I know I've been spoiled by the streaming era, because all I could think while watching the first few episodes of Syfy's "12 Monkeys" was how out of date it felt. I used to watch a ton of science-fiction shows just like this, about shadowy conspiracies and desperate heroes with the fate of the world in their hands. The lead actors were always slightly too well groomed, and the production values were always a little rough, but the writing and characters could make up for that. "12 Monkeys" actually looks great for a 2015 cable show, the actors are strong, and the time travel premise is handled very well. It just suffers in comparison to all the great science-fiction media that's come since. And, of course, it doesn't hold a candle to the 1995 "12 Monkeys" film it was based on.
If you don't remember the movie, Bruce Willis plays a man from the future who is sent back to the present day to stop a devastating plague. It's one of the only Terry Gilliam films that made any money, and Brad Pitt scored an Oscar nomination for playing an unhinged mental patient. The "12 Monkeys" series, created by Terry Matalas and Travis Fickett, uses most of the same concepts but very little of Gilliam's memorable filmmaking style and aesthetics. The man from the future, James Cole (Aaron Stanford) is from 2043, and makes multiple trips to 2015 to stop the release of the virus. He meets and falls in love with a virologist, Dr. Cassandra Railly (Amanda Schull), and the two of them work together to stop the group responsible for the outbreak, the mysterious Army of the 12 Monkeys.
Having multiple episodes to fill instead of two hours, the premise is expanded significantly to make it open ended, certain time travel rules are tweaked, and there are many more characters and complications. Railly has an on-again, off-again boyfriend who works in politics, Aaron Marker (Noah Bean), who quickly gets caught up in the conspiracy part of the show. Jennifer Goines (Emily Hampshire), one of the suspected leaders of the 12 Monkeys, is a wild card element who keeps popping up in new contexts. Mysterious 12 Monkeys agents (Alisen Down and Tom Noonan) keep showing up to thwart our heroes. In the future, the time travel program is headed by the commanding Dr. Jones (Barbara Sukowa), and Cole has a best friend, José Ramse (Kirk Acevedo), who he's known since childhood. Their group is constantly at odds with a militarized faction of survivors called West VII, led by a nasty named Deacon (Todd Stashwick).
It is frustrating to watch Cole and Railly keep hitting dead ends episode after episode, destroying some project or killing some baddie, only for there to be another goalpost just a little further off. Cole keeps almost dying, the machine keeps almost breaking, and the satisfying payoffs are few and far between. However, the show does come up with some solid smaller-scale stories within this framework, and some of the individual episodes are excellent. The development of secondary characters like Ramse and Dr. Jones is much more interesting than the slow-burn romance between Cole and Railly. A high point of the season is an episode where Dr. Jones demonstrates that she's willing to sacrifice what little hope the 2043 survivors still have in their timeline in order to stop the plague in the past from happening. Sukowa is easily giving the best performance in the show.
Stanford and Schull are perfectly fine as the leads, but they're very limited by their roles as genre television creatures, and not very interesting. Emily Hampshire probably has the most thankless task of trying to live up to the gonzo Brad Pitt performance as Goines, and falls significantly short. Her character definitely needs some retooling moving forward, because she's not fitting the more grounded tone of the series. Again, I want to emphasize that "12 Monkeys" is one of the better cable genre shows that I've seen, and there were clearly many talented people involved. However, if this were premiering now on one of the streamers, the seasons would be eight episodes instead of thirteen, the stories would be streamlined and much less repetitive, and the title graphics would look a whole lot better.
I feel like I might enjoy the show for nostalgic vibes if I put off watching the rest of it for a few years. After the first season, I don't feel very incentivized to tackle the other three. I like and do recommend "12 Monkeys," but only if the viewer understands what they're getting into.
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