Making History: Making History

March 5, 2017 6:27 PM - Season 1 (Full Season)

Dan, a facilities manager at a small Massachusetts college, recently discovered time travel and has been transporting himself back to the 1700s to spend time with the colonial woman for whom he's fallen, Deborah. His recent jaunts through time have caused a major issue. To set matters right, Dan enlists the help of a brilliant, polished and popular history professor at the college, Chris. Can Dan, Chris, and Deborah save America as we know it?

TVLine recap - Making History Premiere: Will You Make More Time for Fox's New Comedy?

AV Club Interview - Adam Pally still talks to his Happy Endings costars every day and recap Making History proves there’s nothing as good for an easy laugh as nostalgia

IGN review - Making History is a reasonably entertaining sitcom featuring a likable cast of leads and some funny time travel-based humor. Unfortunately, with so many shows focusing on time travel these days, the bar has been st pretty high. And even with the involvement of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, Making History doesn't do much to rise above the crowd.

posted by oh yeah! (22 comments total)

I was underwhelmed by some of the humor in this pilot, but I'm curious to see where else it goes in future episodes.
posted by oh yeah! at 8:16 PM on March 5, 2017

I didn't hate it- I'll watch the next episode, but I don't think I actually laughed once.
posted by wittgenstein at 9:02 AM on March 6, 2017

It's a bit patchy, but it Pally/Meester/Lester make it work. Overall, it feels like someone on Fox had a surplus of Seth Macfarlane history jokes and too many civil-war era costumes from Sleepy Hollow before they decided to cut flashbacks.
I don't think we'll get more than a season out of this.

Adam Pally still talks to his Happy Endings costars every day
Man, stop teasing. I think everyone feels a 10-season episode on Netflix is eventually going to happen. Just tell us when.
posted by lmfsilva at 9:06 AM on March 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

(obviously, a 10-episode season. I'm not as dumb as I am)
posted by lmfsilva at 9:21 AM on March 6, 2017 [3 favorites]

Today my coworker started randomly singing "My Heart Will Go On." Lemme guess what you watched last night?

I dunno...it was okay. Mostly very silly.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:04 PM on March 6, 2017

I like Blake Lively a lot, but Leighton Meester was by far superior in Gossip Girl and it bugs the shit out of me that Meester can't get a breakout role. (And this is cute, but I feel like probably not it.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:06 PM on March 6, 2017

Came for Pally, left pleasantly surprised that it wasn't nearly as bad as the Fox promos had made it look. I'll probably keep watching unless it gets worse, but still kind of sad that it's just another excuse for Fox to not schedule Bob's Burgers in a reasonable and consistent time slot.
posted by General Malaise at 11:39 AM on March 9, 2017

I'll probably keep watching unless it gets worse

Three episodes in and it hasn't gotten worse, but it hasn't necessarily gotten better, either. I'm not sure there's much to say about the next two episodes, but I'll post them if anyone wants to keep chatting. Alternatively, we can have a full season discussion.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:22 AM on March 20, 2017

Maybe ask the mods to change this into a full-season post?

And yeah, the show is likely to stay at this level for as long as it's on the air. Not too bad, not too good, but still a decent watch.

But am so saying next time I'm with someone and a plane passes by A FLYING CRUCIFIX! IT'S THE END OF DAYS!
posted by lmfsilva at 12:29 PM on March 20, 2017 [2 favorites]

Maybe ask the mods to change this into a full-season post?

Huh. Mods, can that be done? Or does someone need to make a new full-season thread? I have no objection to altering this post, if that isn't too much of a hassle.
posted by oh yeah! at 5:50 PM on March 20, 2017

Mod note: Edited to make it full season; carry on.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 5:53 PM on March 20, 2017

Oh, I'm enjoying the pilot. It's like they made a checklist of everything goofy about Timeless (and I love Timeless) and just ran with it.
posted by mochapickle at 7:27 PM on March 20, 2017

But am so saying next time I'm with someone and a plane passes by A FLYING CRUCIFIX! IT'S THE END OF DAYS!

My favorite joke/bit in episode 3 was the way Chris ended his Tinder date at the bar, that surprised a laugh out of me. Also Ben Vereen was fun.
posted by oh yeah! at 5:37 AM on March 21, 2017

Episode 4 was weird - at first I thought I had missed an episode, but nope- the show is now about general time-traveling, because why not? On to 1990s, so Dan can eat a lot of ice cream, and Chris can fix a bit of history to ... get his mojo back? Not terrible, but it's pretty much pure fluff now, not that a goofy time traveling show was terribly serious in the beginning.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:25 PM on March 31, 2017

Episode 4 was weird, and definitely dropped some of the continuity. Also: How is Deborah driving now?!
posted by General Malaise at 2:38 PM on March 31, 2017

Well, it was weird, but it established several rules of time travel:

- You can't get approach yourself
- You can change the fates of others, but if your actions when you go back are already part of your own history (I need coffee because this makes no sense...)
- Even if you change the fates of others, the universe tries to balance things out and someone's eventually gonna get hit by a car

So hopefully this just introduces some limitations that'll come into play later.
posted by mochapickle at 10:06 AM on April 1, 2017 [1 favorite]

Okay, now episode 5. In terms of continuity it was a little weirder still. Like, Deborah seems to less comfortable with the modern world, as she doesn't seem to have left the house yet. Also, she seemed confused at the idea of driving in 1919 (although that could be explained away by how different the cars would have been). I would have thought it aired out of order, but they reference the ice cream parlor being for sale, but then again, why wasn't the ice cream parlor being for sale, uh, more of a thing? (Just looked at the production codes, and can confirm they were aired in the correct order).

Nice of them to have a cliffhanger right before taking two weeks off. Guess there are some things I don't miss about broadcast television.
posted by General Malaise at 5:40 PM on April 3, 2017

And now we're back to a series instead of stand-alone goofs. Is there actually a plot here? Where are they going with this?
posted by filthy light thief at 12:35 PM on April 4, 2017

I think they still have no idea on how much continuity they want to have or the style of the show because Fox is... well, Fox.
posted by lmfsilva at 1:15 PM on April 4, 2017

The Al Capone arc was fun. It's not a deep show, but I'm digging the characters.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:03 AM on April 27, 2017

I loved Chris' trick of time-traveling back to the present-day unlocked vault to jump back to Capone's hallway, very fun use of the show's time-travel rules. And the implication that the trio's shenanigans are why Capone's vault was empty when Geraldo Rivera opened it (I mean, I think the Rivera thing was just a safe, not a room-size vault, but still, cute.)
posted by oh yeah! at 7:42 AM on April 27, 2017

After a colonial headless horseman with an assault rifle, two founding fathers with assault rifles.


Apparently this is a one and done. I kinda agree with the overall feeling, surely wasn't expecting it to last, but hey, I'm glad it was done.

(soooooo, about a Happy Endings reunion...)
posted by lmfsilva at 5:53 AM on May 8, 2017