On television this fall, the past is present.
Why are there so many time travel TV shows?
is the obvious question nobodys asking.
Credit: Joe Lederer/NBC; Bettina Strauss/The CW
TheresTimelesson NBC,Frequencyon the CW,Time After Timecoming soon to ABC.
They joinLegends of Tomorrow,12 Monkeys,Outlander, and the dormant-yet-omnipresentDoctor Who.
In this summers11/22/63, James Franco tried to save John F. Kennedy.
On the second episode ofTimeless, Abigail Spencer tries to save Abraham Lincoln.
Will no one rescue James Garfield?
Wont someone just think of William McKinley?
But its not hard to explain this trend.
Who doesnt want to leave this current moment for another, escaperight nowforliterally whenever?
This has been a great year for feeling miserable.
Turmoil in our cities.
Chaos in our political system.
Celebrities dying, and worse,divorcing.
Our entertainments offer no hope in either direction.
The pop-culture future is a battleground.
And the past is disputed territory.
Last years brilliantShow Me a Heroand this years gloriousPeople v O.J.
Simpsonthrew ice-cold rain on the internets neverending millennial-nostalgia parade.
Credit NBCsTimelessfor at leasttryingto grapple with the deeper social implications of hopping backwards into Americas past.
In the shows pilot, mysterious villain Garcia Flynn (Goran Visnjic) steals a time machine.
A government-corporate alliance assembles a power-trio squad of time travelers to chase him.
Theres Lucy, a historian, played by Abigail Spencer.
Theres Wyatt, a grieving soldier, played by Matt Lander.
And theres Malcolm Barrett as Rufus, a technician-nerd who operates the time machine.
As it happens, Rufus is African-American.
They want him to travel through time?
Theresliterallyno place in American history that will be awesome for me, he explains.
Its a funny line, with real resonance: Is he talking about the 19th century or the 21st?
In our heroes first adventure, they follow Flynn back to the day the Hindenberg crashed.
Problem: The Hindenbergdoesntcrash.
Is the bad guys evil plan tosavethe Hindenburg?
And, next question: Does that mean that the good guys have todestroyit?
Should they save the president?
And if theydont, are they somehow indirectly responsible for the failures of post-Civil War Reconstruction?
Some of this is boilerplate time-travel philosophy, which means a lot of it is silly.
But the show can personalize the big ideas.
Rufus wants to steer the man north and save him a lifetime of trouble.
Would that alter the space-time continuum?
Rufus is unquestionably the most interesting character on the show.
Lucy carries all the exposition and the mysterious-family mythology; Wyatts the blandsome action hero with a sad-sack backstory.
Example: In the Hindenburg episode, the gang gets captured, put in a jail cell.
Simpson: He gets off!
Certainly, the white cop in 1937 is furious.
He doesnt understand what Rufus is saying; the problem, maybe, is that Rufus is talking atall.
So he brings in some of his fellow officers to beat Rufus to a pulp.
Or maybe worse: Whos stopping them, eight decades before Facebook Live?
(Hell,wehave Facebook Live: Is that stopping anything?)
Fortunately for Rufus, Wyatt comes to his rescue.
Rufus walks into a tavern in 1937 New York and the white barflies stare daggers at him.
Meanwhile, Wyatt walks into the same bar and meet-cutes with a sassy photojournalist.
In episode 2, Lucy walks into Fords Theater and meet-cutes with Abraham Lincolns son.
Ryan madeThe Shieldand produced the one-season wonderTerriers; Kripke createdSupernatural, which will outlive whatever cockroaches survive the apocalypse.
ButTimelessfeels more like their last couple projects: Ryans nuclear-submarine actionerLast Resort, and Kripkes swordpocalypse adventureRevolution.
Both shows tackled American iconography in complicated, fascinating, undigested ways.
OnRevolution, 15 years without electricity transformed the country into an agrariancore battleground ruled by militias and crossbows.
Both shows were ambitious.
(Last Resorthadone of my favorite pilotsever.)
Timelesspicks where they left off.
Flynn keeps going to famous incidents in American history, threatening to mess them up.
Why is he doing all this?
Lucys theory is that hes trying to kill America in the crib, rewrite history before its even written.
In the first two episodes, historical events are altered in minor, intriguing ways.
CouldTimelessreally change our history?
Lucy the historian serves as the shows mouthpiece for acceptance.
The present is imperfect, but itsours, she says.
Its a nice sentiment.
But who, in this American moment, honestly believes this present belongs to them?
SoTimelesshas some philosophical problems.
A bigger issue: Its a bore.
The digital effects look expensive, but unconvincing.
MaybeTimelesswill break out of that structure.
Or maybe its another example of a wild big concept ruined by proceduralization.
And Im not talking about orLostorBattlestar GalacticaorGame of Thrones.
But in its single silly season,FlashForwarddemocratically weaved in character-centric short stories and oddly charming human-scale subplots.
Gabrielle Union and John Cho tried to plan their wedding.
Young lovers searched the world, desperate to meet each other.
(What a show!)
TVwantsto make her a star and List has been a regular on three one-season TV shows.
Last year, she had a key recurring role on the barely-livedBlood & Oil.
You probably know her best as Jane onMad Men.
Im 20 years old.
Now this is no different than the last place, she said.
Her boxes werent even unpacked in her new apartment; she was already to leave.
Actually,Mad Menwas a time travel show, too.
Sure, the characters moved forward the old-fashioned way.
Jane began as an irritant nemesis figure.
Her rise to social prominence was also a descent into boozing and marital anxiety.
She experienced a profound LSD-influenced vision of truth.
She divorced, tried to move on, failed initially but maybe succeeded ultimately.
Mad Mentracked other characters more completely, through vicissitudes more extreme.
There she is, smiling, as a man proposes marriage.
And there she is, years later, talking to that same man.
Theyre divorced, and his mother is dead.
Shes at the funeral out of kindness.
She doesnt love him anymore, but only because she knows him so much better.
Peyton List stars onFrequency, the new CW show based on a movie everyone just barely remembers kinda liking.
It was a father-son movieanda kind of cross-cultural bromance.
There was also a serial killer: A goofy contrivance, but also the movies only real plot point.
The small-screenFrequencyimports the serial killer and immediately makes it the seasons master arc.
But it also complicates the central relationship.
Instead of Dennis Quaid, dad-in-the-past is Riley Smith.
His Frank Sullivan is undercover cop with marital problems and late-grunge-era scruff.
And of Caviezel, our present-day grieving grown-up child is List.
The show cant compete withTimelessfor era specificity, and it only barely tries.
Theres some Oasis and Weezer on the soundtrack in the 90s scenes, and the retro-world is blue-tinged.
ButFrequencyhas a clarity of purpose around its time travel.
Its not trying to tackle the big questions.
Its a story about a distant parent and a messed up kid.
From Raimys perspective, Frank is a looming figure who let her down.
Raimy rescues her father, but finds that her whole life has changed.
The shows helped by a couple strong supporting turns.
The show could go off the rails.
After two episodes, theres a mission statement (stop the serial killer!)
Theres a push-pull between present and past.
When his life gets better, her life gets worse.
The more he tries to help her, the more he screws everything up for her.
The ads forTimelessproclaim that shows mission statement: Protect the past.
The implication is that the past, for all its faults, is immaculate: Something that must bedefended.
OnFrequency, the past is the problem, to be solved or deepened.
There are two presents, really.
In one, Frank tries to save the future, and ruins it.
In another, Raimy tries to fix the past and only makes it worse.
Is there a solution?
Can they find some common ground?
BothFrequencyandTimelessare works in progress, but only one is daring enough to suggest that the past isnt even past.
Timeless:B-
Frequency:B+
