In Review: Timeless – The Day Reagan Was Shot

Synopsis: The Time Team travels back to 1981 Washington D.C. on the day President Reagan was shot, only to discover that the Sleeper’s target isn’t the President – but a young rookie police officer.

Review: When the team gets sent back to 1981 they believe it is to prevent President Reagan from being shot, but it turns out that they have been sent to prevent a rookie police officer from being shot. It soon becomes apparent that the officer concerned is Denise Christoper the future Agent Christopher that sets up the team and pretty much prevents Rittenhouse’s plans from happening as quickly as they could have done.

As the story unfolds we learn that the team must do more than just save Agent Christopher’s life, they literally have to stage an intervention to prevent her from going into an arranged marriage as well as take out the two Rittenhouse sleeper agents that have been tasked with taking Agent Christopher out.

This episode is a lot of fun and more interesting than the usual run of the mill episode because it has a direct effect on one of the regular characters. I particularly enjoyed how Lucy and Jyia pose as private investigators Cagney and Lacey who are working for Jody Foster.  These scenes where they try to talk to Christopher about sexuality is a little awkward verging on hilarious. Especially when Lucy and Jyia try to make out that they are a couple.

While the ladies deal with Denise Christopher by helping with the capture of Reagan’s shooter. Wyatt and Rufus set about going after the sleepers and when they capture and interrogate the first of the two. They learn that things are not quite as black and white as they thought. Turns out that Rittenhouse is using people that they have some sort of leverage over in order to do their dirty work. This revelation particularly strikes home for Rufus who by the close of the episode says that those people could have been him had he not stood up to Rittenhouse and Connor Mason in the first season.

Overall. This was a fun episode with quite a bit of character work done on the backstory for Agent Christopher and by the end we also learn about how Flynn came to be in possession of Lucy’s diary, which is something we may or may not see happen before the season ends given that the show is once more on the cancellation bubble.