Timeless: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln

October 11, 2016 7:26 AM - Season 1, Episode 2

Garcia Flynn connects with notorious assassin John Wilkes Booth and his conspirators; the trio follows, and debate the ethics of protecting the Lincoln-less timeline, and Lucy learns more about why the Hindenburg changes affected her family tree.

Vulture - Timeless Recap: History Repeats Itself

AV Club recap - Other than Timeless, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? - In its second episode, Timeless stays messy, but at least it has fun.

posted by oh yeah! (20 comments total)

Good stuff: Recognizing it would be almost impossible not to affect history and that "good enough" is about the best they can expect to do. Abigail Spencer.

Bad stuff: Most everything else.
posted by Justinian at 7:44 AM on October 11, 2016 [2 favorites]

I missed the first episode so it was a scramble to figure out what was going on but some shows work better this way. The scene at Fords Theatre was well done, tense and poignant.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 4:16 PM on October 11, 2016

I liked it! It's basically an updated Sliders, no? And the scene with Lucy being laced into her corset and discussing her family with the other woman tech was a quiet solid moment. I liked the recognition of differing experiences of history for someone who is black - Lucy as a woman is going to have it harsher as well in some eras. The family names notice and the erasure of the black soldiers for the white guy who just got shot were good moments. It's cheesy, but sort of a mild cheddar on rye. With some nice pastrami.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 4:57 PM on October 11, 2016 [4 favorites]

Yeah. I'm not sure how much I'm enjoying this show is simply due to Abigail Spencer. She is so amazingly good in Rectify, I'm just very fond of the actor. She's very talented and she pretty much makes all her scenes work when possibly many of them would have fallen flat with someone else. Things like her emotion at meeting Lincoln.

But I also thought that this Lincoln assassination stuff was handled much better and much more interestingly than the Hindenburg was. Although I don't know if the history makes sense with regard to Lincoln and the Reconstruction Era. He was a moderate who probably would have successfully resisted the radicals while, in contrast, Johnson and Grant did not. So the argument is that a much more moderate, more accommodationist position toward the rebels would have (ultimately) been better for southern blacks? Really? I guess that's basically the white historical consensus view, but I'm not sure that black historians make the same argument. I'm probably giving the show way too much credit and the writers probably just thought, hey, things got bad in the south for blacks and it would have been much better if Lincoln had lived, the end.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 10:25 PM on October 11, 2016

I think it's more Voyagers than Sliders, but neither is really a close analogy.

I like the fact that they've mucked up history and they're going full tilt in that direction. A lot of time travel shows just either ending up hitting the reset button or the new timeline ends up being better (Back to the Future). I wasn't even sure about watching this, but for now at least I'm along for the ride. The fact that I have positive feelings about two of the three main actors based on past roles (Scottie on Suits and Lem on Better of Ted) it a goodwill bonus.

My only concern is that they're hitting all the "big ticket" historical events. I'd like to see them tackle something smaller and much more obscure that poses a challenge to even expert historian Lucy.
posted by sardonyx at 1:35 PM on October 12, 2016

Oh, and loved the Operation joke.
posted by sardonyx at 1:44 PM on October 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

My only concern is that they're hitting all the "big ticket" historical events.

It also makes it so much easier to stop. Gee it's the date of Lincoln's assassination, I wonder what they're doing?

Why not travel back to sometime in, oh, 1863. Are you there to assassinate Lincoln? Give intel to Lee? Assassinate Grant? Something else? They'd have no idea where to look for you. But no, we'll just go to the freakin' Hindenburg disaster and Ford's Theater.

Can't wait 'til they head to November of 1963 and then do something that has nothing to do with Kennedy. The Scooby Gang would be running around Dallas while you're hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Yeah, yeah, tv whatever I know.
posted by Justinian at 4:06 PM on October 12, 2016 [4 favorites]

There is one small thing that is so jarring, so boneheadedly stupid that every time it happens, I consider changing my stance on handguns, simply so that I can buy a Colt .45 and shoot out my television set a la Elvis, because GOD DAMN. And that is when the team comes back from a time travel mission, explains the differences that have happened in the timeline and Denise Christopher and Conor Mason are skeptical and dismissive because "That's not what's in our records/what's in the history books/what we remember!"

Motherfuckers, what do you think happens to the records/history books/your memories when shit gets changed?

Conor Mason built a freaking time machine and still doesn't fucking grasp this?

WHAT THE FUCK? WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:27 AM on October 13, 2016 [15 favorites]

Motherfuckers, what do you think happens to the records/history books/your memories when shit gets changed?

Conor Mason built a freaking time machine and still doesn't fucking grasp this?

WHAT THE FUCK? WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK?

Yes. Exactly!

lol I've had actual nerd arguments with people about this. "Look people could be time traveling right now and changing things and you will never, ever know that the history we all agree has happen today isn't the same as it was yesterday."

It's mind bendy if you think about too much.
posted by Jalliah at 9:17 AM on October 13, 2016 [4 favorites]

At this point, for me, the episodes break down like this:

4-8 minutes: explanation of case of week, mildly interesting.
5-6 minutes in new time/location: interesting as setting/stakes/complications revealed.
20-24 minutes exploring case of week: frequently stupid, mostly a bunch of missed opportunities. Why do I bother?
4-6 minutes finding out what changed: outside of supervisory characters inexplicably
not understanding how this even works, this is very interesting.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:54 AM on October 14, 2016

I'm going to give it another couple of episodes but so far the problem I'm having with Timeless is the same problem I had with another ambitious, expensive, FX-drenched project: Terra Nova. No expense is spared except that which you would pay writers who know something that isn't already on TVtropes.
posted by Bringer Tom at 8:09 PM on October 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

Rufus reveals that they're Civil war reenactor uniforms:
"No wonder they smell like sweat and loneliness"

Okay you bought yourself a third episode watch right with that one.

Also good:
"What's changed in your lives? Since we got back from 1937, what has changed for you?"
"I just had an unsuccessful evening with a girl, so nothing, really."
posted by phearlez at 12:10 PM on October 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

Speaking of rage inducing, am I the only one who HATES it when people who should know better say that they have to get the bullet out? That's what likely killed Garfield!
posted by Carillon at 3:47 PM on October 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

Maybe but the excessive lasagna consumption was a significant contributing factor.

... what?
posted by phearlez at 11:01 AM on October 31, 2016 [3 favorites]

Would lead poisoning be an issue with Civil War era bullets, or is that too long-term an issue to justify poking into the wound in the past versus non-invasive first aid until the trio gets back to modern medicine?
posted by oh yeah! at 11:23 AM on October 31, 2016

"What's your name?"
*looks at Hamlet poster*
"Juliet Shakesman"

Has there ever been worse dialogue?
posted by crossoverman at 3:32 AM on November 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

Would lead poisoning be an issue with Civil War era bullets, or is that too long-term an issue to justify poking into the wound in the past versus non-invasive first aid until the trio gets back to modern medicine?

That's more of a long term issue if the bullet stays in for years, so yeah, they totally could have waited. Elemental lead isn't particularly toxic; it's when it's in a compound that it becomes problematic. And elemental lead also isn't super-reactive. The amounts that do react in the body to form compounds over a few days would be miniscule enough that lead poisoning shouldn't be an issue over that timeframe.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:00 PM on November 3, 2016

A guy named Rich Tannen used to beat up Rufus as a kid? Now where have we met a rich guy named Tannen before?

When I learned this show was a collaboration between Shawn Ryan and Eric Kripke, I thought... "Hmmm... on the one hand, The Shield, and on the other Supernatural." I am beginning to think it is more of the latter. I know there are fans of that show, but I am not among them; indeed, I am the only one in my house who rolls his eyes at the adventures of Sam and Dean. I have watched a half-dozen episodes and I strongly feel that if it were played to half a rat brain floating in brine, the rat would feel condescended to.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:36 PM on November 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Has there ever been worse dialogue?

Good lord, yes. (And in an odd bit of coincidence, I made an allusion in that comment eighteen months ago to the events of April 14, 1865).
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:43 PM on November 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also also, as a proud son of Hamilton, ON, I was delighted to see a poster in Ford Theater advertising an appearance by Julia Arthur, the celebrated Broadway actress who was probably the most famous Hamiltonian of the 19th century. I was also somewhat startled, as she would not be born for another four years.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:49 PM on November 7, 2016 [4 favorites]