Note: This 11.22.63 review and recap was originally published in April 2016, shortly after these episodes were first broadcast.
Spoilers for episodes 5 and 6 of 11.22.63.
Episode 5 opens up on April 8, 1963 and to me we’re starting to get a bit of a ticking clock with his series. Over four episodes, we’ve crossed almost three years and the second half is going to only cover a half year.
We saw last episode where Sadie hears a tape of Oswald and his wife in a compromising situation and while she wants the truth, Jake can’t tell her for obvious reasons.
While I get that he couldn’t stay completely removed from the situation, he was warned about getting close to people when he set out on this mission because it would lead to heartbreak because he would have to lie.
After the opening credits, we go to a flashback (of the future) where he asks his class if they could travel in time and change something in history. Most of them said kill Hitler or Stalin. One makes a joking comment about killing Homer so they wouldn’t have to read that book and we go back to 1963 where Jake is getting fired over the recording Sadie heard.
It’s the day before the assassination attempt on General Walker and they are waiting to see if Oswald is alone when he takes that shot. They are discussing whether or not it makes a difference if Oswald takes the shot. Walker hates JFK so why would he shoot both?
Like Jake, I have to agree. For the sake of his mission, motive isn’t as important as the deed itself. Plus Jake is a little worried about going up against time and is trying to be ready for as many potential situations as possible.
Bill of course asks what’s going to happen to him afterwards and Jake is vague about it because I’m not sure he’s honestly given a lot of thought to what’s going to happen after he stops the assassination of JFK. Vaguely he has plans to return to 2015 but besides that, the how he’s going to get away after killing at least one person and what he’s going to do upon his return, you can tell by the way he acts that I suspect he suspects he might not make it back to the future.
Johnny, who we met last episode, calls on the day of Walker’s assassination and we find out that he’s at Sadie’s house and wants Jake to come and talk. Sadie is tied up and tries to tell him not to come.
After a quick call to Bill to let him know he’s on his own for Walker, he rushes over to Sadie’s. He finds clothes all over the stairway and we see Sadie’s head covered but there is a lot of blood on that covering.
Even when I saw Jake get the call, I suspected that this was time fighting back against Jake being there for Walker’s attempted assassination. Making Jake choose between Sadie and solving this mystery, of course we know what the hero of the tale traditionally chooses.
Johnny then gives him a glass of bleach, the best money can buy he claims, and orders him to drink it telling him it’s him or Sadie. But to everyone’s surprise, Sadie decides to start fighting back and dropping his dirty little secrets.
Bill and Marina Oswald are having a smoke when they get caught by her husband, something Jake told him to make sure it didn’t happen. Oswald hands him a book by Karl Marx and tells him to read it and then they’ll talk.
Back to Jake, we see that two students are here to deliver a prize Sadie won and Johnny is holding a gun and telling him to get rid of them, something he’s anxious to do to make sure they don’t get hurt.
Throwing the glass of bleach in Johnny’s face, they take off for another room. A slightly blinded Johnny comes after them and begins shooting at random things. In self-defense Sadie shoots him.
Principal Simmons comes and gets him out of an interrogation and helps him get to the hospital so he can be with Sadie who we learn is in critical condition and will be in surgery all night. A little impromptu blood drive leads us to a continued interrogation. As the interrogation ends, Jake sees that it’s nine and we see Bill waiting for the attempted assassination.
The time is right, Walker is where history has him for the assassination attempt, and now we are waiting on our shooter. History fights back when Bill sees what he thinks is his sister but it turns out it was a hallucination and he misses the shot going off.
Al makes another appearance this episode in a flashback and we see the warning again about making connections. While I understand his reasoning, I have to wonder how Jake could be expected to live for three years without making any personal connections.
Walker walks by and Jake calls Bill to see what happened. Bill is really upset at seeing his sister because her body was never found. He also feels guilty about seeing nothing that could help them figure out who shot JFK.
Sadie makes it through surgery okay, but the doctors say she’ll have a scar on her face. Jake is relieved that she’s alive. Ignoring Al’s warning and realizing that he can’t get through the next six months without Sadie, he tells her the truth, well part of it that is.
Episode six opens with Lee Harvey Oswald trying to get a job at the Texas School Book Depository. He succeeds and we see Agent Hosley from the FBI confront him outside. There’s a time skip here because Oswald’s birthday is coming up. A quick google search tells me that his birthday was October 18. Marina is expecting another child and she’s moved in with a friend.
In a conversation, Oswald says he didn’t shoot Walker. They noticed that Oswald is being more careful. Jake doesn’t know that Oswald interacted with Bill in the previous episode so he thinks that as far as Oswald is concerned, the timeline is unchanged. Bill mentions the butterfly effect and I wonder if it’s negative towards their end goal, a subtle way for time to fight back.
Jake visits Sadie and we see that she’s doing a lot better after the events of the previous episode. She’s got one last surgery to get through. Apparently, Principal Simmons is teaching her to play poker and makes a comment that Miz Mimi wants to see Jake.
She has cancer and doesn’t have a lot of time. After asking him to keep an eye on Principal Simmons for her and to not wait to do something with Sadie.
Going home, he listens in on Oswald’s party and hears Bill upstairs at the party. Going up to investigate, he finds Bill upstairs and it appears as if Bill and Oswald are drinking buddies.
When Jake confronts him, he knocks over a lamp and reveals a bug to Oswald. Of course, Oswald doesn’t take it well and watching the scene I couldn’t help but wonder if that might cement the idea to go through with the assassination in Oswald’s mind. Jake seems to be having a similar thought.
Turns out that Bill has been seeing Marina for a bit now and after chewing him out Bill kicks him out of the apartment directly below Oswalds. I’ll admit that I wasn’t completely surprised by this turn of events because since they settled back in Texas, Bill has had a thing for Marina and has wanted to put a stop to how Oswald treats his wife.
I also feel like something happened in the time jump between the last episode and this due to the growing tension between Jake and Bill.
Jake goes to Sadie and it’s time for her last surgery. Jake sees something and feels as if there’s something wrong but Sadie is already in surgery. It turns out he was right to be anxious because there was a technical issue.
I think Jake started to see some of the warning signs with Bill and gets him admitted to a psych ward. This also discredits Bill when he tries to tell them the truth, ironically enough. We’ll see if it’s too late where Oswald is concerned.
The problem here is that while Jake has been trying to avoid history as much as possible, just his very presence has created bit of a butterfly effect. Being about a month away from the assassination of JFK, he needs to be very careful from her e on out.
Al told him that George de Mohrenschildt would be the only one who set Oswald up and if he could eliminate that possibility then he should take Oswald out. He stops to call Sadie and proposes to her.
All of a sudden, a group of men come and beat Jake up. Not only had Jake bet on a fight, but so had Bill. Having felt that Jake learned his lesson, the bookie and his goons left. Odds are, this was time fighting back because Jake was trying to kill Oswald.
He wakes up in the hospital with a head injury. Sadie notes that it’s been some time since the fight but as the episode ends we are unsure as to how much time is left until 11.22.63.
We’ll be covering the last two episodes of the series in the next few days. If you would like to hear other details about the episodes above, here are some great podcasts:
Podcasts from the Another Kind of Distance:
11.22.63 – Episode Five: The Truth
11.22.63 – Episode Six: Happy Birthday, Lee Harvey Oswald
Podcasts from Golden Spiral Media’s 11.22.63 – A Look Back:
ALB09 – S1E5 – 11.22.63 The Truth
ALB10 – S1E6 – 11.22.63 Happy Birthday Lee Harvey Oswald
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