Television Review: 11.22.63 Episode 8 (Hulu)

This episode premiered on a Monday, as they all have, and I managed to watch it the very next day but have just been taking the time to let what I saw sink in before taking the time to write about it.    While I felt like the first three or four episodes did a nice job of building up to something, the last three episodes or so weren't as good for me and so it really did come down to this.   I just wanted to know how it was all going to end.

So Jake manages to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from shooting JFK and killing him but in the process, Sadie dies.   Jake goes back to the future and it is bad.   Everything is in this black and white tone and it looks like the post-apocalypse.    Jake finds the guy who was in his class- that he saved from his father murdering his mother and all- and he mentions the bombings.    He also asks Jake why he killed his father, which just proves the point that sometimes things just need to happen and we shouldn't try and alter the past.

Jake also learns this lesson in general because apparently letting JFK live did not make the world a better place and in some ways this whole mini-series was pointless.   Obviously Jake goes back to reset everything again and tries to pull Sadie but is warned by the yellow card hat guy not to and so he thinks better of it and just goes back to his present, which seems to be back to normal.    It was a nice effort, Jake, but saving JFK didn't really have the effect you'd hope for and it all must feel like such a waste of time now.

In the end, Jake goes to Texas as Sadie is being honored with an award and Jake dances with old lady Sadie because apparently the real lesson here is that love conquers all or some other romanticized nonsense and not that we should leave the past the hell alone.   I mean, I guess I never really saw Jake saving JFK and then coming back to this utopia of sorts because then he'd want to go back for Sadie in which case he'd have to stop Oswald again and that'd just take us back to Episode 1.

   But this... I don't know how I feel about it.   I feel like perhaps it took us a long way to get to the simple idea that the past happened for a reason.