Note: This 11.22.63 review and recap was originally published in March 2016, shortly after these episodes were first broadcast.
Warning: Spoilers for the first two episodes of 11.22.63. Due to the length of my summary as well as the other tidbits we wanted to provide you with, the second part will come out in a few days.
I’ll admit, that going into the first episode of 11.22.63 I was a bit skeptical. I haven’t read the book (though I might go and read it to see where they differ once the series is done) so on that end I didn’t really have expectations.
11.22.63 follows Jake Epping, a recently divorced teacher as he gets sent on a quest by Al Templeton to attempt to make a better world.
To me, my skepticism came from the premise of the show: a man goes back in time to attempt to stop the assassination of JFK. I think I mentioned in my introduction post that from what I could see, 11.22.63 (as well as Legends of Tomorrow) were taking a more rigid approach to time travel then the one I tend to think of.
For example, on this show, Jake was warned that when he would go and change something important, he would know because the past would fight back. And several times he experiences this.
One, when he tried to call his father (time travel 101, don’t call your parents and directly mess with your timeline because it could force you to not be where you were to be able to time travel thus you might not be able to go back and warn them and then…. You get the idea) and a car crashed into the booth after he went in a second time. The first time, he got interference and his father couldn’t hear him.
Another time, a chandelier almost drops on him and a third time the house he was staying in burnt up, taking the notes he’d brought from the future with him.
Part one really laid the foundation. Discovering the “rabbit hole” back to 1960, going back, starting his investigation, and Jake learning the hard way that the past doesn’t necessarily want to be messed with.
Of course, he goes and begins to investigate Lee Harvey Oswald, who most believe assassinated JFK. He runs into some CIA agents as well as someone who had ties with Russia.
His end goal will take place six months before the infamous assassination. Jake knows that there will be an assassination attempt made on a general in which the same caliber rifle is used as the one that killed JFK. If Oswald is on the other side of that gun six months earlier, then Jake was to take him out.
But, there is a constraint to the way time travel works in the story. Using the rabbit hole always takes him back to the same date in October 1960, over 2 years before the general’s assassination. Jake must live in the past for that whole period, investigating other leads until he can actually see who committed the murder.
Episode one leaves Jake discouraged and ready to give up. As he’s heading back to the 1960 end of the rabbit hole, he finds himself in Kentucky, the time and location of some terrible events that forever changed the life of Harry Dunning, one of his students in the future. Harry’s story reveals that on Halloween night, 1960, his father murdered his sister and mother.
Maybe before he goes, he can at least do some good.
And that’s where episode 2 picks up. Jake arrives in Holden Kentucky and makes contact with Frank Dunning a couple of days before the crime is to happen. He sees the rage that will drive the man to murder build up and realizes that the best option is to try and get the family out of town so that they can’t be there to be murdered.
Frank shows up where Jake is staying and invites him to his butcher shop where he confronts him about the tickets that he gave Frank’s wife to get her and the kids out of town. He thinks that Jake is trying to have an affair with his wife and proceeds to beat the snot out of him and tell him to leave town.
We see how easy it was to buy a gun in 1960 when Jake goes and buys a gun and decides that he’ll go after Frank. But, the past fights back and he wakes up throwing up. Regardless, Jake decides to do his best to protect his former student.
Bill, the town’s bartender, catches him and wonders what he’s doing there and Jake learns that Frank killed another woman, Bill’s sister, twelve years earlier. The body was never found.
Frank sneaks into the back door and we hear his wife, Doris, screaming. Running in, he takes a shot at Frank and the two end up in a fight as Doris and Harry run off. Jake kills Frank, strangling him with a belt. He’s managed to change the past, Doris and the kids are safe and the abusive father is dead. Deed done, he leaves town.
It hits Jake that thanks to him, three people who had died previously were now alive. But then Bill catches him with an article from after Kennedy’s assassination and the episode cuts with him being held at gun point and Bill demanding answers.
Regardless of the long term consequences, technically his actions here created a paradox. Though, one could argue that the Jake of his old timeline will replace the Jake of the timeline he’s creating. (I guess a parallel example here would be Wolverine from X-Men: Days of Future Past).
Another interesting thing I took note of, is the discussion that Al and Jake have about the butterfly effect. JFK doesn’t die, his brother wouldn’t run for president when he did thus he wouldn’t be assassinated. Another, and more powerful wave is the fact that JFK would stay in office and tensions wouldn’t rise in Vietnam and perhaps that entire conflict could be avoided.
How many lives would that change and arguably, one couldn’t help but wonder what a world like that would look like if Al’s theory is right? I guess we’ll have to keep watching the rest of the series to see what happens.
A warning to anyone who wants to watch this. The mature audience rating on it is mainly for the language, so if you are a parent who doesn’t want your child hearing the variety of profanity the English language has to offer, this is not a show to watch with your kids.
Historically, they did their research, nothing really stood out to me as being inaccurate so far. In fact, there are little touches, segregation, the Beatles reference, the music they use, that give it a feeling of a good historical show.
I’ll be back with more as more episodes continue to air and we inch ever closer to 11.22.63. 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 One – The Rabbit Hole
11.22.63 – Episode Two – The Kill Floor
Podcasts from Golden Spiral Media’s 11.22.63 – A Look Back:
ALB05 – S1E1 – The Rabbit Hole
ALB06 – S1E2 – The Kill Floor
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I don’t watch television, so I was not aware of this program.
Is it based on the book of the same name by Stephen King? I absolutely fell in love with that book and felt the protagonist’s frustration with having to remember every single mistake he made the first time he went back to that day in time and the further frustration of trying to save President Kennedy’s life over and over again. After all, who would believe him if, in seeking help, he told them that he came from the future. The book was so well written.