What I’m Watching: 12 Monkeys

12 Monkeys: Season 1, Episode 6 “The Red Forest” (B)

Make no mistake about it – I am thoroughly enthralled by this show and very excited by the direction in which it is headed. Yet I am a bit concerned that it may be taking on a bit too much at once, and that it isn’t entirely sure where it’s headed. Maybe my understanding of time travel is rusty, but it’s not clear to me how Cole traveled back from one time where the machine worked, then returned to a time where it didn’t yet still got pulled back according to a certain schedule, and then got easily sent back again to correct his timeline, where he was promptly assigned a new bullet wound courtesy of a relatively useless Aaron. It was obvious that Ramse was going to be the one in charge of the West 7 in this alternately timeline, identifiable by his obligatory eye patch, and fortunately Cole knew just what to say to be able to convince him of who he truly was. That same task took considerably more effort with Aaron, whose mouth visibly dropped when he splintered back to the future. Let me tell you, whoever that woman was whispering strange things into Cassandra’s ear was truly freaky, and she’s definitely going to be haunted by that. At least her death in 2015 and the outbreak of the plague in 2016 seems to have been prevented, and now Aaron has Operation Troy to go on as a clue in this complicated web of trying to rewrite and rebuild history.