What I’m Watching: 12 Monkeys

12 Monkeys: Season 1, Episode 5 “The Night Room” (B+)

I don’t usually read other people’s reviews of episodes, but I’m starting to think that maybe I should. That’s because, in the wake of the episode’s final moments, I googled to see what other reviewers said about that confusing finish involving a very different 2043 to which Cole had returned. Christine Seghers’ IGN review threw me for a major loop since it addressed a whole bunch of questions I hadn’t even asked, namely whether we’ve been seeing multiple timelines already. The notion that relationships and trust have been formed throughout time between Cole and Cassandra and Cole and Jennifer (definitely not between Cassandra and Jennifer) is extremely alluring as a concept, and I’m all for time travel being much more fantastically complicated than it’s made out to be. It can never be as simple as Cole fading away once he’s negated the outbreak of the virus, and I like that nothing is stable, particularly the place he comes back to after he splinters back to the future. Learning that Jones sent back others before Cole in a way that didn’t work at all was intriguing, and Ramsey keeping that knowledge secret was important. What’s most impactful is the fact that we saw that interaction, which proved enlightening, and now Cole has returned to a very different future in which that conversation never happened. I want to see more of Jennifer since she’s so wonderfully deranged, and Tom Noonan’s tall man is entirely creepy. In continued praise of the IGN review I referenced above, please note the completely accurate caption under Jennifer’s picture: “I’m the craziest thing on this show. And this show is BANANAS.”