Timeless - Season 1 Wrapup

It's been a while since I've written about the streaming series Timeless (2016-2018). We finished watching it months ago; I've just gotten way backlogged on writing about it. Here I'll catch up on the end of season 1.



S1E16, the season 1 finale, tied up or transitioned 3 plotlines that were very satisfying:

1. The players in the game of "Cat and mouse" become allies.

Season 1 has followed an episodic plot structure with a cat-and-mouse dynamic. Every episode the bad guy, Flynn, travels somewhere back in time and tries changing some major event in US history, generally to the detriment of the US and key people in its history. (( brief S1E2 spoiler )

) The good guys chase after him and try to prevent calamity from happening.

A broad arc across the season has been that Flynn keeps telling the heroes they should help him, not fight him. He tells them the real villain is a shadowy organization called Rittenhouse. But is Flynn a misunderstood hero, or is he a villain lying to throw the good guys off? And even if Rittenhouse is malign, Flynn seems not to care if his efforts to thwart Rittenhouse destroy the whole US as well. In S1E16 they find a way to start working together, opposing Rittenhouse without destroying the whole country. Yay, not having to worry if we're going to suddenly find out we lost WWII! 😂

2. Lucy stops whining, "What about my siiiiiiister?!?!?!"

My biggest gripe about the writing of Season 1 is that main-character Lucy keeps whining about wanting to "bring back" her sister. Recall that in S1E1, Lucy's sister, Amy— who we learn is actually Lucy's half sister— disappeared from the present-day timeline after Lucy changed history in 1937. Lucy's mom is like, "Sister? What sister? You've never had a sister."

This is a common element of time-travel stories. Lucy made a seemingly unrelated change in the course of history decades earlier that rippled to the modern day. Amy's father met another woman— the descendant of a survivor of a disaster Lucy prevented— and married her instead of Lucy's mom. Thus Amy was never born. Oh, and BTW, Lucy's mom was no longer dying of cancer in the present day, as she was never hooked on smoking by the man she never married. You'd think Lucy might take the good with the bad as consequence of her actions but, noooo, she harps about wanting Amy back. Every. Dang. Episode.

The reason why Lucy's harping about Amy in every episode is especially annoying is that in genre of time travel, one can't just go back and "save" Amy. Amy was not killed in an event a time-traveler could go back and stop from occurring. The complex series of events that led to her being born was averted by a complex series of events. Elite university Ph.D. educated Lucy should be able to figure this out.

So, what happens in the season finale to shut off this annoying recurring plot-point? Oh, boy.

In the penultimate scene of S1E16 ( episode spoiler )

3. A new villain for season 2 emerges.

A tag-ending scene in S1E16 introduces a new villain who'll help drive the plot in Season 2. ( episode spoiler )

Friday Night Halfway — Four in a Row!

It's Friday night... and again it's Friday Night Halfway! Last Friday found us in Auburn, halfway to a hike in the Grouse Lakes Basin of Tahoe National Forest. Tonight we're in Jackson, halfway to a hike tomorrow along the Pacific Crest Trail above the Kit Carson Pass.

Jackson is a town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. It's a crossroads town, at the junction of highways 88 and 49. Route 88 is one of the passes over the Sierra Nevada. Route 49 is "the 49er trail" connecting a bunch of towns in the foothills that sprang up in the California Gold Rush that hit its peak in 1849 following the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill the year before. Sutter's Mill is/was about 35 miles north of here, in Coloma, though in the gold rush years gold was discovered nearby here, too. In fact there are at least a dozen historical gold mines within a few miles of Jackson. But those are not why we're here. For us it's just Friday Night Halfway.

Not Stuck in Lodi Again

The drive out to Jackson starts like a drive to Yosemite. We leave the Bay Area via Livermore on I-580 the hook the short I-205 east toward Manteca. Yes, Manteca, the Spanish word for lard; lard as in rendered pig fat. But instead of going all the way to Manteca as we would en route to Yosemite, we turn north on I-5 to Stockton and cross over to Route 99 north. On Route 99 we drive north a few miles to Lodi to exit onto Route 88, which angles northeast up into the Sierra foothills.

Lodi is always an amusing town to drive through. We can't so much as think about the town without also thinking about the classic hard-luck song named for it.

Just about a year ago
I set out on the road
Seekin' my fame and fortune
Lookin' for a pot of gold
Thing got bad and things got worse
I guess you know the tune
Oh Lord, stuck in Lodi again

-- Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Lodi"

Thankfully we're not stuck in Lodi tonight, or even hanging our hats there. I mean, we could have chosen a hotel there. We actually did, once, ten years ago. Going back would have to be just for the LOLz, though, as Lodi is about as dreary in real life as it's made out to be in song. ...Not that Jackson is worlds apart. It's a hardscrabble town whose best days were upwards of 150 years ago. Stately Victorian buildings built as banks with Gold Rush money are today biker bars popular with 50+ year old rebels in MAGA hats. But at least Jackson's 30 minutes closer to where we're going hiking tomorrow.