What I’m Watching: 12 Monkeys (Season Premiere)

12 Monkeys: Season 4, Episode 1 “The End” (B)

I never understand why networks feel the need to release an entire season over the course of a short time period since, unless it’s dropped all on the same day on a streaming service. It just doesn’t feel like the network is all that invested in the success of its programming, cramming all the episodes in instead of spreading them out over the course of ten to thirteen weeks. After airing all ten hours of season three in a single weekend last year, the eleven episodes of season four will be spread across four weeks, the third of which is tonight. I’m going to stretch it out as I usually do, watching a few quickly as I catch up on all my shows but still taking them one episode at a time. I like a lot of things about this show but I’m not quite as into the mindless action which involves gun battles that end only with fringe characters dying. Olivia, the newly cemented Witness, arriving with an entire city to destroy the nuisance that is Jones and her time-traveling facility once and for all, is a formidable and unforgiving nemesis, and though she believes that she’s taken them out, she’s not going to stop once it’s clear that they’re poised to be far more influential than they knew. Returning to the moment before Cole went back in time to first meet Cassie is fascinating, and I’m so interested to see where things go from here. I was thrilled about the notion of two different Jennifers defying a paradox to work together on heists, and the revelation that she’s just imagining separate versions of herself is a real letdown.