Hello, friends! I've finally been able to find the time to catch up, and I'm so upset it's taken this long. We've definitely got a few exciting developments, and one that should definitely stop developing, but let's hold off on that for a second. I'm getting this review out in time to celebrate tonight's new episode, and I'm really, really hoping to never fall so far behind again. Or behind at all. Beggars can't be choosers, though, so we'll just have to see. Now, on two our previous two episodes!
Jacob
With this episode, we pick up our characters' lives after a three month time jump. Four bodies are found in an abandoned factory, the bodies of four Travelers who were held and question the same way our Travelers were. Grant is alerted by another Traveler with the police and they discuss how the director could allow this to happen, as well as the differences in the futures remembered by Grant, Walt, and the cop, including a rogue faction that only exists in some of the remembered timelines. Grant is then told that his team can investigate the scene later, and we check in on what everyone has been up to. Trevor has been faking the length of his recovery as to not seem suspicious, Marcy now works as an x-ray technician, Phillip has been keeping busy while waiting on a new assignment, Carly and Jeff have been working on faking a healthy relationship to regain custody of their child (which ends up working, but I don't know if we care all that much), and Grant has been helping Kathryn through her pregnancy since she's decided to keep the baby.
Our friend, David, has gotten back together with his ex. She's not Marcy, therefore she's not worthy. She needs to go. She's apparently been having stomach pains for a while now, and when she has another attack in the kitchen, David decides it's time to go to the hospital, despite me yelling to just let her go. At the hospital, David specifically seeks out Marcy to ask her if she can get an x-ray for Blair. That's the ex-girlfriend/current girlfriend's name. Blair. Darcy or Mavid sounds a lot better than Dair or Blavid. I'm just saying, he needs to reevaluate his decisions, and Marcy needs to hop back into his life. Anyways, because Marcy is an angel, she agrees to help out. She discovers a mass in the stomach, and David informs her that it must be cotton balls, as Blair has done this before in an effort to lose weight. Because he still clearly is not over Marcy, he calls her later and invites her to have dinner with him and Blair in what is arguably the most adorably awkward voicemail ever recorded. Marcy shows up for the dinner, but Blair is going to be late (she can't even be on time for things, come on, David!) so it's just Marcy and David for a bit. Marcy asks if David can tell her about the old her, and after stumbling he admits the only thing he can really tell her is how she made him feel. They're having a bit of moment when Blair chooses the worst time to finally show up. She apologizes for her tardiness as Marcy is gets a call to return to base. There's been a lot going on with the team, actually.
When our group heads to investigate the scene, they locate a comm device and begin searching for other clues. They are interrupted, though, when Carly spots a man outside getting ready to blow the building. She warns the group and tries to gun the man down, but he's able to detonate the bombs anyways. Luckily, our entire team makes it out unscathed. The next day, they are able to identify the four host bodies and discover that one member of this team is still alive and out in the world somewhere. Grant learns that the missing member is a man named Jacob when his wife shows up at the FBI asking questions about the four bodies who went missing the same time Jacob did. While repairing the comm found at the factory, Trevor questions Phillip on his excessive use of the eye drops and is met with a little blow back. When Phillip later attempts to put a tap on Jacob's wife's phone, he discovers that another tap is already in place, meaning they aren't the only ones listening in on her life. At the same time, they attempt to contact Jacob through the repaired comm, but he tells them to stand down after discovering the director has not assigned them to assist him. They ask if he's also tapped into his wife's phone, but he cuts out his comm before answering them. Grant heads to the wife's place, sure that Jacob will be there, and he's not wrong. Jacob sprints out, forcing Grant and Carly to chase him down. When they finally get him, he informs them that his team was assigned to investigate the disappearances of entire teams of Travelers, but they were captured before they could get too far into their investigation. Before he can reveal more, he is shot, and Grant and Carly try to rush him back to base to save him. On the way, he tells them his team discovered that all of the buildings the Travelers were taken to were owned by various shell companies under one conglomerate. Of course, he conveniently dies before he is able to reveal the name. Grant has Beth from the office look into the most recent location, and it he is lead to Vincent. After surrendering his electronics and weapons, Grant gains access to the house where Vincent dances around almost every question Grant asks him. As they continue to talk, Vincent slips up and mentions Grant's wife, which immediately makes Grant suspicious. Vincent tries to backtrack by claiming to have met Grant and his wife at an event five years prior, but Grant isn't buying it. Phillip hacks into Vincent's computer and finds all of Vincent's files on various Travelers, and they get ready to attack. Before they leave, though, they encounter little girl with a message telling them to stand down, while Vincent's son, Taylor makes his way a little too far from the house and passes along a message telling Vincent to quit pursuing Grant. Vincent gathers his son and his belongings and prepares to leave the house forever now that the director knows where he is, while Grant discovers several cars waiting outside of their base, presumably ready to attack if the team hadn't heeded the little girl's message.
11:27
We start off this episode with Carly and Trevor in the middle of a mission impersonating two people from a conversation and crashing the rendezvous points for a bomb hand-off, with Carly presumably procuring the real bomb, and Trevor handing off a different one. Grant is also getting ready for a mission with Bishop, the man grant saved from a plane crash a while ago. The mission, according to Bishop, is for Grant's team to assassinate him. Already we have an interesting set up! While Phillip stops to see Jenny for more eye drops and Marcy sits in her hotel room trying to contact David, Grant and Kathryn discuss their future. Kathryn expresses how much she loves living in her friend's apartment, and Grant suggests that they put an offer in on a unit in the same building to show that he's committed to being with her. Though this seems to excite her a little, she ultimately says she's not ready to move back in together yet. Over at an internet cafe, Trevor waits for Abby, the girl from the bomb rendezvous, to show up in order to continue the mission. They discuss the dangers of a new seed a company is about to release, as well as the bill that will allow the seed to be fast-tracked if it gets passed. They talk outside for a while before Trevor brings her back to the base, where Phillip begins helping them plan for Abby to bomb the company making the seed, as she currently works in archives there and has access to the building. Trevor and Abby continue to bond throughout the episode, and it looks as though a romantic spark may even be igniting. Unfortunately, she is set to die when she places the bomb in her company, and Trevor and Phillip speak about how they wished there was another way. On mission day, they ready the timer on the bomb to go off at 11:27. The explosion is supposed to distract from Congressman Bishop's speech just long enough for Carly to complete the assassination and get away without any trouble, thereby making the Congressman a martyr. Things don't go to plan, however. After bonding with Trevor and Phillip, Abby runs back to them with the bomb, saying that they've helped her see this isn't what she really wants to do, and that there are other ways the problem can be handled. But she'll never know, because the director sends a message through her that Trevor needs to be the one to complete the mission, and then she promptly has her aneurysm, much to Trevor's disappointment. Trevor grabs the bomb and heads in ready to die, despite Phillips objections and insistence that they can do something else. Phillip isn't ready to let a friend die, though, and he remotely disables the bomb before it kills Trevor (thank goodness!). Without the explosion, Carly is forced to take the shot without a distraction, and just barely makes it out due to the help of another Traveler. Back at the base, they try to hypocrites and yell at Phillip for going against a direct order and improvising, but he very quickly reminds all of them that he's not the first one on the team to do either of those things, and the argument is quickly shut down.
On the personal side for Grant, he and Kathryn attend an ultrasound for the baby, during which they learn there may be a blood clot that could ultimately end the pregnancy. Desperate, Grant hunts down Marcy at the hospital and asks him to help her break Protocol 4 by synthesizing a drug to help prevent anything serious from happening. She tells him she needs to get back to work and walks away. She is then promptly approached by another doctor and asked on a date, to which she says yes. They have a nice dinner, and some quality alone time, but she clearly isn't terribly invested in it, and is probably thinking about how great David and how she shouldn't have messed up and left him. After the semi-completion of their mission, Marcy pulls Grant aside and agrees to help make sure the pregnancy goes well. She then hangs out with Carly on a roof for a while, and they witness an explosion at the company they were supposed to blow up earlier. They realize that someone else has completed their mission, and Phillip, who is in Jenny's bed high on eye drops, receives a message through Jenny's little sister to store a "sequence" in a "memory chain". It's very long and complicated, and Phillip looks a little taken aback.
Mission Review
I think one of my favorite parts about this show is that most of the one-off/minor characters are so much more than cannon fodder. A lot of shows bring in two dimensional characters and never bother to develop them at all because the writers know they're going to kill the character anyways. Abby was a full-fledged human that I would have loved to see stick around more. She was heading towards some great character development that was tragically cut short by the director's intervention. I knew she was always meant to die in the explosion, but I still allowed myself to be invested in her story, and was even excited when she showed back up at the van. This all made her death really mean something, and I found myself hurt by the loss of a character I'd only known for about 30 minutes. Well done,
Travelers. I even felt a little sad that Bishop had to die.
I don't know why, but I really don't care about Carly at all any more. I actually kind of forget about her unless she's on the screen. I don't hate her or anything, I just really couldn't care less about what she's up to. Strange. Most of my attention gets paid to Marcy's story or Grant's. I also think Trevor and Phillip are great characters, and I love their stories, but I don't focus on them quite as much. I guess what I'm really saying is if I had to kill one of the Travelers it would be Carly. But I also don't want Jeff to have sole custody of that child, so he's gotta go, too, so the baby can hopefully be given to a proper home.
I'm excited to see more of Vincent and his travels now that he's leaving his home, and I'm very interested to learn more about this Jenny girl, which I assume will happen tonight since the episode title is "Jenny". But that's just wild speculation, there's no way to know for sure! I also wonder if our Travelers are going to receive any blow back for not completing the bombing mission, and what kind of blow back would even be possible.
What did you think of the episode? Do you feel the same about Carly? Are you on team "Kill off Blair and put David and Marcy back together"? Sound off in the comments below!
