. I don't know how old Lucy's mom is but I'm assuming she's older than 45 so that didn't phase me in the least .

Edited March 13, 2018 by Your Aunt Tilly

[jcin617]

16 hours ago, iMonrey said:

I'm still not clear on what these sleeper agents were/are trying to do. It's only just recently that Rittenhouse got control of the Mothership. Prior to this, they were actually controlling the Life Boat in an effort to take down Flynn, who in turn was trying to take down Rittenhouse. So, are these sleeper agents just news-gathering? They get dropped off somewhere in the past, live there for a few years, then pass info along to the time travelers? I don't understand what use they are to Rittenhouse. 

I'm picturing it like ripples in a pond.   An agent in 1800 will make a change, it ripples forward where an agent in 1830 makes another change, and so on and so forth until events are set up how Rittenhouse likes.   I'm hand-waving (until the show explains otherwise) that embedding a person from the future in the past somehow shields them from the changes in the timeline - and since you can't travel back to a point you've already been, this allows sleeper agents to make continuous changes on the fly to ensure the Rittenhouse plan plays out correctly.

[mythoughtis]

Yes, except the butterfly effect will cause the Rittenhouse plan to have just as many unintended and unknown consequences as the Flynn or Lucy plans have.  I’m under the theory that life has a way of happening while you are making or executing plans. 

Edited March 13, 2018 by mythoughtis

[mythoughtis]

Question- could the journal be from the altered timeline Lucy? The one who was raised Rittenhouse and may have time traveled under Rittenhouse plans? Then she grows to hate them and in the future gives Flynn the journal? Of course, Flynn has now altered that timeline by-stealing the time machine.  I now have a headache, because that means original Lucy is not actually original either? 

Edited March 13, 2018 by mythoughtis

[legaleagle53]

14 minutes ago, mythoughtis said:

Question- could tbe journal be from the altered timeline Lucy? The one who was raised Rittenhouse and may have time traveled under Rittenhouse plans? Then she grows to hate them and in the future gives Flynn the journal? Of course, Flynn has now altered that timeline by-stealing the time machine.  I now have a headache, because that means original Lucy is not actually original either? 

There is no altered-timeline Lucy.  The original timeline keeps being re-written AROUND the original Lucy and the others, so to everyone who's not a time-traveler, "our" Lucy is the only one who's ever existed.

[saber5055]

9 hours ago, possibilities said:

When I think 1918, I think flu pandemic.

They should have dropped off some Tamiflu while they were there.

 

7 hours ago, Dowel Jones said:

Captain:  "What regiment are you from?"  Rufus:  "The black one."

That had to confuse the Captain since back then it would have been "the Negro one." Although it did make me think of the Scottish Black Watch and the New Zealand All Blacks. Both are good, so there's that.

I have no idea what Rittenhouse is suppose to be and if they are bad or maybe they are good and changing history so things are better today. Anyone?

[legaleagle53]

15 minutes ago, saber5055 said:

I have no idea what Rittenhouse is suppose to be and if they are bad or maybe they are good and changing history so things are better today. Anyone?

Rittenhouse is clearly trying to take over the world by remaking history in its own image, people's individual agency and liberties be damned.  Didn't its founder, David Rittenhouse, say that people only existed to be manipulated like the parts of a clock in order to achieve certain ends?  Destroying people's agency by controlling their every move isn't the way a person (or an organization) brings about change for the better.  It's the way a dictator runs things -- and dictators never do anything for anyone else's benefit but their own.

Or, to put it more succinctly, the end doesn't justify the means, especially when it comes to organizations like Rittenhouse.

Edited March 13, 2018 by legaleagle53

[Shanna Marie]

13 hours ago, Clanstarling said:

Though the generations do seem off to me. If he already had children, which seems likely or as you say, they would have disappeared, Lucy's mother's father (if he was the soldier's offspring) must have been pretty old when she was born. My own family has four generations (and could have had five if I'd gone the "normal" route) within that approximate timeline.

It's not out of the question. I'm younger than RittenMama, since I'm not old enough to have a daughter Lucy's age (going by the age of the actress), but my grandfather was a WWI veteran. The tricky part is that RittenGrampa would have had to at least conceived his child before September 1918 in order for Carol and Lucy not to be erased when he was removed from the timeline (unless maybe there's a loophole that allowed him to be removed, healed and briefed, and then returned to the time they took him), so his child would have had to be in his mid-40s when Carol was born. It's not at all out of the question. And it's not surprising that Lucy might not have known the name of a great-grandfather who died long before she was born.

Just a random thought that came to me when parsing this: Shouldn't Lucy's last name have changed after that first trip that changed her family? She thought her mother's husband was her father until Amy got erased and she didn't when her mother didn't marry him, so presumably Lucy's last name is her stepfather's last name. But now her mother hasn't ever married him, so her mother and Lucy would presumably have a different last name in this timeline. Of course, Lucy would see herself as having the same last name, but her official identity in the outside world would be different. And yet the journal her mother gave her had the same initials.

12 hours ago, legaleagle53 said:

Lucy did what she had to do in Jesse's case in order to preserve the timeline and prevent HIM from killing God knows how many other people once he'd escaped from prison (as he would undoubtedly have done eventually) by shooting THEM in the back, which was his modus operandi.  That's why she felt no remorse over taking him out.

I think she was also protecting Wyatt -- Bass had a gun on Wyatt while Wyatt was getting ready to shoot Jesse James. If Wyatt had shot, Bass might have killed him. Lucy doing it preserved the timeline, since Jesse was supposed to be dead, without getting Wyatt killed for doing so.

And that sort of thing is why I don't necessarily see the thing with Lucy and Wyatt now as rushed. I'm not really a shipper, but I think even in the real world something between them would probably be inevitable. People tend to be more attracted to people they're around during high-adrenaline situations, so odds were that they'd end up attracted to each other, especially since they don't have any current outside relationships. Add to that the fact that they really don't have anyone else they can be honest with about what they're going through, unlike Rufus, who's had Jiyah all along, and the fact that there don't seem to be any formal anti-fraternization rules, and I'd be more surprised if two people in that situation didn't go there. I don't know if it was intended in the writing, but Abigail Spencer has kind of been playing it like Lucy has had a tiny crush on Wyatt almost from the first "ma'am" and fastening the harness. There was the bit in the Alamo episode when she overheard him talking about the source of his PTSD and she got all misty-eyed, and then you could practically see the little hearts in her eyes in the Bonnie & Clyde episode when he told the story of his engagement. They got all flustered with each other after the kiss they did while playing along with their roles. On the other hand, I think he's rebounding in a big way, so there are definitely red flags for him, considering he's got a raging case of PTSD and is rebounding from giving up on his late wife, so he's jumping to the nearest available woman he knows, and that means that what he feels may or may not be entirely real or entirely about Lucy herself. But it is something that seems like it would happen, and both of them believing the other was dead, only for them to find each other again, would only intensify it. The current isolation, where they can't interact at all with anyone outside their team, will just add to it. And because this is television, I imagine that the cliffhanger for the episode in which they actually get together will be his wife showing up like she's never been dead, thanks either to direct intervention by Rittenhouse or to the butterfly effect from something they did in history.

The other option is that we're going to learn that her death was a hit from Rittenhouse from a future time traveler, only they're experiencing it like history.

[mythoughtis]

36 minutes ago, legaleagle53 said:

There is no altered-timeline Lucy.  The original timeline keeps being re-written AROUND the original Lucy and the others, so to everyone who's not a time-traveler, "our" Lucy is the only one who's ever existed.

I see what you are saying. But our Lucy is not the Lucy that non time travelers are used to dealing with. This was shown after the very first episode when our Lucy came back to a reality where she was engaged to someone she knew she had never met. That someone still fully recognized Lucy as his fiancée- but realized she was ‘off’ from his normal Lucy.  So the altered timeline Lucy had existed and then somehow went poof when Lucy returned from the past. 

 

Eta - which sort of answered my own question in a negative way. 

Edited March 13, 2018 by mythoughtis

[snarktini]

21 hours ago, DFWGina said:

So glad this show is back.  I can't see how it wouldn't change things to bring Grandpa to the present - he wouldn't be doing any of the things he did in the past if he was suddenly disappeared from his oriignal timeline, right?  

 

I'm confident they indicated he was supposed to die on the battlefield, so taking him from the timeline changes nothing. Which means his kid -- Lucy's grandparent -- has already been born or conceived and the manifesto is already finished. Which also means it may not have been scanned by sleeper guy with the infinite iPhone, he may already have had that scan from the future brought back on the phone. Unless something originally happened to the manifesto through time, like it was seen but destroyed or lost at some point?

I'm assuming the reason for the kidnapping is to get his evil genius in the same time as the time machine. The manifesto is one thing, but the thinker behind it is is better. He can guide missions and course correct. 

So confusing. I'm glad to see it back but I do hope it clears up or I may not have the patience to sit through it. Rufus is what keeps me tuning in for now.

[iMonrey]

Quote

Lucy doesn't know her own great-grandfather's name? Really?  Some "historian", there.

Good point.

I went back and watched this again because I felt like I must have missed some stuff. Turns out, I didn't. This episode really needed to be 2 hours. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate a show that doesn't insult my intelligence by spelling everything out, but there were too many unexplained plot points. For example, the whole Captain Albright thing didn't make any sense. He apparently scanned/copied the manifesto written by Nicholas Keynes - but why? If he was planted there by Emma, and Emma planned to return and collect Keynes himself, what purpose did it serve to copy Keynes' manifesto? Apparently, just so Rufus and Wyatt could steal it. 

There's also that bit where Captain Albright and his men apprehend Rufus and Wyatt and take them back into a tent. As soon as they walk in, there's another soldier sitting in there who seems to instantly recognize them, and Rufus shouts out a warning to Wyatt. What tipped Rufus off? Did Rufus recognize this guy? Did this guy recognize Rufus and Wyatt? I didn't get that at all. It almost seems like maybe the only purpose for these sleeper agents is to capture Team Lucy should they ever show up.

Then there was some sort of Rittenhouse henchman following Carol and Lucy into the army camp asking how they knew Madame Curie would be there "We're historians." Who the heck was this guy, and how did he get there? We did not see him prior to this and he is never named.

To be honest I was really hoping they would move past this whole Rittenhouse nonsense this season and do something else - like maybe they have to fix a lot of the timeline because of the damage they and Flynn did last season. I just think Rittenhouse as a whole, as a plot point, is still too ill-defined and doesn't really work as an effective Big Bad. It's just a little too convenient to hand wave all this so they have a new reason to keep going into the past. Last season, it was Flynn; this season, it's Rittenhouse sleeper agents trying to change the past. Enough with Rittenhouse already.

[North of Eden]

Good return over all. I probably wouldn't have gone with a WWI setting though as that conflict is something of a cypher...The Bob Dylan song says it best "not really sure what we were fighting for"...not like World War II where it was so clear cut good guys verses the Nazis. Simple and easy.

Eliminating Mason Inudstries whiffed of budget cutting so as not to have to pay all the extras on hand.

"You haven't lost me." awesome...just great. A nice moment.

What I don't get is this new timeslot. When it was renewed I distinctly remembered it being touted as making it "more family friendly" so why stick it on at Ten O'clock when the kids are in bed for school on Monday morning. Makes zero sense.

[legaleagle53]

14 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

There's also that bit where Captain Albright and his men apprehend Rufus and Wyatt and take them back into a tent. As soon as they walk in, there's another soldier sitting in there who seems to instantly recognize them, and Rufus shouts out a warning to Wyatt. What tipped Rufus off? Did Rufus recognize this guy? Did this guy recognize Rufus and Wyatt? I didn't get that at all. It almost seems like maybe the only purpose for these sleeper agents is to capture Team Lucy should they ever show up.

Then there was some sort of Rittenhouse henchman following Carol and Lucy into the army camp asking how they knew Madame Curie would be there "We're historians." Who the heck was this guy, and how did he get there? We did not see him prior to this and he is never named.

The second question answers the first one.  The Rittenhouse goon who was following Carol and Lucy was Mack, and he's evidently been on other missions before. He may, in fact, have been one of the other sleepers planted by Rittenhouse in this particular era, so he would have known from the get-go who Lucy, Carol, Emma, Wyatt, and Rufus were.  He was the one waiting in Captain Albright's tent, so as soon as Rufus spotted him and recognized him, he knew that the whole setup was a trap.  Hence the warning to Wyatt.

1 minute ago, North of Eden said:

Good return over all. I probably wouldn't have gone with a WWI setting though as that conflict is something of a cypher...The Bob Dylan song says it best "not really sure what we were fighting for"...not like World War II where it was so clear cut good guys verses the Nazis. Simple and easy.

Which is sad, considering that 2018 marks the centennial of the end of the war.  This entire episode takes place less than two months before the armistice was signed and only about nine months before the Treaty of Versailles formally ended the war on June 28,1919.

[saber5055]

59 minutes ago, legaleagle53 said:

It's the way a dictator runs things -- and dictators never do anything for anyone else's benefit but their own.

It will be interesting then, how Rittenhouse handles Hitler (they already went back to WWII) and all the other dictators in the world, from the beginning of time until present day. Will Castro exist? Mao Zedong, Leopold II, Hideki Tojo, Nicholas II, Pol Pot and on and on. Or maybe they are all part of Rittenhouse too? There are hundreds of them through history.

Can't say I'm a big fan of the Rittenhouse plot.

25 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

Enough with Rittenhouse already.

I second that motion.

[sarthaz]

Flynn was interesting. Emma not so much. They're trying too hard to make her the evilest evil who ever eviled, and it doesn't track. I'm supposed to believe Rittenhouse is this massive all-powerful time-travel organization with sleeper agents scattered throughout time, and their top operative runs around murdering random people in the past without regard for the ripple effects of that stupidity?  They lost me there.  Didn't help when Wyatt dramatically announced his presence to Emma, when he could have just shot her and saved everyone.

[legaleagle53]

14 minutes ago, saber5055 said:

It will be interesting then, how Rittenhouse handles Hitler (they already went back to WWII) and all the other dictators in the world, from the beginning of time until present day. Will Castro exist? Mao Zedong, Leopold II, Hideki Tojo, Nicholas II, Pol Pot and on and on. Or maybe they are all part of Rittenhouse too? There are hundreds of them through history.

That's one of the main reasons that the showrunners have said that they have no plans to visit the future.  History is simply too full of stories (both told and untold) that need to be explored, and they have basically said that their intent is to focus primarily on the untold stories involving real people and events (particularly those involving women and minorities) to give these people the proper credit that they deserve for the roles they played in shaping our history.  I, for one, had no idea before I watched this episode that Marie Curie had (1) invented the X-ray machine; (2), figured out how to build and power a portable version of it; and (3) served with her daughter in France during WW I teaching women how to use and maintain it -- and even teaching women how to drive the transport vehicles -- and this was long before women even had the right to vote in France (that didn't come about until just before the end of WW II in 1945, and even then, it was limited only to women who were literate).  And I had studied about Marie Curie in high school and thought I knew everything about her!

Edited March 13, 2018 by legaleagle53

[iMonrey]

Quote

The Rittenhouse goon who was following Carol and Lucy was Mack, and he's evidently been on other missions before. He may, in fact, have been one of the other sleepers planted by Rittenhouse in this particular era, so he would have known from the get-go who Lucy, Carol, Emma, Wyatt, and Rufus were.  He was the one waiting in Captain Albright's tent, so as soon as Rufus spotted him and recognized him, he knew that the whole setup was a trap.  Hence the warning to Wyatt.

Oh, I didn't make that connection. Still . . . how did Rufus recognize the goon? And how would Rufus know the goon would recognize him and Wyatt? Up until that moment, Rufus and Wyatt had never laid eyes on him, so far as we can tell. 

[CooperTV]

Lucy overcomes grief and trauma from losing people she loves by... killing other people? She and Flynn are really a match made in hell.

Agent Christopher telling Wyatt, of all people, to prepare himself for the possibility the person he loves might be dead already after the violent kidnapping. It's not like Wyatt was in the exact same situation before or anything.

Great chemistry between every key player this episode, and everyone has stuff to do. Team Eyeball's reunion was great, and Jiya interrupting first Wyatt and then upcoming Lyatt was so good. I like how the script used her appearance as a coda there.

Of course there's even bigger evil secret plot and the deeper levels of shadow government. Of course it is.

Bonus: some periodic clothes and hair porn with Lucy and her mom, and also some actual porn with Wyatt all hurt, angsty and naked in the shower.

43 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

And how would Rufus know the goon would recognize him and Wyatt? Up until that moment, Rufus and Wyatt had never laid eyes on him, so far as we can tell. 

When Lucy left Wyatt and Rufus in the tent, Wyatt watched her walking away and saw that guy.

Edited March 13, 2018 by CooperTV

[legaleagle53]

3 hours ago, CooperTV said:

Lucy overcomes grief and trauma from losing people she loves by... killing other people? She and Flynn are really a match made in hell.

 

That's not why she did it, as the episode made clear.  It was a choice between proving to Carol and Emma that she was loyal to Rittenhouse by doing something that Emma would have done anyway because the soldier in question was trying to interfere in the operation that would save Nicholas's life or exposing herself as an expendable liability whom Emma would have killed without hesitation as soon as she had finished the officer off.  Would you rather that Lucy had made herself a martyr right then and there?  And let's not forget that even after she passed the test, she still considered killing Nicholas by smothering him with a pillow (which she would have done if Carol hadn't caught her before she could) and then later planned to destroy the lifeboat with everyone aboard.  Those aren't the actions of someone who is trying to overcome grief and trauma from losing people she loves.  Those are the actions of someone who knows what she has to do and is willing to do it in order to stop the greater evil from succeeding..

Edited March 14, 2018 by legaleagle53

[iMonrey]

Does anyone get why sleeper agent Captain Albright scanned Nicholas Keynes' manifesto if Emma & Rittenhouse were just going to come back and collect Keynes himself anyway?

[mythoughtis]

I think the manifesto was scanned in the present and was on the phone when the guy came back in time.  He might have been there to protect Carols’ grandfather.

[Clanstarling]

23 minutes ago, iMonrey said:

Does anyone get why sleeper agent Captain Albright scanned Nicholas Keynes' manifesto if Emma & Rittenhouse were just going to come back and collect Keynes himself anyway?

Did Keynes have the manifesto on him? Having the man doesn't mean he'd be able to recreate it, word for word. Even writers like backups. The Rittenhouse organization would have a certain reverence for the original wording (as is the case for most holy books and/or manifestos that spawn large movements).

I think the scan is a backup, something done in the event they couldn't save Keynes.

[Shanna Marie]

25 minutes ago, mythoughtis said:

I think the manifesto was scanned in the present and was on the phone when the guy came back in time.  He might have been there to protect Carols’ grandfather.

That's kind of what I was thinking, but it wasn't entirely clear. Either the manifesto was scanned in the present and brought back on the phone as a reference, or the guy was sent to get the manifesto. I'm leaning toward the former because the pages on the phone looked old and yellowed, not like something that had just been written when they were scanned. It's possible that there were multiple missions at work. We don't know when the captain was from -- our present or possibly even our future. His mission might have been independent of whatever Emma and RittenMama were up to.

[Camera One]

9 hours ago, snarktini said:

I'm assuming the reason for the kidnapping is to get his evil genius in the same time as the time machine. The manifesto is one thing, but the thinker behind it is is better. He can guide missions and course correct. 

That's what I was thinking too.  Rittenhouse have been around a long time, but Carol's grandfather came up with the idea of using a time machine and mapped out moments in history that Rittenhouse could change to gain power.  Now, it would basically be the battle of the historians with the grandfather and Carol trying to make sure his plans are carried out, while Lucy tries to foil them.

4 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Does anyone get why sleeper agent Captain Albright scanned Nicholas Keynes' manifesto if Emma & Rittenhouse were just going to come back and collect Keynes himself anyway?

 

3 hours ago, mythoughtis said:

I think the manifesto was scanned in the present and was on the phone when the guy came back in time.  He might have been there to protect Carols’ grandfather.

Maybe Captain Albright was there to shadow Nicholas, and to figure out the best time to rescue him?  Maybe all the sleeper agents have the manifesto on their devices because it contains their orders for what to do.  

[Stuffy]

How many people fit in the mothership because the lifeboat only fits three? It seemed like they were going to take Mama, Lucy, Emma, and injured soldier back in one trip. If Jiya situation is any indication, that’s not smart. I may have my ship names mixed up except I think I have the lifeboat right.

I’m too tired therefore lazy to remember names right now. 

[North of Eden]

8 minutes ago, Stuffy said:

How many people fit in the mothership because the lifeboat only fits three? It seemed like they were going to take Mama, Lucy, Emma, and injured soldier back in one trip. If Jiya situation is any indication, that’s not smart. I may have my ship names mixed up except I think I have the lifeboat right.

I’m too tired therefore lazy to remember names right now. 

The mothership being state of the art I would imagine it's not only roomier but either has safeguards against a Jiya situation or safeguards aren't' needed just because its designed for more people.

[Raja]

A sleeper agent is an Infantry Captain on a WWI battlefield? They had a life expectancy measured in days. Rittenhouse must have an infinite supply of agents

[CooperTV]

7 hours ago, legaleagle53 said:

That's not why she did it, as the episode made clear. 

At the beginning, when she was thinking everyone at Mason Industries was killed, she just stop caring about the consequences of her actions because she wasn't planning on living for that long to find out. She said to Wyatt at least two times.
 

Quote

 

Wyatt: Wait, hold on, let me get this straight. You were gonna kill a soldier and blow up the Mothership?

Lucy:  I thought you were dead.

Wyatt: How are you gonna get home?

Lucy: I wasn't.

 

Quote

"Because I thought you were dead. Because I thought the "Lifeboat" was gone. Because I thought I was the only one standing. I would've done anything, Wyatt. I would've stayed in 1918 forever. "

And isn't the pillow situation happened after she already met Rufus and Wyatt? That was a different Lucy altogether.

I also think this is the direct parallel to Flynn and his "Lets the world burn" approach, and that'll eventually come up in a conversation between them, for better of for worth, as I hate Flynn and his manpain.

The same thing was with Jesse James. She was depressed about Amy, and wanted someone to suffer and everything to make sense again. That was almost a justified killing, though, but it was kind of uncomfortable to watch.

Still, I do find that murder really unnecessary, and the mostly a cop-out from the writers. Emma should have been dead three times in this episode alone, and that didn't happen because the writers want the repeat of the Flynn situation.

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, CooperTV said:

Still, I do find that murder really unnecessary, and the mostly a cop-out from the writers. Emma should have been dead three times in this episode alone, and that didn't happen because the writers want the repeat of the Flynn situation.

Yeah, that's a small worry I have for this season.  They're substituting Flynn with Emma and Carol.  So our heroes will bump into them in every time period, exchange fire, and go back to their own ship and go home.  

[JackONeill]

8 hours ago, CooperTV said:

The same thing was with Jesse James. She was depressed about Amy, and wanted someone to suffer and everything to make sense again. That was almost a justified killing, though, but it was kind of uncomfortable to watch.

Still, I do find that murder really unnecessary, and the mostly a cop-out from the writers. Emma should have been dead three times in this episode alone, and that didn't happen because the writers want the repeat of the Flynn situation.

Going back to the Jesse James thing for a second, there was another thing that happened that possibly triggered Lucy's shooting Jesse. She had just seen Tonto die (yes, I know that wasn't;t his name, but I forget what it was) after being shot by Jesse. That affected her, and that made her feel like Jesse would never change and would kill again. Then, when she saw the stand-off between Wyatt, Flynn, the Lone Ranger, and Jesse the only way to keep someone else from getting killed -- possibly Wyatt -- was for her to shoot Jesse.

Edited March 14, 2018 by JackONeill

[plurie]

1 hour ago, JackONeill said:

Going back to the Jesse James thing for a second, there was another thing that happened that possibly triggered Lucy's shooting Jesse. She had just seen Tonto die (yes, I know that wasn't;t his name, but I forget what it was) after being shot by Jesse. That affected her, and that made her feel like Jesse would never change and would kill again. Then, when she saw the stand-off between Wyatt, Flynn, the Lone Ranger, and Jesse the only way to keep someone else from getting killed -- possibly Wyatt -- was for her to shoot Jesse.

In order to protect the timeline, Jesse had to die before he did any more damage. "Historical" Jesse was supposed to be dead already. So Lucy had to kill him to restore the history she knew.

[Shanna Marie]

9 hours ago, CooperTV said:

And isn't the pillow situation happened after she already met Rufus and Wyatt? That was a different Lucy altogether.

I also think this is the direct parallel to Flynn and his "Lets the world burn" approach, and that'll eventually come up in a conversation between them, for better of for worth, as I hate Flynn and his manpain.

I don't think the pillow had anything to do with any kind of "let the world burn" attitude. She knows Rittenhouse is very, very bad news. She knows they're trying to change the past to serve their own ends. Saving that soldier is the Rittenhouse mission on this trip, which means it has to be something good for Rittenhouse and therefore likely bad for the rest of the world. She's trying to sabotage their mission in every way she can. Knowing that Wyatt and Rufus are still alive, that the Lifeboat still exists, and that they still have a chance makes her less keen on committing suicide by blowing up the Mothership with herself on board, so the next best way to disrupt the mission is to kill the person who seems to have been meant to die at this point but that Rittenhouse wants to save -- they went to that place and time and were waiting for him to show up, prepared to intervene medically, which suggests that this person died in the original timeline (like Jesse James) and that there's some perceived benefit to Rittenhouse if he lives. Killing him preserves the timeline without her having to kill her mother and herself. She's counting on Wyatt and Rufus to destroy the Mothership.

Upon rewatch (I figured I'd let them get credit for an additional viewing on the NBC app), Rittengrandpa is deliriously mumbling like he's talking to a child when he's first brought to the farmhouse, something along the lines of "I told you not until you're six," which suggests that he's already had children, so him dying or being taken out of the timeline doesn't stop his family line. As for Lucy not recognizing his name, it occurred to me that these people are members of a secret society. There's a chance that there's been a fake identity along the way. Or, I wonder how involved original timeline Carol was in Rittenhouse. Lucy seems to have been the result of some kind of breeding program between two Rittenhouse families, but in the original timeline Carol went on to get married. Did that marriage separate her from the cause as she had a normal life and family (and then got sick), while new timeline Carol stayed single and focused on the cause? That means original timeline Carol, the one our Lucy grew up with, may have been estranged from her family, and therefore Lucy wouldn't have known anything about her mother's side of the family.