Note: This 11.22.63 review and recap was originally published in March 2016, shortly after these episodes were first broadcast.
Continuing our look back at 11.22.63 (see the first installment here if you missed it), the third episode of the series opens with Bill asking a ton of questions and eventually Jake outright tells him the truth. Bill wants him to prove it by going back twelve years and saving his sister Clara, but as we know, he can only going back to 1960. After some more discussion at gunpoint, Bill agrees to help get Jake back to Dallas.
Part of me was curious why Jake was willing to believe him. I guess with the article for proof, that was enough. One must wonder what life was like for Bill that he was willing to drop everything and go with Jake to do this.
When they arrive in Dallas, Jake walks Bill through the crime scene before we take a second to see Al’s remembering reactions to the assassination.
They settle in a town call Jodi, between Fort Worth and Dallas since Oswald will be living in both and gets a job teaching. Here, we do a time skip to 1962. Jake is settled into the school and moves Bill into an apartment across the street from where Oswald will be in a few days. At the school in Jodi, Sadie Dunhill, who Jake briefly met in Dallas in 1960, starts at the school as the new librarian.
Throughout this reintroduction to his life in 1962, we see a bit of how Jake doesn’t get the popular worldview of the time. In writing, I’m a fan of when a writer includes historically accurate details, such as the Civil Rights Movement and Segregation, to give the story a sense of place.
It was the political atmosphere at the time and they did a good job at weaving it through the story as we start getting closer and closer to the day in question.
After that interlude, Lee Harvey Oswald re-enters the country and they bug his place.
I need to take a second in the middle of this to note the nice touches with a dance in the 60s, very Back To The Future esque. Jake and Sadie are chaperoning this dance together and we see that Jake might be ignoring Al’s warning not to get close to people in the past.
He has to leave the dance to bug Oswald’s place and to their surprise, Oswald arrives at the apartment early.
But they start listening to the recording, trying to find mention of General Walker and one day a member of the CIA that Jake met two years previously comes to visit Lee at home.
Jake’s new problem is that George, the CIA agent, and Oswald might both want JFK dead and he needs to know if Oswald is acting alone or if this is part of some bigger conspiracy. And with them being about a year from the attempted assassination of General Walker, he is running out of time to figure it out.
Because it could go either way. We see at the end of episode three where Lee Harvey Oswald makes a very loud death threat against the General.
But once again, the question becomes, is he acting alone?
This brings us to episode four and we are almost halfway through this mini-series and it opens up telling us we’ve done another time jump, this time to March 1963. Oswald is putting together a rifle, perhaps the one he will later use to attempt to assassinate Walker and then JFK?
Jake and Sadie seem to still be together and the Beatles reference I have been waiting for was finally made.
Though it seems as if our friends aren’t as undetected as they think they are because we get a glimpse of someone watching Jake. But he doesn’t know and heads home to a conversation they overhear from Oswald that sounds like he’s talking about either JFK or Walker or perhaps both. This might be the evidence they need.
But it seems as if Miss Mimi, the school secretary has come a little too close to the secret. After feeding a hilarious story about being in witness protection and seeing that she seems to buy it, another reference to Sadie is made. Apparently in the time between the episodes they’ve grown quite close.
This presents a problem since there is a rather large part of who he is that he has to hide from her. Sadie notes that he doesn’t talk a lot about his past, about his family about growing up with his “brother” Bill.
The past starts fighting back again just as he’s about to tell her and someone has sent pictures of Sadie to threaten him. They end up at a hotel where the plan might be handed down. But once again, the past fights back and he can’t hear what’s going on and he gets arrested.
Sadie’s husband finds her and won’t give her a divorce, a surprise to me since I thought it was implied that she was already divorced.
Bill comes with news. Oswald and George are meeting with their “friends” that afternoon and Bill goes to follow Oswald and Jake takes the CIA handler.
Jake overhears something about Walker, but it is unclear due to a dog barking. As soon as he goes to leave, someone says something to him. It turns out that the man is Sadie’s husband who is trying to threaten him. Jake isn’t having that and threatens to blackmail him.
It was hinted in the previous episode but as this fourth episode comes to a close, we see that Bill has developed feelings for Oswald’s wife, Marina, and doesn’t appreciate how Oswald treats her. But Jake reminds him that they can’t interfere in Oswald’s life at this point. It’s too close to the attempt on Walker’s life.
As the episode begins to wind down, we see that Sadie finally gets her divorce. Something is going on with Miss Mimi and it has the principal really upset.
The past kicks back one more time as Sadie hears a recording of Oswald and Marina being intimate and wonders who on Earth would record someone like that.
Half-way through the show and only about six months until 11.22.63 and that’s where we are so far. I’ll be back with more episodes in the coming weeks. In the meantime, you may want to listen to some great podcasts that examine other details about these episodes:
Podcasts from the Another Kind of Distance:
11.22.63 – Episode 3 – Other Voices, Other Rooms
11.22.63 – Episode 4 – The Eyes of Texas
Podcasts from Golden Spiral Media’s 11.22.63 – A Look Back:
ALB07 – S1E3 – Other Voices, Other Rooms
ALB08 – S1E4 – The Eyes of Texas
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