I remember when I saw the movie, 12 Monkeys, in the theater on opening night. It was a perfect time travel flick, and it made sense 100% of the, uh, time, which is unusual for such fare. If you want to impress friends with movie trivia, did you know that one of the two writers of this movie also wrote Unforgiven?
Anyway, when they announced a TV series was being made out of it, I had to wonder how. How could they stretch that story out over the course of a season, much less more than one? They did a pretty good job of it, and the show went off in a lot of crazy and unexpected directions.
But I lost Syfy before I could watch the final season. My provider dropped the channel for whatever reasons, and ever since I've wondered how they ended the show. When I gave up cable for streaming, I always kept an eye out, hoping someone would eventually have it.
And now, while watching the new season of From and the final season of Billy the Kid, I discovered MGM+ had it. At first I thought, I remember enough of the show. I can probably just plunge myself back into it with nothing more than the previously-on walkthrough.
That was a terrible idea. I'd forgotten so much about the first few seasons that I really should have started from the beginning, but I didn't have time for that. I'm not going to pay for another month just so I can do that. The problem is, I am a completely different person from the guy who watched those first seasons. Number one among the changes: I no longer drink three-quarters of a handle every night. No wonder my memories were hazy. I was probably blacked out when I watched a majority of 12 Monkeys.
Cumulatively I'm missing about a decade's worth of my life. It's not like I turned 30 and boom, the next thing I know, I'm 40. There are bits and pieces I recall, but booze effectively erased a lot of that decade. It's more like 33 to 43, maybe 44.
So picking up the show again after so much time was surreal to me. The time travel show sort of . . . sent me back in time. I had the sensation of being that person again for the first three episodes to the point where I reached for my drink once and recoiled in horror at it *not* being whiskey.
As for the show itself, I managed to get back into the correct mindframe when that feeling of time travel faded, and I understood the story again. I recalled more until I realized there was a plot twist I'd been waiting for when I watched back in the day. The twist did, indeed, come but it was not the twist I expected. Related, sure, but different nonetheless. I won't say what it was, in case you planned on watching at some point, but I thought Cole would somehow turn out to be his own father--like a test tube baby, not the other way--hence his importance as a paradox to the story. I was close, but that didn't turn out to be the case. The actual twist is pretty sweet, though, and you should give it a shot.
In fact, the whole show is just great. If you have MGM+, check it out.
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