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On ‘Timeless,’ Lucy & Wyatt DTR by way of… Bonnie & Clyde?
Like so many Will They/Won’t They TV couples before them, Lucy (Abigail Spencer) and Wyatt (Matt Lanter) of found themselves impersonating a couple on the Dec. 5 episode of “Timeless.” And as is so often the case in these circumstances, they wound up kissing — but just for the mission, obviously! Right?
“Timeless” has never shied away from employing TV tropes, to its credit, and this undercover fake relationship arrives just on time. From “Castle”‘s Richard (Nathan Fillion) and Kate (Stana Katic) to “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”‘s Amy (Melissa Fumero) and Jake (Andy Samberg), the performance of love between two people we all know are destined to be together is an expected stage of courtship… And this show leans into it delightfully, not just the kiss but a variety of hugs and leans, culminating in a shared bed.
With shades of “It Happened That Night,” the fake couple lay side by side in a single bed, hair and makeup and 1930s nightwear lending a throwback glamour to the proceedings. What proceeds, though, is a frank conversation about all the reasons this fake pairing cannot go legit — at least not anytime soon.
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Like a fine meal’s wine pairing, we know every historical vignette on the show will somehow manage to mirror the character arcs of our heroes. Here, Lucy and Wyatt’s fake love is set against the notorious, doomed lovers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow (played here by the very game Jacqueline Byers and Sam Strike, all Southern accents and smoldery looks).
The team didn’t know this was their assignment — and for once, Lucy’s encyclopedic knowledge of historical dates fails them, catching her as off-guard as the others when an ostensibly simple mission to visit a bank winds up with Lucy and Wyatt on the lam with Bonnie and Clyde… Whose deaths, Lucy was able to predict instantly once she recognized the situation, were set for 9:00 a.m. the next morning.
Because the stakes on this show aren’t high enough already, turns out the final bank robbed by the notorious couple just so happens to be the same bank where a key is being kept that Flynn (Goran Visnjic) suddenly and inexplicably needs. Post-robbery, Bonnie decides to sport the key necklace-style, making it extra tricky for Lucy and Wyatt (Matt Lanter) to retrieve it — particularly since Bonnie and Clyde had a date with destiny in the immediate future. And so Lucy’s ongoing Cassandra complex pops up once again, as she finds herself in the company of people she’s come to like — and who she knows are doomed to die horribly, very soon.
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Bonnie and Clyde’s fate is well documented, a fixed point in history. Lucy and Wyatt’s future as a couple is the opposite: Still undefined. For now, both seemingly accept a future as merely colleagues who kissed one time, let’s not dwell on it, we’ve got work to do, etc.
And for real: Wyatt is still grieving the murder of his wife and, on a show about time travel, you know that’s going to become more of an issue moving forward. Lucy’s got her stranger-fiancé to deal with, erased family and a mysterious future… And oh yeah, they’re being forced to travel through time to prevent the universe from imploding while being chased and/or bankrolled by an Illuminati-like organization. Costumes and kisses are fun; but nobody’s got time for a relationship right now — especially since Flynn not only got the key, but has inserted it into some sort of steampunk clock, which popped out a very ominous wax-sealed scroll, because the midseason finale’s next week and that’s exactly what this weird, wonderful show needed to do: Get more bonkers yet.
“Timeless” airs its midseason finale, “The Capture of Benedict Arnold,” Monday Dec. 12 at 10:01 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.
It will return for the six remaining episodes of Season 1 on Monday, Jan. 16.