I Got Thoughts is a point-form collection of my thoughts on episodes of television for shows where a proper recap is insufficient for expressing all the things I want to express.
-After an ugly and emotionally fraught 2016 Presidential Election cycle, I was actually looking forward for a trip back to the simpler days of the Watergate Scandal. The Watergate Tapes was less about Richard Nixon's America however (Though we did meet Deepthroat and the BLA) and more about finally fleshing out Garcia Flynn and Rittenhouse, while revealing Rufus and Lucy's own deceptions. We were definitely due for a mythology episode of Timeless and I'm mostly glad with all the developments in this one but it does feel like a bit of a waste of such an interesting backdrop. Oh well.
-I'm always a fan of when TV uses real history as part of it's mythology so the idea that the missing 18 and a half minutes of the Nixon Tapes are Nixon freaking out about Rittenhouse and how dangerous Rittenhouse is is delightful for me. It also helps make me much more interested in Rittenhouse than I've been up to this point.
-So Rittenhouse is some kind of secret organization that dates back to 1778 and its history and development is intertwined with that of America. That's something. We still don't know a lot about what it is exactly that they do or why they do it, which keeps the threat of Rittenhouse vague and ill-defined, but it's definitely more defined than it was previously so it's progress. We also learn that they keep no records, that people are born into the organization rather than join it, that they'll go to incredible lengths to keep their secrets and that Lucy is much more tied to the organization than we realized. That last one is crucial because huge mysterious threats on shows like these always work better if the characters have a personal connection to it.
-I actually forgot that Lucy and Wyatt weren't aware of the existence of Rittenhouse as anything more than the crazy ramblings of Flynn. I also forgot that Lucy had never told Wyatt or Rufus about the journals Flynn has that allegedly come from Future Lucy. By the end of the episode everyone's on the same page as we are though so that's positive. I appreciate Timeless not dragging out the characters secrets for longer than a few episodes. It keeps the story moving that much quicker.
-Flynn and Wyatt were the two weakest links of Timeless back when it started. Since then, Wyatt has really come into his own and become a much more compelling character while Flynn has remained more or less the same. Claims of doing all this in favor of a greater good do not make a character compelling. That changes this week though when Wyatt becomes Flynn's captive and we learn the truth about why he's doing what he's doing. Now Flynn is much more fleshed out and actually feels like a complicated antagonist, which is much better than us just being told he's a complicated antagonist.
-So what's the deal with Flynn? Turns out he took on some routine surveillance for the NSA a couple years ago, discovered large amounts of money being funnelled to Connor Mason as he worked on his time travel project and connected it to Rittenhouse. When he flagged it to his contact at the NSA, a few nights later Rittenhouse killed his wife and child and when they failed to kill him, framed him for the murders. So now he's trying to destroy Rittenhouse in an attempt to save his family and if that means taking out America in the process than so be it. It's a strong backstory for the character that also makes him an intriguing mirror of Wyatt, who is also hoping to save someone he lost through their adventures. Garcia Flynn is still a villain but now he's a more tragic one and that's going to be important for the future sustainability of the show.
-Lucy hiding the existence of the future journal and her occasional chats with Flynn seems like a small thing as far as secrets go, but the journal is used for much greater effect when it turns out to contain details about the death of Wyatt's wife and Future Lucy's opinion that Wyatt needs to "get over it", which is a much better justification for driving a wedge between Wyatt and Lucy.
-OK so the "dead wife" as motivator for Wyatt (And now Flynn) is still an annoying cliche and I'm not a fan of it. That being said the scene where Flynn reads Wyatt the stuff in the journal about his wife, revealing to us how it happened was very effective. Her turning up dead after a drunken Wyatt left her on the side of the road following a big fight gives us valuable context into why Wyatt wants to go back and save her so bad. It's good character development even if it's relying on a dumb cliche.
-So how long until we learn that Rittenhouse was behind the death of Wyatt's wife? I'm thinking episode 13 (Which would've been the finale if not for a full-season order) tops. You don't establish a conspiracy board without it paying off at some point.
-Seriously Wyatt is such a better character now. When he talks at the end about not being able to trust Lucy or Rufus, my heart actually broke just a little.
-Now that all three of our heroes and Flynn are interesting, fleshed-out characters, can we start fleshing out Connor Mason, the NSA agent and that other girl at the lab please? They're regulars but they never seem to get much to do, particularly the ones whose names I can't even remember.
-The Doc being a person and not a document was a good twist. It also reinforces how ruthless Rittenhouse is as they were actively trying to destroy her for sending her family away and trying to escape. I'm curious to see if she'll show up in the present day timeline at some point. I hope so. She made quite an impression with her brief screentime.
-Lucy and Wyatt finding out that Rufus has been spying on them for Rittenhouse was a surprise. I figured we were a few more episodes away from that reveal but it's all out in the open now. Whatever trust was between the three of them has definitely been severed. Hopefully we'll get to see the fallout from that get explored in the next couple weeks. It would ring false if they were all back to being friends again in a week's time.
-It was good to actually meet Rufus' mom this week and learn some details about his family. It helps enforce why we should care about Rittenhouse threatening them.
-The juiciest revelation we got is that John Getz's threatening Rittenhouse guy is named Benjamin Cahill. Also, he's Lucy's real father. Again as I said above, that makes Rittenhouse more intriguing by giving Lucy a personal connection to it even if she isn't aware the connection exists right now. My main question is does Cahill know the historian he's spying on is his daughter? His phone call at the end leaves that ambiguous.
-It seemed weird that Rufus didn't seem to know much about Watergate or Deep Throat, but his ignorance on the situation did lead for some funny moments, particularly his joke about knowing the porn version of Deep Throat.
-Solid episode this week, even though I would've preferred more Watergate stuff. Next week has them in the 1750's and tackling the "stranded in time" trope, which could be very cool.
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