Round Two: 12 Monkeys

12 Monkeys: Season 1, Episode 2 “Mentally Divergent” (B+)

I’m on board after a great second installment of this show, which affirmed the fact that this series is well worth watching. I was particularly impressed with the fact that plot developments like Cole being sent to North Korea in 2006 rather than Philadelphia in 2015 were not embellished or dwelled on for too long and instead just used as a jumping-off point for the fact that this time travel business is not stable. It’s good that they could easily just slingshot him to the right time, and that ultimately made it much simpler for Cassandra to track him down. It does seem that their fates are permanently liked, and I can’t imagine that Cole is going to disappear anytime soon. It was very worthwhile getting to know Jennifer, seeing that she’s not completely crazy but that she does have some problems. She and Cole are actually on remarkably similar levels, and I’m so curious to see what happens next with Jennifer. Kudos to the casting team for bringing Tom Noonan on board as the major villain who calmly threatened Cassandra while she was standing over her dead friend’s body and then came for Jennifer. The fact that he knows who Cole is complicates things, and it’s clear that there is an extraordinary web of bad things that come together in different times to arrange events for the outbreak of this virus, and I am eager to see where this show goes since it’s doing a terrific job so far of turning this concept into a series.