Last week’s season opener reframed the Timeless story, and made it much more of an underdog theme, so with the season now fully underway, and a new direction in place, the team begins to get stuck into the fightback, in a very enjoyable episode 2 – The Darlington 500.
This time, the key action takes place in South Carolina in 1955, and all revolves around the nascent NASCAR series, as the Rittenhouse plot involving sleeper cells finds its shape. With agents placed throughout time, it would seem that they are intent on changing key events for their own benefit; in this case eliminating the top CEO’s of all the car companies and taking over Detroit.
TIMELESS — “Darlington” Episode 202 — Pictured: Joseph Lee Anderson as Wendell Scott — (Photo by: Justin Lubin/NBC)
The sleeper agent ploy seems like an intriguing development in the strategy for Rittenhouse, and in the long run will bear fruit in terms of story, but in this instance seems unnecessary, as there must be easier ways to bump off the CEOs, than planting someone back in time for 9 years, and then sending them on a suicide mission. This is assuming of course that they planted just a single person, and that he wasn’t part of a larger team with other goals, or that this wasn’t just one of many tasks for the single agent.
TIMELESS — “Darlington” Episode 202 — Pictured: (l-r) Malcolm Barrett as Rufus Carlin, Abigail Spencer as Lucy Preston, Matt Lanter as Wyatt Logan — (Photo by: Justin Lubin/NBC)
One other thing that I thought a little odd is that Wyatt is obsessed with 1950s drivers. As it would have been the early 90s when he had the poster on his wall, I would have expected him to have drivers such as Dale Earnhardt, or Richard Petty instead. However, despite my reservations, the show does do a great job of infiltrating the real history with the ‘new history’, including swapping out Lee Petty for the fictional Ryan Millerson, and also adding a certain art director, Kevin Gilbert in there…
All that nit picking aside, the whole Wyatt as bootlegger digression does allow for a nice bit of Dukes of Hazzard Style TV fun, including some of the worst police driving in a TV serial. In amongst all the action there are a couple of nods to the racial realities of the South in the 50s, including a nice comical Rufus moment, but generally they stay away from anything too heavy in this department. It might have been nice to explore this in more detail, and more rigorously, but the way it is handled is more in keeping with the idea of a sci-fi romp.
TIMELESS — “Darlington” Episode 202 — Pictured: Malcolm Barrett as Rufus Carlin — (Photo by: Justin Lubin/NBC)
It is good to see some of Jiya’s (Claudia Doumit) symptoms on display in this episode, although it is a little annoying that the relatively lazy trope of ‘a character that doesn’t tell anyone about their symptoms’ is employed. No doubt in a couple of episodes time something will happen which will bring it to a head, and the whole team will be forced to look into her symptoms in a more tense situation, rather than being able to plan ahead and calmly examine the evidence in a much more safe manner now. From some comments that the creators have made over the past year, the Jiya storyline could become more important, which would be great, as it is intriguing, and more Claudia Doumit is always welcome.
On the Rittenhouse side of things Annie Wersching has been a great asset for the show, as the unpredictable and menacing Emma, giving the team a much darker villain to battle. Carol (Susanna Thompson) has yet to find her feet as a truly sinister figure, and with the appearance of the truly unhinged Nicholas (Michael Rady), who enthrals Emma, Carol may find herself side-lined as the more zealous members of Rittenhouse enact the grand plan.
TIMELESS — “Darlington” Episode 202 — Pictured: (l-r) Matt Lanter as Wyatt Logan, Malcolm Barrett as Rufus Carlin — (Photo by: Justin Lubin/NBC)
Despite all my misgivings above, this was a very enjoyable episode, and it is down to the quality of the cast and writing that I can be nit-picking, yet the whole show still stands up as very good television. With a weak show, it would all fall apart, but with a strong show, the ability to critically knock it about, raises it up.
The potential of this show at this stage looks to be quite extensive, and I can foresee there being many twists and turns yet, building on the solid foundations we’ve seen at the beginning of this season. My main sadness is that we only get 10 episodes!
