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But instead of all of that, we're treated to some pretty useless events in the Mystery storyline, which neither develops the characters in a meaningful way nor keeps us interested. I believe they could've reduced the time in that storyline to like 5 minutes. They find Janice; they retrieve the hard drive. And get Ben, instead of Ian, to change Addison's mind about keeping the thumb-drive secret, not Ian. I really feel the Ian character doesn't really serve any real purpose in the story. It's a subjective opinion. But I think the story can be served better to focus more on Ben and the relationship between him and Addison. I mean what do we really know about either of them? Nothing really. Comparing them to Sam and Al, from after the first episode we knew about Sam's father and we knew how Al was a Vietnam Vet. How cool would it be if we learn, for example, that Addison was a prisoner of war in Afghanistan. That she's dealing with PTSD. Or maybe that she was an astronaut herself. If we would've gone down that route, then Addison's help on the space shuttle would've been very authentic. After all, she's been in Ben's shoes. Man, that would be cool. But so far she feels like a cardboard character.
In the course of the story, they decide to keep Ben in the dark. Does that really make sense? Not entirely sure. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. But wouldn't it make a lot more sense to get him onboard, because they would be able to figure out why he leapt a lot quicker if they do? I mean worst comes to worst they can threaten him. If you don't tell us why you leapt, we won't help you with your leaps and therefore you won't be able to set right what went wrong and you won't leap and you won't ever get to your destination. I mean that's a pretty convincing argument right there. But alas, the writers decided to go a different route, and we just have to wait and see how it works out.
One thing which kinda annoyed annoys me about this show, is the Computer Science behind this show. So Janice has a super computer in her basement? Do you know how much electircal electrical power that would take? She wouldn't be able to hide it for very long. And all this talk about code and rewriting the operating system, come on... Really? Re-write the operating system? Who does that? Coming from a guy who works in the Super Computing world, no body re-writes the operating system. They can add user applications which perform innovative functionality, but not re-write the OS. I think if they vet their terminology to and ground it more in reality, it'll serve the show a bit better.
Overall, I fear that this show might not last very long if they keep going down the path of the Mystery story line. I have never found shows which keep dragging out the mystery for more than a couple of episodes very interesting. The mystery becomes boring after a while. It would be better for them to resolve the mystery quickly and focus on helping Ben with the leaps.
I suspect Ben's goal is to reach the location which Sam Beckette ended up at in his last leap. I think achieving that and focusing on that is the best thing strategy to dotake. Maybe Sam has to do something in each leap to get to his final destination. Maybe he needs to figure something out and do some investigation. And maybe he needs to hide his goals from his future team. I think that would be a lot more interesting and worth while, instead of having the Mystery story line.
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