The Department of Time: Tiempo de pícaros. (Time of Rogues) First Watch

May 10, 2018 10:55 AM - Season 1, Episode 6

The Ministry is called to investigate when archaeologists find a cell phone belonging to a missing 21st century corrupt executive in a room that was sealed off in 1520. Julián, Amelia and Alonso travel to the past and meet the novella-inspiring Lazarillo de Tormes. Meanwhile, Irene interrogates Paul Walcott who has been captured by the Ministry and locked in a 1053 prison in Huesca.

Notes

* The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes and of His Fortunes and Adversities is a Spanish novella which was published anonymously because of its anticlerical content in 1554. It is considered one of Spain's greatest contributions to literature after Don Quixote. However, Lazarillo de Tormes is fiction. This episode postulates that it was based on a real person.
* The book was banned by the Spanish Inquisition, and as a result became quite well known and translated throughout Europe, where it was widely copied.
* Lazarillo de Tormes is considered the first picaresque novel ever written, and is credited by modern scholars as founding the genre. (The word 'picaresque' comes from the Spanish word 'picaro' meaning rogue, which gives us the title of this episode.)
* Paul Walcott works for Darrow Ltd, a private American company that created a nuclear-powered machine which can open a tunnel through time.
* We meet Armando Leiva, Irene's former mentor in the Ministry. He was imprisoned because he tried to bring his son, who had leukemia, to the 20th century. This is against Ministry rules.
* Leiva asks Irene to find out who betrayed him
* We meet Susana Torres, liaison between the Spanish government and the Ministry. Salvador really dislikes her.

posted by zarq (4 comments total)

The book was banned by the Spanish Inquisition, and as a result became quite well known and translated throughout Europe, where it was widely copied.

Should we be talking about the "Lazaro Effect" rather than the "Streisand Effect", then?
posted by tobascodagama at 11:36 AM on May 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

Let me say that I really like that half of their missions are cultural in and of themselves. If this was a Timeless episode (much as I love Timeless, you know this is true), they would be adding a couple of paragraphs about how the book influenced a particular politician to enact a particular piece of civil rights legislation and that's why we have to save it. But for the Department of Time, it's enough that something is a piece of Spanish culture.
posted by Mogur at 4:16 PM on August 12, 2018 [1 favorite]

There is a great injustice in this episode. After Amelia climbs up onto Lazarillo's cart, we cut to what is presumably a few hours later. At this point, Amelia is wearing a puppet on her right hand, but not doing anything with it (her hands are folded in her lap). Obviously, at some point Lazarillo talked her into putting it on and she may even have played with it, but then she either got embarrassed or just couldn't get into puppetry.

But we are never shown Amelia playing with the puppet!
posted by Mogur at 4:16 PM on August 16, 2018

Wasn't it a bit awkward at the end, where they bid Lazarillo a fond farewell, and then all of them set off down the same road? He had a cart, but it was slow, so the next hour or so would be them studiously ignoring each other until he finally pulled far enough ahead to be out of sight?
posted by Mogur at 4:17 PM on August 16, 2018