Timeless - 'The Capture of Benedict Arnold'

It must be nice to have Washington on your side.

This week, the team travel back in time to the War of Independence to prevent the assassination of George Washington by the brainwashed Rip Hunter and… No, wait; damnit. That was Legends of Tomorrow.

Okay, this week, the team travel back in time to the War of Independence, where they know Garcia Flynn is up to some shenanigans involving Benedict Arnold, the man who tried to surrender West Point to the British and became a byword for treachery after his death in comfortable retirement in England. Before they go, Agent Christopher gives Lucy a flash drive containing a record of her family, in case the team ever comes back and finds that her children have been erased.

The team are captured by Patriot forces, but freed when Flynn – having murdered and replaced Washington's spymaster Rowe with consummate ease(1) – explains that they are his homies. Flynn believes Arnold to be up to the eyeballs with the original Rittenhouse after finding a letter from Arnold in the clock that Ford's key unlocked, and promises to surrender himself to justice and tell Wyatt who killed his wife, if the Lifeboat team will help him to kill the weed at its root. This involves the four of them pretending to defect to the British, ostensibly to capture Arnold for trial, but in fact to beat him up until he agrees to introduce them – or at least the white folks, since that's the kind of dude Rittenhouse is – to Rittenhouse himself.

"There are things I will not tolerate. Uppity negros. Feisty women. Assassins
from the future set on protecting the democratic rights of the masses. And also
sloppy clockmaking."

Rittenhouse turns out to be a creepy clockmaker with a heavily trod-upon son, who explains his father's belief that democracy is a smokescreen to convince the masses that they have power, while a secret cabal wields the only effective form of government: Tyranny(2). Rittenhouse spots them for assassins in a heartbeat and decides that he's going to have Flynn and Wyatt shot and Lucy for a sex slave. Dude; even evil can be classy, you know. He also shoots Arnold with Wyatt's gun, because this is the price of failure, and clearly has plans in his little clockmakey brain to mass produce knock-off Brownings in the 18^th century. Fortunately, Rufus creates a ruckus, allowing Flynn to kill Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse Jr escapes, however, and Lucy prevents Flynn killing him as well, since he's just a child and since Rittenhouse clearly indicated that he was not a sole operator.

Flynn takes this philosophically and kidnaps Lucy. Meanwhile Rufus is left to deliver the recording of this to an increasingly suspicious Rittenhouse organisation, who have threatened to bump off his family if he messes with another recording and are unlikely to be philosophical about him giving his seal of approval to the assassination of their own articular founding father.

Perhaps a little disappointingly, Timeless hits its terminus post quem in the 18^th century, as if this is the founding of Rittenhouse then there will never be a need to chase further back. I always figure that for a weakness in a time travel show, but then again we have been told that the story of Rittenhouse is the story of America, and there is always a chance – should the series be renewed – to reveal even earlier roots. On the upside, this false denouement provides the solid shakeup that the formula has been wanting; with the team separated and Rufus facing near-certain death in the present, it seems a pretty sure thing that we won't just be getting another temporal brouhaha of the week next episode.

This week, the team's vacillation over the rightness of their course and the justifiability of murder was interesting, not least because of Rufus' resentment of Lucy's moral position. Murder appals her, and he clearly feels – having shot someone for the sake of the timeline – that her absolutism is a judgement on him (and less emotively, Wyatt.) The fact that of the three of them, he is also the only one being personally threatened by Rittenhouse in the nownow is also clearly a thing, with the mission for him clearly far more than just a matter of historical pragmatism.

(1) Apparently Rowe and Washington never met, but I continue to be amazed at how smoothly Flynn fits into a time, and yet how badly Team Lifeboat do the same.

(2) I increasingly expect to see Flynn putting on the white hoodie and parkouring around the past.