No new developments at Rittenhouse 2018 in tonight’s Timeless, but a trip to “Hollywoodland” leads to romance and EVEN MORE COMPLICATIONS.
Oh my gosh. This show is determined to crank the dramz up to 11. I swear.
It’s sleeper agent time in glamorous 1941 Hollywood. 15 years after being planted there by his pop, another Rittenhouse legacy has risen through the motion picture business ranks to become a powerful movie producer for Paramount– Lucas Calhoun (Teddy Sears) is even producing TV shows and forecasting television’s future in 1941.
He’s on the studio lot, going about the business of making movie magic, when his father reappears to activate him. His mission, which he chooses to accept, is to steal the only, just-finished copy of Citizen Kane from RKO and trade it with newspaper magnate Willam Randolph Hearst (John Colton), upon whom the movie is reportedly based, in exchange for a weekly column in each of his papers. This column will be authored by Rittenhouse and published without any changes, because Rittenhouse knows that whoever controls the media controls the people.
When the time team, and their crew of additional characters the show is trying *so* hard to make important, find out where the Mothership has landed, they spring into action.
It takes milliseconds for Lucy (Abigail Spencer) to conclude that the only way they’ll ever figure out the significance to Rittenhouse of Hollywood in 1941 is to talk to Garcia Flynn (Goran Visnjic). It takes another millisecond for Agent Christopher (Sakina Jaffrey) to cave about talking to him, so they go to the prison to see him.
He’s like, “Get me out of here! I have been stabbed by Rittenhouse with a shiv!”
Agent Christopher is like, “No way, man!” and Lucy is like, “OK. Yes.”
Then Agent Christopher is like, “What? No!”
And Lucy goes, “Come on.”
And Agent Christopher shrugs and is like, “Fiiiiiiinnnnnne.”
Wyatt (Matt Lanter), Lucy and Rufus (Malcolm Barrett) hop in the Lifeboat, guided by a squiggle on a napkin that Flynn has provided, which they quickly decipher to be the Paramount logo. They steal some clothes, which is how they get era-appropriate wardrobe now, and sneak onto the Paramount lot.
They are caught almost immediately by a guard, but Wyatt insists that he is Langston Hughes and has a meeting to see the president of the studio, Barney Balaban (James DuMont). He claims to be working on a movie musical based on The Ways of White Folks, and that Wyatt and Lucy are the white folks. This ruse gets them in the door, where a flustered Barney accepts their lie and lets them pitch him concepts like Hamilton before they attempt to trick him into revealing himself as Rittenhouse by pitching a movie about that. He isn’t their man, though, so no luck.
While they’re meeting, Hedy Lamar (Vikings‘s Alyssa Sutherland) walks in with a grievance. Awestruck Lucy uses the opportunity to meet another of her idols, then informs her colleagues and the audience of some of Ms. Lamar’s scientific contributions and how she essentially invented wifi but didn’t keep the patent renewed long enough to profit from it. (Which is true.)
The time team figures out, from eavesdropping, that Hedy and Barney will be at a party at Hearst’s house that evening– and that Citizen Kane has been stolen. Lucy knows right away that the two things are somehow connected and suspects Hearst might be Rittenhouse. They decide they need to be at the party, steal some fancy clothes from Wardrobe and hop in a taxi.
At the party, Hedy immediately confronts Rufus about the fact that she knows he isn’t Langston Hughes. He tells her that he and his friends are pals of Orson Welles and are working to retrieve Citizen Kane on his behalf. She actually is a friend of Welles’s, and she likes this. She and Rufus scamper off to listen in on a conversation between Hearst and sleeper agent Lucas, while Barney appears and forces Lucy into an impromptu performance.
While Lucy dazzles the crowd with a vivacious rendition of “You Made Me Love You,” pointedly looking at Wyatt and making all the sparks fly, Hedy and Rufus learn about Rittenhouse’s plot– and where the transfer of the film reels will go down.
With this knowledge in hand, everyone’s ready to leave. Hedy invites the time team to crash at her house, where she and her inventing partner, George Antheil, pull Rufus into a room full of inventions (for apparently the rest of the night). Left alone, Wyatt and Lucy finally acknowledge their feelings for each other and get jiggy with it in Hedy’s guest room. (Did I mention that Rufus tries to pass off the theme to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as a Langston Hughes poem? He does.)
The next day, the time team easily foils Rittenhouse’s plot. Wyatt kills Lucas, and Lucas kills an innocent studio guard. The team recovers Citizen Kane, and Rufus drops it with Hedy to return to its owner. She says, “You aren’t really a friend of Orson’s, are you?” And he says, “Don’t let your patent on that frequency-hopping technology lapse.”
Our heroes make a quick detour to Flynn’s prison, which is conveniently under construction in 1941. They hide everything he’ll need for his 2018 prison break behind a brick in his future cell, and head home.
When they get there, they find that Flynn has joined their bunker gang and Jiya (Claudia Doumit) has been given a clean bill of health by a doctor (in fact, her health is *better* than before she got scrambled by the Lifeboat). Jiya is still having seizures and visions, but she’s cool with it. Oh– and one more thing. Wyatt’s wife, Jessica (Tonya Glanz), is not dead. So he breaks out of the bunker to see her after receiving a text from her. Because TIMELESS LOVES COMPLICATIONS.
I guess Rufus telling Hedy to keep her patent, which led to her and George making $30B, made Jessic not die? Sigh.
Related: Keep up with my season two recaps here!
Also – Next Sunday is Easter, so no new Timeless. Next new episode airs April 8!
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