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Timeless

Credits

Cast

Network

Reviewer

Paul Asay

TV Series Review

Got the time?

Lucy, Wyatt and Rufus have plenty of it—and not nearly enough. Or maybe they’ve just got the wrong sort of time. Or could the time be right, but the circumstances wrong?

Stories involving time travel can get convoluted. So many potential paths, so many opportunities to miss, so many of parallel existences on which to speculate. And Timeless, NBC’s silly swashbuckler, is all about second guesses.
Second? Get it? That’s a little time-travel humor there.

If I Could Save Time in a Weird Ship

The trouble began (or ended?) with wealthy genius Connor Mason’s time machine. Alas, his nifty new invention was pilfered by a guy named Garcia Flynn, a guy who seems pretty evil … until we discover that there’s another bad ‘un that bad guy Flynn wants to stop.

Yeah, time’s not the only thing that gets a little convoluted.

Thankfully, Connor has a spare time machine on hand—a prototype that functions reasonably well and almost always goes where it’s supposed to. Connor, with strong encouragement from the National Security Agency, is now sending a crack team off into America’s past to stop any and all evildoers and, if possible, clean their collective clocks.

Lucy serves as the crew’s in-flight historian. She’s been tasked with figuring out where she, Wyatt and Gunther need to go next and making sure that her two cohorts don’t make a lot of out-of-place references to Pokémon Go. Wyatt Logan, a Delta Force operative, is the team’s muscle. He’s also still grieving his dead wife, Jessica. Rufus is ostensibly the time machine’s pilot. But he’s uncomfortable with these time-traipsing missions. First, he’s not really a pilot at all, but a coder. Second … well, Rufus is black: “There’s literally no place in American history that would be awesome for me,” he reminds Connor.

Yes, that would be uncomfortable … on the face of it.

Get it? Face? Clock? Oh, never mind.

It’s All About the Minute Details

“Maybe we don’t get to make it up as we go,” Lucy speculates. “Maybe some things are just …”

“What?” Wyatt asks, thinking about his dead wife. “Fate?”

Timeless circles back to this intellectual, philosophical quandary again and again … asking viewers what they would change about their own histories if given a chance. And perhaps more importantly, whether they should.

Lucy is the first character to really deal with the consequences of mucking around in the past: After their very first mission, Lucy returns home to find her terminally ill mother as fit as a fiddle! On the downside, though, her sister has completely vanished. I’m sure Marty McFly would sympathize.

But while Timeless may deal with the complex messes inherent in time travel, it does so in a light, frothy way. Sure, you may learn a little something about real history in the process (like the fact that Abraham Lincoln’s son was saved by the brother of John Wilkes Booth), but the show doesn’t take itself too seriously. It feels a little like The A-Team with a serious chronological impediment.

Alas, if Timeless is a throwback to the 1980s’ team-oriented capers, the content here has a new millennium’s worth of problems.

The violence is not particularly gruesome, but it is disturbingly common. Lots of people die (presumably spoiling the futures of scads of kids and grandkids). Others are seriously hurt. Blood is just as easily shed in 1776 as in 1865 as in 1937.

There are plenty of sexual allusions, too—jokily suggestive and, at times, titillating. The hard-drinking days of yesteryear mingle with a more contemporary liberal use of profanity, giving us a strange, century-jumping stew of issues to deal with.

Timeless is often light, sometimes fun and has just enough problems to give many discerning families pause. Your time might be better spent elsewhere.

Episode Reviews

Timeless: Mar. 17, 2018 “The Darlington 500”

Lucy, Wyatt and Gunther go to South Carolina circa 1955 to save a soon-to-be famous stock car racer from certain death. Alas, that race car driver is actually an agent from 2018, courtesy of this season’s time-traveling bad ‘un, a man named Rittenhouse. The driver’s “fame” is a sign that memories have already been altered, and his mission is to kill a bunch of automobile execs during a race. It’s up to Lucy, Gunther and Wyatt—along with real stock car legend Wendell Scott—to save the execs and the day.

Wyatt fights one of Rittenhouse’s thugs, eventually killing him by snapping his neck. Someone else is shot to death. Guns are fired elsewhere, too, and bombs are planted in cars. A bunch of ruffians threaten to beat up Scott due to a race-based altercation (literally in both senses of the word, because of a racetrack rivalry and because Scott is black). Gunther burns his arm—something eerily foreseen by his girlfriend, Jiya. (The two also briefly kiss.)

The episode chronicles the historical beginnings of NASCAR, which had its own roots in illegal bootlegging. Scott confesses to being a former moonshine bootlegger and says that he still has a couple of bottles stashed in a secret compartment in his stock car. Later, Wyatt and Lucy stow away in that same secret compartment—holding each other close and nearly kissing during their cramped ride. Wyatt later drives another stock car, eluding law enforcement (but for an honorable purpose). We see signs of the racial discrimination common during that era. A woman wears a fairly modest swimsuit. The team tells lies to preserve its cover.

We hear about Wyatt’s problematic relationship with his abusive, smoking, drinking father—one culminating with Wyatt stealing his dad’s car. (We also hear that Wyatt was a bootlegger of sorts himself, admitting that his contraband was “stronger” than moonshine and “a little more illegal.”) Characters say “d–n” and “h—” several times, along with more sporadic uses of “a–,” “b–ch” and “b–tard.” Someone uses the crude British term “wanker.” God’s name is misused twice.

Timeless: Oct. 3, 2016 “Pilot”

Lucy, Wyatt and Rufus dash to 1937, chasing after evildoer Flynn, who seems to want to make the year’s Hindenburg disaster even more disastrous. But things take an unexpected turn when Flynn saves the zeppelin instead.

Lucy, a college professor, recounts a (true) story of how a former president exposed and used his genitalia to illustrate why the United States was involved in Vietnam. Crude follow-up references ensue. She removes her bra so Wyatt can use its underwire to pick a jail lock. (We see her bare back and a bit of the side of her breast.) Characters lob double entendres.

Several people are shot and killed, with one victim gasping for air as death comes. Others die in blimp explosions, one being crushed by the crashing, fiery zeppelin. At least one person catches on fire. Lucy, Wyatt and Rufus beat up two police officers and lock them in their own jail cell, but for a good purpose. Folks are threatened by knives and bombs. Someone gets knocked out by a frying pan. Lucy’s mom is terminally ill, and she looks it.

Several people sip beer and slam down drinks. One person smokes. Wyatt shows up to a research facility slightly impaired. “I didn’t know I was going to be working tonight,” he explains. The flight on the time machine makes the passengers nauseous. Characters say “a–” three times, “h—” seven times, “d–n” twice and “crap” twice. God’s name is misused once.

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Paul Asay

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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