TIMELESS is Running Out of Time

Season 1, Episode 15 “Public Enemy No.1”
Written by Anslem Richardson and Matt Whitney
Directed by Guy Ferland

On this next to the last episode of Timeless, the Time Team goes rogue and steals the time machine. It appears that Jim Beaver’s character, Jake Neville, is a bad guy. He has no qualms about sending an assassin after Flynn’s mother, who is by any account a total innocent. They have lost their patience with Flynn (Goran Visnjic) and are pulling a Terminator on her, killing her so that Flynn will never be born.

Lucy (Abigail Spencer) and Rufus (Malcolm Barrett) dress up for the sixties and set off with their new soldier assassin. It is gratifying to see that he gets nauseous, unlike the short lived Bam-Bam. Rufus nails him with a tranquilizer dart and they pick up Wyatt (Matt Lanter). Wyatt learned his lesson from his disastrous attempt to save his wife and is ready to dedicate his life to protecting Lucy and Rufus. They are planning to save Lucy’s sister, presumably by making sure that her stepfather and mother meet. Unfortunately, they get the signal that Garcia Flynn took the mother ship out and they decide to follow him, rather than save Lucy’s sister. This is way too responsible on their part, as they won’t have enough charge left in the battery to do anything else after that.

They land on the day that Al Capone (Cameron Gharaee) is convicted of tax evasion, only to find that he was found innocent. Garcia Flynn gave Capone the necessary information to evade the charge. Lucy is horrified by how badly they fit in while wearing 1962 costumes. The trio meets Elliot Ness (Misha Collins), who knocks out a reporter as he leaves the courthouse.

Back home, Jiya (Claudia Doumit) gets locked up in a store room because she is caught with a burner phone that Rufus gave her. At least he told her he was stealing the machine this time. She manages to help them out with old computer parts to keep Connor Mason (Paterson Joseph) from finding out when they are. Teach them to not let a girl use the restroom!

Misha Collins does a fine but all too brief job of playing Elliott Ness. Flynn told Capone the super secret hiding place and gunmen show up and shoot up the place. Ness is dead. It’s almost as if the actor needed to get back to another show because they were doing a lot of angel-centric episodes.

Because Ness is dead, Lucy comes up with the idea of getting help from Capone’s long lost brother, Richard Hart (Mather Zickel), who is a prohibition agent. In real history, he was in Nebraska. I don’t know if it would have really worked to appeal to him as his brother’s keeper. He managed to not follow the family business but ignored Al Capone’s well publicized crimes all of his life. But he agrees to take them to Capone. He is going to arrest him, while they just want information on Flynn.

Flynn helped Capone to get Ness and kept him from being convicted of tax fraud. In exchange, Capone gave him access to someone who knew about a meeting of Rittenhouse that takes place every twenty-five years that will next take place in 1954. He asked another favor, one which Capone had no trouble with. Flynn told him to shoot the black guy so the Time Team couldn’t follow him. There’s a standoff. Al Capone shoots Rufus! Wyatt pushes him out of the way but not quickly enough to take a bullet for him. Jimmy Capone, turned Richard Hart the G-man, kills his brother.

Rufus is gravely wounded and Wyatt and Lucy are distraught and so am I. He is my favorite character. They take him to the time machine to try to get him back to modern medicine and he can’t fly. He passes out over the controls. Aaaah! His last words are “Tell Jiya-” Tell Jiya what? That he loves her? That you can be a Star Trek and a Star Wars fan at the same time? To use the tractor beam to get them home?

That’s where they leave us.

I was not too impressed with the brother vs brother storyline or the two actors playing the brothers even though Cameron Gharaee does bear a remarkable resemblance to Al Capone. The storyline with Flynn is thin as well, although he shows an aptitude for using foreknowledge that our team doesn’t. All of it was for one piece of information, and everything our side went through was only for that piece of information. They paid a high price for it. In fact, I think the entire episode was about getting to the point where Rufus was shot. We shall see.

I’ve pointed out several times that they need to have some cross training. Evidently piloting the time machine is very difficult, but Lucy and Wyatt need to know how to do it, too. At this point there are only two possibilities for a pilot-Emma and Jiya. Jiya is in present time, and we don’t know where Flynn is, and if Emma could be persuaded to help. Maybe Einstein could help, or Doc Brown is floating around somewhere!

Shawn Ryan and Eric Kripke did a recent interview with TVLine in which it is apparent that the season finale was written with hope for renewal. We are more likely to get a cliffhanger than a conclusion in the upcoming final episode. It was also mentioned in this TVLine interview that it could be two or three more months before we know if Timeless is coming back.

It’s suspense like this that I can’t take. If only I had a time machine.

 

The season finale of Timeless airs on Monday, Feb 20, at 10pm/9c.