TIMELESS Finds Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair

Season 1, Episode 11 “The World’s Columbian Exposition”
Written by Lana Cho
Directed by Craig Zisk

This episode of Timeless was brought to you by The Devil and the White City, by Erik Larson. Seriously, I don’t think they could have written the script without reading it. The book is about the Columbian Exposition and the serial killer H.H. Holmes, two separate stories that intertwine in the book. It’s a great read. And despite it borrowing heavily from Larson, this episode was well researched and suspenseful.

Flynn (Goran Visnjic) has Lucy (Abigail Spencer) and he’s furious that she prevented him from killing the original Rittenhouse’s son. Nothing has changed and he fears that he has lost his chance to change the future before it even begins. In fact, things are worse because he can’t find Rittenhouse Jr. He’s gone underground.

The folks back home are trying furiously to figure out where the mothership went. Flynn has been flitting around. Finally they realize that he has gone to Chicago 1893, to the Columbian Exposition. Wyatt (Matt Lanter) and Rufus (Malcolm Barrett) go after him to get Lucy back.

I was hoping that we would get to see more of the White City but I wasn’t surprised that we only saw a couple of long shots and some of the Midway. It would be expensive to reproduce much of it. As soon as Wyatt and Rufus get there, they spot one of Flynn’s men, who leads them into a building called the “World’s Fair Hotel”. It has long dark corridors and many small bedrooms.They have no suspicions because they are without their historian and they haven’t read the book! Or any other books or articles about H. H. Holmes.

They are soon in terrible trouble. Wyatt meets a young architect that he has some chemistry with, or else he just has chemistry with all the girls. Rufus finds a jawbone in a wood stove. Both of the rooms they are in are gassed and they wake up in a brick room; Rufus, Wyatt, Sophia Hayden (Katherine Cunningham), and a man named Henry (Joel Johnstone).

Garcia Flynn tells Lucy what he’s done to gain her cooperation. He wants to kill Henry Ford (Chris W.Greenfield), Thomas Edison (Link Baker), and J.P. Morgan (Marcus Hondro) to kill the Rittenhouse conspiracy, but he can’t get in the room. Lucy comes up with the idea to find a young Harry Houdini (Michael Drayer) playing at the World’s Fair.

Houdini does get in the room — not through the locks but the ceiling — then gets Flynn’s gun. They handcuff him to the room and take off. She then asks Houdini to help her get the guys out of what will be called The Murder Castle. He does, and Wyatt is thrilled to be reunited with her. Rufus doesn’t seem any less thrilled than Wyatt, though. They are about to get away when Lucy realizes that the other man, Henry, who was locked up with him, is H.H.Holmes. He drags her off to the basement and imprisons her in what was probably a coffin about to go in the crematorium.

She remembers an earlier conversation with Houdini, where he tells her there is no fear in an escape, just the singular thought, “Escape.” She manages to keep Holmes occupied with her knowledge of him until rescue comes.

When they get back, Flynn calls Wyatt with the name of his wife’s killer, leaving him with the moral quandary about revenge or even preventing his wife’s death.

I love this episode. It may be my second favorite after the moon landing episode, “Space Race”. Lucy’s plan is brilliant. Not only does she plan to double cross Flynn from the start, she knew that Houdini would be able to help her with the Murder Castle, with its hidden rooms, gas and chloroform jets coming out of the walls, trap doors, and steel plates to keep people getting out through the walls. She knew how to signal him to do what she needed. The cut-purse trick. Houdini was a bit more inclined to follow along than her usual companions. And, to add a little wonder to time travel to balance the mind bending terror, she got to be the assistant from the audience and you can tell she loves it, even though she must have been worried about Wyatt and Rufus at the time.

I love the twist that she ends up saving them although they came to save her from Flynn. It’s also a relief that she ended up with her own team because I was afraid she would start helping Flynn and re-enacting-or enacting for the first time-the events of the diary.

The actor playing Houdini was sufficiently monkey-like to be believable, although it might have been a stunt double doing the tricks. He also had panache that was lacking in the Houdini from the lamentably short lived series, Houdini and Doyle (sorry, Michael Weston). Flair, showmanship, and a dash of daring. A touch of verisimilitude — he’s wearing the exact outfit that Houdini is wearing in a piece of poster that is believed to have survived from the Chicago World’s Fair.

I liked the young architect, Sophia Hayden. She is another unsung hero, the first woman to graduate from MIT in her field. She did not originally get killed by H. H. Holmes, so it didn’t change history when she was rescued. Wyatt must have put her in danger in the first place. Strangely, her Wikipedia article seems to say that she was shot to death later in life, but elsewhere in the same article it says she died in bed. Maybe someone has been messing with her timeline.

Holmes was perfectly innocuous when they didn’t know who he was. He wasn’t suspicious at all, while the young man who was acting suspicious was not him. I’m not sure he was believable as the serial killer at the end. Holmes was someone who not only killed people, he defrauded them and talked them out of their worldly goods. He should have been more persuasive.

Once again, I enjoy the guest actors playing the historical roles. That’s a real strength for this show.

The idea that they can’t interfere or be around at the same time and place as their younger selves has been mentioned again. Garcia mentioned it when he called Wyatt. But he said, YOU can’t. Does that mean that he can and has? Is this only a rule and not something that causes a paradox?

I agreed with the Wyatt’s decision to shoot Holmes in the end. Historically, it wasn’t time for him to be caught yet. Even if it changed history, how could you stand by and let him kill more people? And strangely, there are rumors of a curse surrounding Holmes’ execution. Many of the people involved with it died sudden, unexpected deaths. Maybe Wyatt spared them that fate. Let’s hope that he didn’t bring the curse on himself.

The episode was very claustrophobic. There’s a recurring theme of being trapped and escaping. Houdini’s trick towards the beginning had the least amount of danger. After all, it’s just a trick. Then we have Wyatt and Rufus, along with H.H. Holmes and Sophia Hayden, trapped in the inescapable room. But it’s a large room with time before the air runs out. I bet it has a secret exit since the murderer trapped himself in the room with them. At the climax we have Lucy trapped in a very small space and about to go into the kiln. There’s a buildup of tension with each successive imprisonment. And at the very end, Rufus speaks into one of his recording devices and tells Rittenhouse that he won’t spy for them anymore. If they hurt him or his family, they can find themselves another pilot, only there aren’t any other pilots. He hands the device to Mason (Paterson Joseph) to give to the Rittenhouse agent. Rufus is now free from that particular trap.

In a bit of casting news, Jim Beaver, who played Bobby Singer on Supernatural, will be in the last three episodes of this season that were recently picked up by NBC to round out the season. He will be playing an NSA agent named Neville, who will lock horns with Agent Christopher (Sakina Jaffrey). I can’t wait to see it!

Jim Beaver is not the only Supernatural alumni to work on Timeless. Misha Collins will appear as Elliot Ness in episode 15 as one of their historical guest characters.

Next week, we go back to the old west and meet Jesse James, for some unknown reason.

 

Timeless airs on Monday nights on NBC at 10pm/9c.