Based on Stephen King's novel and picked up by Hulu, the recent TV series 11.22.63 feels original, at least early on during its pilot episode. A drama at heart, it quickly turns into fantasy that incorporates time travel, recent American history, and the assassination of a famous president, in John F. Kennedy. At the center of it all is an English teacher, Jake Epping (played by the sometimes good, but often mediocre actor at heavy drama, James Franco).
Consisting of only eight episodes, 11.22.63 engages the viewer instantly in the exciting and original first episode, which incorporates just enough mystery and intrigue for an average viewer to keep watching. Unfortunately, that excitement quickly wears off, as the characters begin to make senseless decisions, and behave in a manner that is childish and naive, completely in contrast to how we'd expect such people to act. As wise and intelligent as Epping may seem at first, he goes about picking a strange, even psychotic, person as his accomplice in the year 1960, a time in the past he finds himself in as a result of going through time-travelling portal outside of his friend's diner in Maine. Bill Turcotte (George MacKay) is a strange dude, a person who meets Epping for the first time by pointing a gun at his head. This unusual incident aside, Turcotte goes on to make one wrong decision after another, eventually compromising Epping's mission, which is to save President Kennedy by preventing his assassination in Dallas on that fateful day in November, 1963. I, for one, could see that there was nothing good about Turcotte at all, a disturbed fellow who should've been left exactly where he was found.
Why would Epping, a scholar and an intellectual, choose so poorly when selecting a partner in this most prestigious of missions? Watching Bill mope around and idiotically proclaim his love for Lee Harvey Oswald's abused wife, I couldn't help but wish for him to meet Kennedy's fate, without anyone coming to his aid, nor going back in time to prevent his doom. He's as unnecessary and ridiculous of a character that I've seen in a dramatic TV series in ages. I mean, the man is a caricature of a human being, dumb and irresponsible, perhaps even dangerous, never justifying his place in Epping's grand assignment, which is supposed to change American history for the better.
When we finally reach the conclusion in the eighth and final episode, and when Epping at long last confronts Oswald in Dallas library right after his attempt at Kennedy's life, the moment, which should've felt bigger and more dramatic, instead falls flat. In a scuffle, he kills Oswald, and after being taken into custody by the local police, Epping is questioned by an FBI agent, another moment that felt plastic and far less than authentic. There's absolutely no talk about conspiracy with CIA, or FBI, something that feels rather unimaginative and cowardly on the part of the author. And by the time Epping returns to his time period in 2016, and when we witness the futuristic wasteland, a la Mad Max, that is the modern USA, we are never given any answers why exactly things have gotten so bad as a result of Kennedy having lived. The result of such unimaginative and uninspired climax leaves one scratching their head as to what exactly they've watched for some eight-plus hours.
11.22.63 isn't exactly a bad show, per se; it's just a half-baked one, a show full of promising ideas and infinite possibilities, but lacking any real execution worthy of its "fascinating" premise. King seems to have no thoughts of his own when it comes to any theories about Kennedy's assassination, nor any conspiracies that surround it, something that Oliver Stone accomplished to much greater success in his 1991 epic movie JFK. My suggestion: forget this show, and watch Stone's movie instead. It'll take less of your time, while simultaneously tickling your brain in all the right ways this TV show simply isn't quite capable of.
C-
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