Timeless Season 1, Episode 5 That being said, the Alamo was a great place for Flynn to try and derail the rise of America and, by extension, Rittenhouse. As a rallying cry of patriotism, they don’t get much more important than this key battle in the Texas Revolution. Timeless has really set the bar high with its immersive historical settings, which must cost a fortune in set design and costuming, and the backdrop was completely believable. The characters of James Bowie and Davey Crockett were particularly well-portrayed, deftly avoiding the danger of creating caricatures. The biggest problem with Flynn that’s beginning to emerge is that he chooses great targets, is brutally efficient, and yet doesn’t always follow through. From a narrative standpoint, this makes sense, since Lucy, Wyatt, and Rufus have to put things right again, but the character is weakened by his own oversights, such as taking out Colonel Travis but not Bowie or Crockett. On the other hand, humanizing him through his appeal to Santa Anna to spare the women and children went a long way towards smoothing over his mission flaws. This is especially true given his replacement waiting back home. It was a nice change of pace to see someone like Wyatt perfectly willing to give up his spot due to his failure to take out Flynn. He has been pretty hard on himself on that score in previous episodes, so his acquiescence felt right. Rufus and Lucy’s insistence on keeping the soldier that they’d grown to trust was successful way too easily, to be honest, but it created further bonding for a group of leads whose chemistry has really carried the show. It’s refreshing to see Rufus take such a key role in figuring out solutions that Lucy’s historical knowledge or Wyatt’s military might can’t uncover. With a quick nod to slavery being outlawed in Mexico (nice touch!) Rufus was able to hone in on the aqueducts as an escape route, giving his character something useful and noble to pursue. His eureka moment in using the grenades was a little obvious, but it’s still nice to see him win the day. As for the main action of the episode, the Battle of the Alamo was well done and a wonderful spectacle. Timeless is particularly good at including obscure details that viewers might not have known about, and this week’s mention of John William Smith, the young boy who would become the first mayor of San Antonio, gave that additional spark to the historical tale. This history lesson of sorts is becoming the hallmark of the show, and hopefully that will be carried throughout the series. It’s not that the episode failed in any way; it just has settled a bit and churned out what amounts to a filler episode this week. Nothing wrong with that, but it does make viewers start to wonder how quickly some of the mythology plots in Timeless will progress. With no additional details about Flynn, Lucy’s journal, Rittenhouse, the bit about Lucy’s father is almost a token gesture. It makes it hard to… well, remember the Alamo.
