TIMELESS Recap “Karma Chameleon”

By Ruby Campos

This week’s episode of Timeless is just a bit different from the previous 12. Rather than seeing the trio chase after Flynn, this week two members of the Time Team steal the Lifeboat with personal motivations.

At the end of the previous episode Wyatt asked Rufus to help him save his wife’s life by changing something about her killer’s past and tonight’s episode opens with Wyatt telling Lucy about his plans. She recognizes the danger and slight stupidity of stealing the time machine for personal reasons and still offers to join them, but Wyatt wants as few people involved as possible (if Lucy joined them, Agent Christopher may not be as keen to help her get her sister back). When she finally agrees to stay behind, Lucy promises Wyatt that she will call Christopher and tell her what he’s doing, but only after enough time has passed for the guys to get away.

Rufus and Wyatt make their getaway on the Lifeboat just in time, making sure to fake Rufus being taken hostage, and they travel back to when Jessica’s killer’s parents meet in 1983. Before the trip, Wyatt did his research and learned that the parents have a one-night stand and conceive the man that murders his wife and two other women, but they never see each other again. So, keeping them apart should be easy, right?

The two arrive at an airport where the mother, Claire works as a flight attendant (or as Rufus says more accurately for the time, a stewardess) and where the father presumably should be. Wyatt’s plan to keep the two apart goes astray when they learn that her plane landed 20 minutes early, throwing them off schedule. He asks a group of flight attendants if they know where she went, pretending to be a friend from high school, and they point him in the right direction.

It turns out that Claire goes to a bar, and the father, Joel, is the working bartender, and the two seem to be hitting it off. Even better? There’s a tornado coming through town and a police officer seeking shelter there, strongly advises everyone not to leave the building.

While the guys are stuck in the eighties trying to stop a one-night stand, Anthony makes a mysterious call. He wants to talk to Rufus but since he is unreachable he settles on Lucy and demands that they speak face-to-face and alone. There are big risks in letting Lucy meet Anthony by herself and with the Lifeboat already in use, they can’t go after them if Flynn decides to kidnap her again. However, Lucy agrees to meet up with him anyway.

Lucy has somewhat of a heart-to-heart with Jiya as she helps her get ready to meet Anthony. Jiya is visibly upset that Rufus didn’t tell her about his plan to run away with the Lifeboat. Lucy tries to comfort her, asserting that he most likely kept the secret from her to keep her safe. But Jiya decides that if one really cares for or loves someone they would tell that person their plans before risking their own life. This leads to a slightly awkward yet sweet moment because while Rufus didn’t whisper a word to Jiya, Wyatt went to Lucy’s house and told her everything. Jiya gives a knowing look but Agent Christopher enters the room just in time to divert their attention back to Anthony.

Lucy then sets out to meet up with Anthony but he comes out of seemingly nowhere, removes her tracking device and tells her the top-secret information. Rittenhouse doesn’t like people who stand up to enact change because that takes the control away from themselves, so they plan to hijack the Mothership to rewrite history so that they have the utmost control over the planet. Anthony plans to destroy the Mothership against Flynn’s wishes, and advises Lucy to do the same with the Lifeboat, because Rittenhouse getting their hands on a time machine would be catastrophic. He leaves her with words to do the right thing and to not trust Connor Mason.

Later, Lucy tells Christopher of Anthony’s plan and confides that she thinks it would be best to destroy the Lifeboat as well, after of course she figures out how to get her sister back. Christopher agrees but advises Lucy not to say a word of this to Mason, agreeing that he may not be as trustworthy as they thought since they know he keeps in contact with Rittenhouse.

The guys seem to be handling the tornado situation as best they can and Wyatt even manages to keep Claire and Joel away from each other for a while. Claire’s work friends, the ones that told Wyatt where he could find her, manage to trek the outdoors and make it to the bar, simultaneously blowing Wyatt’s cover when one of them recognizes him from the airport.

Wyatt becomes more desperate as his chances lower and he ends up at the police station when he gets into a fight with a man at the bar. Rufus comes in proposing a fake story to the police officer watching Wyatt about a kid (a creepy one, named Haley Joel) who ran out into the storm. Rufus was hoping to clear the room to make the escape easier but Wyatt knocks out the officer and takes his gun, rushing to the hotel where Rufus informs him Claire and the bartender retreated to.

Wyatt enters Claire’s hotel room, just in time it seems, and scares the hell out of the two. He literally drags Joel out of the building at gunpoint, though he promises he isn’t going to hurt him, he just wants to take him for a drive. However, because Joel is terrified and thrashing about, he ends up taking a fall and fatally cracks his head on the pavement in the parking lot, leaving Wyatt in complete distress as Rufus forces him to get to the Lifeboat.

They return to the present with an entire team awaiting him to make an arrest, but Christopher lets him have a moment. Lucy tells him that Jessica is still dead but the other two women are alive, meaning the killer must have lied about killing his wife. Wyatt, desperately in denial, is handcuffed and dragged away shouting that Jessica has to be alive.

Moments later, Jiya gets the alert that there was a huge explosion in Oakland (where Anthony told Lucy he was planning to destroy the Mothership). Rufus and Christopher make their way to the remnants of the disaster but find no debris from the Mothership. However, Anthony’s body is found left behind with two gunshot wounds to the chest. Clearly Flynn found out Anthony’s plan and put a stop to it before it was carried out.

Before the episode ends, Lucy pays a visit to her father, a known member of Rittenhouse who also converses regularly with Connor Mason. She wards off his fatherly doting by cutting to the chase; what he is a part of is not right and inhumane. He laughs off his daughter’s speech and warns her that Rittenhouse is a legacy and seeing that she is his child, she was born into this “gift” whether she likes it or not.

Timeless continues Mondays at 10/9c on NBC.