Travelers: The Verdict
Okay, first things first, that finale made me very emo. Not the most emo a finale has ever made me, though. That honor still goes to Ripper Street. But this might be second.
I LOVE PHILIP! I love how smart he is with computer-y things! I love his desire to save lives! I love his determination to be free from addiction! I love how much he loves his daughter Poppy! I love his little nose-ring! I love his beautiful singing voice!
The main thing I would like to change about the show is that I would like to see Philip get to do more stuff. Everyone else has human relationships outside the team, but Philip doesn’t have anyone besides Ray, and the result of that situation was that he didn’t get as many interesting storylines as everyone else. But I love his angst about not being able to save people, about having saved the wrong person (Aleksander), about his various addictions.
This is obviously not the sort of show that prioritizes closure, but it kind of sucks that Grant and Marcy got so much more closure, albeit in very different ways, than the other three. Grant gets to go on one last mission and Marcy gets to make a noble sacrifice, but the other three don’t get anything comparable. We at least know that Carly is going to try to see her son again, but Trevor and my darling Philip just kind of get dropped.
If I ever rewatch this show—which I would really like to do—I’m gonna pay more attention to Protocol 5. It’s really interesting to think about how the travelers sort of merge identities with their hosts. I’ve mainly thought about this in the case of Philip—how by taking on Philip 1.0′s addiction, he takes on a lot of additional baggage.
I guess I feel like this show is sort of…deliberately unsatisfactory, at least if you’re like me and you mainly watch TV shows because you want to fall in love with the characters and watch them learn and grow. The implementation of Protocol Omega set up the perfect opportunity to wrap up the show in a satisfactory way. The travelers would basically have to find who they truly are and start making their way in the world without guidance from the Director. But instead the show ends with a reset! Argh! That’s fine, it’s the story they wanted to tell. It just makes it sort of hard for me to talk about the show because I’m more interested in whether Philip is getting enough social interaction than whether Attempt #2 is going to change the future.
If I can just be painfully on-brand for a moment, I was thinking of Lost quite a bit during the last few episodes. Would I rather have the Director or Jacob orchestrating my life? I don’t really know.
Overall grade: A-
