Travelers: Jacob
December 26, 2017 3:23 PM - Season 2, Episode 3 - Subscribe

Three months after the team's last assignment, the discovery of bodies at a construction site alerts the traveler to a global pattern of killings.

*We see a Traveler strapped in wheelchair being tortured/interrogated like MacLaren's team was. As a gun is put to one Traveler's head, another breaks and answers the question of what his mission is with "We're after you".

*At a construction site, a worker notices a problem in a wall, and after they take a sledgehammer to the cinderblocks, a hidden room is revealed to contain the corpses of 4 Travelers still strapped in their wheelchairs.
*MacLaren and Walt arrive at the crime scene and get updated by Officer Boyd, who MacLaren hasn't seen since he shot her (twice), in her bullet-proof vest in the season 1 finale. (Boyd is from the same 'Shelter 41 collapsed' timeline as MacLaren and his team, Walt is from the changed, 'Shelter 41 stayed up and birthed the Faction' timeline.)

*Trevor is out of the hospital. His father drives him to school, and tries to give him a pep talk about his spinal injury recovery, but Trevor does most of the pep-talking. He asks to be dropped off a little ways from the school, and limps away with his cane, but breaks into a fully-healed run as soon as his father is out of sight.

*Marcy is working at the hospital now as an X-ray technician. A Dr. Barker awkward flirts at her.

*At Ops, Trevor checks the computer as Philip welds. Philip says he would have told Trevor if there was a new mission, but there's been nothing. Then they hear the news report about the discovery of the bodies.

*MacLaren and the team come back to the crime scene at night after the police have removed the bodies and finished their forensics. Carly cases the perimeter while Philip scans the room with some makeshift future-tech, and Marcy locates a com in the cinderblock debris. Carly finds someone outside with a detonator, calls for the team to evacuate, and opens fire. He is able to set off the explosives before she shoots him, but the team makes it out of the building before it collapses on top of them.

*David is back together with his ex, Blair, but his making her breakfast in his apartment is interrupted by her having intense abdominal pain and he insists they go get her looked at.

*At Ops, Philip uses the TELL (time, elevation, latitude, and longitude at time of original death) of the 4 hosts to identify the Travelers, and finds they were a 5-person team - the missing one is Traveler 2192. Trevor is still working on activating the com Marcy found.

*At the FBI office, a woman (Sylvie Ward) tells MacLaren that her husband, Jacob, went missing the same time as the 4 dead people. She doesn't recognize their photos, and knows of no connection between them, but is convinced he's still alive. She says he turned his life around for the better sometime before the disappearance. MacLaren tells Philip to put a tap on Sylvie's phone. When he joins Philip and Trevor at Ops, Philip tells him there was already a tap on Sylvie's line. Trevor manages to get the broken com working, and they contact Jacob. He asks if they have been assigned to help him by the Director, and tells them to stand down when MacLaren admits they have not, but that they want to assist because they nearly suffered the same fate as his team. When they tell him about Sylvie's line being tapped, they hear him cut the com out of his body.

*At the hospital, David asks Marcy for help with Blair, because Blair has no health insurance, and Marcy is a super future doctor. Later, Marcy tells him that the X-ray revealed a foreign mass, and David tells her it's cotton balls that Blair has been swallowing to reduce her appetite (presumably because she has an eating disorder).

*MacLaren goes to Sylvie Ward's to find Jacob. Jacob is there and tries to make a break for it, but Carly catches him outside. Jacob says his team was sent by the Director to investigate the kidnappings, but then Jacob is shot in the chest by a hidden sniper. MacLaren and Carly get him into the car to race to Ops; Jacob is able to tell them before losing consciousness that all of the buildings where the bodies have been found were owned by shell companies owned by one conglomerate. At Ops, Marcy tries to save Jacob, but he dies without regaining consciousness. Later, Beth at the FBI office tells MacLaren that the sole owner of the building/conglomerate is Vincent Ingram.

*Trevor comes back to Ops to find Philip has torn the place apart looking for his eyedrops. He accuses Trevor of hiding them from him, but Trevor is able to spot them in the mess on the floor, and points out that they don't seem to be any less addictive than his heroin was.

*David leaves a long voicemail message for Marcy, inviting her to come over for dinner with him and Blair.

*MacLaren goes to Vincent's estate to question him about the bodies, but Vincent says he knows nothing about the property. Vincent claims to recognize MacLaren, and to remember his lovely wife, Kathryn, from a charity gala 5 years previously. Back at Ops, Philip is able to find photos of MacLaren and Kat at a gala in that time frame, but there are no photos of Vincent there, and MacLaren tells him to hack into Vincent's private servers.

*Carly and Jeffrey have continued their strategy of radical lifestyle change to get Jeff Jr. back, exercising together in the apartment, going to couples counseling, and ultimately their new custody hearing with CPS. The CPS woman (Jacqueline Peele) tells them she's not buying the happy-couple act, but she does believe they are showing they could be good parents. After Jeff Jr. is returned to their custody, Jeffrey pours out a celebratory drink, despite having promised to stay sober, and Carly is dismayed.

*At Ops, Philip has trouble getting into Vincent's server, and appears to have been locked out entirely, but then suddenly is in (was let in?), and finds files on the dead travelers showing them before and after their kidnappings.

*At David's, Marcy arrives before Blair, and asks David to tell her about Marcy 1.0, but when Blair arrives she gets the com call to return to Ops asap.

*At Ops, Philip shows everyone Vincent's files on the team, which has surveillance photos of them, and also of Kat and David, and the team gears up to go infiltrate Vincent's compound. Meanwhile, two snipers set up outside Ops.

*Vincent's son, Taylor, playing outside with his dog, strays too far from the dampening field in the house and becomes a Messenger, saying that Traveler 001 must stop pursuit of Traveler 3468 (MacLaren) and his team immediately. Meanwhile another Messenger child knocks on the Ops door and tells MacLaren that he had his team are off mission and must stand down immediately or face repercussions.
*Vincent tells his security men that he and Taylor are leaving the compound immediately and will not be returning. MacLaren tells the team to stand down, and walks the now-confused little girl out to his car to return her home, and the mystery snipers drive away.
posted by oh yeah! (12 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
(I always forget how long it takes to do these write-ups. I'll try to get at least a couple more out tonight, gotta take a dinner break.)

I found the whole thing in the hospital with David, Marcy, and invisible Blair unintentionally funny. Like, I momentarily forgot that this is a Canada-pretending-to-be-the-USA procedural and not a Canada as Canada procedural, even though MacLaren is running around pretending to be FBI (maybe from watching so many seasons of Enrico Colantoni on Flashpoint), so, when David is all "oh, forgot Blair doesn't have health insurance" it totally broke my suspension of disbelief. And then Marcy telling David what was wrong with Blair instead of telling Blair herself, well, sure, why would future-doctor know or care about HIPPA? (Also, did Marcy get a new fake identity to become an X-ray technician between seasons? I forget how they got around the whole problem of Marcy-the-host being known to have a mental disability to get her out of social services supervision without David being in trouble anymore.) Anyway, the whole setup of Blair being an actual 'crazy ex' is a little skeevy. I guess I get them wanting to create obstacles for David/Marcy other than just Traveler stuff, but, it's an odd choice of subplot.

Curious to find out who the snipers work for. And how Vincent is connected to the Faction. I think last season it was assumed that MacLaren's team had been kidnapped by the Faction, but if he's the very first Traveler then he's from the original timeline where Shelter 41 had collapsed and there was no Director vs Faction struggle yet.
posted by oh yeah! at 3:46 PM on December 26, 2017


Is cottonball-swallowing a real thing? That made me wince. I know the tapping and EMDR from the previous episode are real techniques.

David is #beardgoals. Google a picture of the actor without a beard and you'll see why he grew one.

My suspension of disbelief is always triggered when someone hacks into a machine (or is even just looking for a file) and multiple windows pop up with exactly what they're looking for. That's not how it works, ever! Apparently you can write code to make that happen (or the screens are CGI) but obviously the characters are not installing and running code to open specific image files simultaneously. That would make even less sense.

Who are the snipers waiting for, since they've seen everyone at Ops go in and out at least once?
posted by AFABulous at 7:05 AM on December 27, 2017 [1 favorite]


Who are the snipers waiting for, since they've seen everyone at Ops go in and out at least once?

I think the snipers were the "repercussions" the Messenger threatened MacLaren with - if his team had come out of Ops looking like they were heading after Vincent, they would have opened fire, but since it was just MacLaren taking the little girl back home they packed up and left. But I don't know whether they (or the little girl Messenger) are being tasked by the Director or the Faction.
posted by oh yeah! at 7:14 AM on December 27, 2017 [1 favorite]


The snipers are Vincent's personal security team. The mute Asian guy that greeted Mac when he went to Vincent's is the same guy that drove by in the SUV when he escorted the girl to his car, and you also saw him set up to ambush along with the other guys in black. I thought it was obvious that Vincent let Phillip in after the 6th redundancy to trace them back to their place.

I'm surprised though that after Mac and team figured out who Vincent is and where he was, that the Director didn't go after him right away, after losing so many Travelers to track him down. I suppose there's a larger plan involving him as well as Mac's team, so the Director couldn't afford to let both teams kill each other.
posted by numaner at 12:27 PM on December 27, 2017 [2 favorites]


I guess there's still something fundamental that I don't understand. Vincent created the ability to travel, and he was the first traveler (thus 001) and he chose 9/11 as his "landing spot." But the plan was for him to send a message and then die. I understand why someone would selfishly want to live, but why was that the plan? Why is the Director still after him? I thought the travelers are being tortured to reveal the location of Vincent... but Vincent owns the buildings, so I thought he was torturing them, by proxy.

Ugh. And here I thought Dark was confusing.
posted by AFABulous at 12:53 PM on December 27, 2017 [1 favorite]


I guess there's still something fundamental that I don't understand. Vincent created the ability to travel, and he was the first traveler (thus 001) and he chose 9/11 as his "landing spot." But the plan was for him to send a message and then die. I understand why someone would selfishly want to live, but why was that the plan? Why is the Director still after him? I thought the travelers are being tortured to reveal the location of Vincent... but Vincent owns the buildings, so I thought he was torturing them, by proxy.

I don't think it was established that Vincent created the ability to time travel, just that he was the first to volunteer for travel. I think the plan for him to die after sending the confirmation-of-successful-arrival message was just to avoid any unnecessary alterations of the timeline. And I don't think it was ever said that the travelers were being tortured to reveal the location of Vincent, they were being asked to confirm whether they were trying to find Vincent.
posted by oh yeah! at 1:37 PM on December 27, 2017 [1 favorite]


Cotton balls - yeah, it's a thing.

David/Marcy - ugh.

Marcy getting a radiology tech cert was kind of jarring. Up here, it's a 2-ish year curriculum plus another year or two on rotations (typically at at least one rural/underserved area). I'm ok handwaving that someone hacked enough records and that Marcy is employed under a different SIN than the identity that David is aware of, and maybe took a certification test to get a current certification ("Oh, I got my cert in Louisana the week before Katrina. Oops, I guess the records got screwed up. Please please please let me just take the certification test?")

Working as a rad tech is curious; the hours and location are typically more flexible, but not that much so, but also a rad tech simply isn't going to have as much opportunity to "appropriate" medical equipment, and prescription drugs not at all.

Getting a position in logistics/supply chain would make a lot more sense, but then again, if making money is trivial, it is extraordinarily easy to acquire (non-prescription) medical equipment legally ("Yup, I'm a prepper. Sue me. But after taking my money for all the things." or even "I'm starting a new business putting together the highest quality first aid kits, package them up really nicely, and sell them to big corporations at a substantial markup along with replenishing "expired" components at regular intervals. What, you've never heard of us? Why, we have only the most discerning clients.").

I have a suspicion that the development of time travel wasn't directly a result of Shelter 41/asteroid but once the asteroid thing happened, then it was "hey, duuuude, we can time travel!"

The Director (now, which The Director, from which shard timeline?) was never after Vincent until Vincent went rogue and started causing eddies in the flow of continuity* and making future time travel missions into the past more difficult.**

It wasn't until Vincent started making enough eddies and screwing up (being preserved in historical records) that he came onto the radar and became targeted.

Yes, Vincent was torturing the team to see if they were a hit squad specifically after him or simply another team doing ancillary things, and also to gain intelligence on how well informed The Director is of Vincent's location/activities and/or how widely disseminated future knowledge of rogue Vincent is (like, does everyone know and it's kill on sight, or something less drastic for Vincent).

Also, Vincent's knowledge of the future is extraordinarily out of date. The most out of date of any traveler, even. That's ok because moneywise he's gotten to the point where he'd have to try hard not to keep making money hand over fist using conventional methods, but not acceptable from a control-freak perspective.

*can't think of the word I'm thinking of, maybe starts with a "p"

**I was going to raise a point about something, but I think I'll wait until the skydiving episode

posted by porpoise at 4:28 PM on December 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


*causality, that's the word I was thinking of
posted by porpoise at 10:30 AM on January 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


Getting a position in logistics/supply chain would make a lot more sense, but then again, [...snip...] What, you've never heard of us? Why, we have only the most discerning clients.").

porpoise, are you sure you're not a spy?
posted by Jesse the K at 12:36 PM on January 4, 2018 [1 favorite]


You're a grown ass adult eating cotton balls?
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:30 PM on January 24, 2018


eating disorders are pretty fucked up, yes.
posted by numaner at 11:37 PM on January 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


This is the episode where I stop caring about David and Marcy, and I know I cared about them last season, but I just..can’t. I’m kind of getting tired with David even still being in the series and taking up valuable time at this point. Like, why is he back with Blair if there’s this big love for Marcy? It actually makes me like him less, even if Blair is not well, he still shouldn’t be using her, she clearly has no idea who Marcy is.
posted by corb at 5:49 AM on March 7, 2018


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