12 Monkeys - 'Immortal' and 'Meltdown'

"Costume budget?"
"Costume budget."

After last week's revelations, the team know for sure that they are rescuing primaries from Messenger hit teams in order to prevent time-fracturing paradoxes and the destruction of... pretty much everything.

After a brief interlude playing with Ramse's son and reaffirming their on-again bromance, Cole and Ramse get the detail this week: Travel back in time to protect a primary in the 1970s (because this season they have the budget for multiple eras.) The kicker: This primary is also a serial killer, who murdered and butchered several women, the last of whom is their way to trace 'the Immortal', locate his hunters and so prevent a paradox.

Of course, it all goes wrong. Encouraged by his son to embrace the mission and protect others, not just him, Ramse is the cool head, but Cole can't stand by and let a woman be murdered as a means to an end. He interrupts the murder, provoking a time quake, and they have to pretend to be journalists with a source to get the police to help them locate the killer, Kyle Slade. Then Cole goes charging in, and when Slade says that he has the Witness, helps him to escape custody. Slade wants Cole to kill the Witness and take him to the future, and claims that he has been murdering other primaries to thwart the Messengers. The last victim was just a message to Cole, however, and Cole gradually realises that Slade is insane, and moreover has only succeeded in capturing a Messenger.

Well, this isn't good.

It's at about this time that Cassie is in 2016, having a conversation with apparently-not-dead-Aaron, who tries to convince her to join the Army's mission to destroy time and so put an end to death. He's got some mojo, but when she at last rejects his arguments and realises that he is the Witness putting on a face, he morphs into Cole before splintering out.

Ramse appears and saves Cole's butt. He has already taken down one Messenger at the hotel, and the other is killed - along with two police officers who trigger Slade's booby trap - before Cole executes Slade for his crimes, assuring him that he only needs to stop him dying from paradox.

Jennifer heads out to take the fight to the streets. As Cassie prepares to return home, she sees the masked Witness again and her eyes turn black.

"Witness me!"

In 'Meltdown', Cassie dreams of seeing the machine sabotaged, and wakes to find that she came back with an anomalous second brain signature, and that this growth. is malfunctioning, spewing temporal radiation and randomly zapping people through time. As Cassie, Deacon, Cole and Ramse try to disable the core, Cassie and Sam disappear, nly to turn up in the Core chamber, with Cassie holding a gun on Sam. It becomes apparent that Cassie has somehow been possessed by the Witness, and indeed we see her consciousness now trapped in the cabin of cedar and pine.

This is the Witness's counterstrike after their success in the 70s, and a conspicuous display of his direct power. Fortunately for our heroes, Cole is able - barely - to talk Cassie down by putting his own life in danger, banking on her coming to his rescue even when buried beneath the Witness's mental powers. Which she does.

Damn you!

Unfortunately, by this point the rather lovely Dr Eckland has already sacrificed himself to save Jones, by going in to repair the Machine, or at least stave off catastrophic failure for a short time. Moreover, a last surge of temporal energy zaps Sam and sends him off through time.

TRAUMA!

Well, that was a rapid reversal from beating back the anomalies in 'Immortal' to getting owned by the Witness in 'Meltdown'. It also confirms that the Witness is another time traveler; apparently one who has much more experience and power than they do, and is able to send his consciousness as a passenger in Cassie's mind. It's hella creepy. And someone has found Sam in the forest, which can't be good.

'Immortal' is an excellent episode, and affirms what has also been suspected: That some Primaries are definitely the regular kind of crazy as well. Cole's growing awareness of this as he walks through the booby-trapped corpse store is played to perfection.

I've been expecting bad things to happen to Sam for a while now, and I'm kind of glad that part is out of the way for now. 'Meltdown' also provided something genuinely threatening in the form of the Witness hisself, with his weird powers and ability to go anywhere that you go.