Let's get right to it. I kinda liked this episode. But still my concerns haven't been addressed. They spend way too much time chasing the McGuffin mystery and it feels like wasted minutes.
So far each episode is divided into two story lines: the leap story line and the mystery story line.
The Leap story line has two main objectives, setting right what went wrong and building the relationship between Sam and Addison (I had to go to the IMDB page because I still couldn't remember her name)
The Mystery storyline is all about finding what motivated Ben to leap before the technology was ready. It's about chasing down Al Calavichi's daughter, Janice.
In this episode Addison finds an encrypted thumb-drive in the apartment she shared with Ben. She doesn't trust Magic or Jenn enough to hand it to them, but trusts Ian to help her crack the drive. Some unimaginative and fairly useless dialogue goes on between them about how Addison should hand the thumb-drive over and how Ian felt hurt because she's thinking of Ben only and not of him... Yeah buddy, he's her husband to be, no surprise there. At the same time Magic and Jenn go after Janice to try and understand how she fits in the puzzle. In their quest they are able to retrieve a hard drive which contains a bunch of data which, by the end of the episode, shows them a destination in time, which they suspect Ben is trying to get to. When, how and why are still unanswered questions.
They spent more than a quarter of the episode in the Mystery story line. I still think that's way too long and it takes away from the leap story line.
The result of this split is less time spent fleshing out the characters in the leap story line. This leads to a lot of telling and not showing. A lot of exposition explaining, for example, the relationship between the commander of the space shuttle and his second in command. Instead of showing us their relationship, we only hear about it from the second in command. Not so interesting. We know the commander took her under his wing and trained her for a decade. We get some hints of a romantic relationship between them, which would've been really cool to explore. He's a married man, and she's his protege. I mean, if we had time in this episode, we would've been able to really flesh that out. And when the commander gets injured, if we've already seen how him and his second in command are close, it would've made us feel more for the second in command when we see someone she loves get hurt. We could've seen her rattled for a bit as she tries to struggle to get into the mindset of being the person in charge of the mission. In essence stepping out from under the commander's shadow and being her own person; her own hero. Then when the commander regains his consciousness, the struggle for whose decision is right would be way more impactful.
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. I really feel the Ian character doesn't serve any 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 the writers 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've 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 annoys me about this show, is the Computer Science they use. So Janice has a super computer in her basement? Do you know how much 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 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 strategy for the show to take. 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 it would be a lot more interesting and worth while, instead of having the Mystery story line drag on an don.
And wouldn't it be cool, if the government considers Ben a risk and end up sending someone else back in time, the evil leaper, to stop Ben? And then we can endup with a chase across time?
Anyway, that's it from me. Over and out.