I’m a BIG fan of time-travel media. From small-scale stuff like Primer, to huge blockbusters like Avengers: Endgame, I’ll watch nearly any show or movie with time-travel in it. I’m not even sure why, if I’m being honest.
I guess I’m fascinated in the question, “What would you do if you had knowledge of future events?” 11/22/63 is wholly based on that question. If you could go back in time, would you stop JFK from being assassinated?
It is a tantalizing question. It’s adjacent to the “Would you kill baby Hitler?” hypothetical, and I feel like both questions evoke similar answers. And those answers point towards the butterfly effect. The show definitely touches on that concept, in a pretty satisfying way I might add.
I didn’t expect as much personal drama. Of course there had to be something in-between all the “trying to stop Lee Harvey Oswald” scenes, but I was surprised at how much time was spent on the main character’s relationships with people he meets in the past. That isn’t to say they’re bad or anything. In fact, the final scene of the show focuses on the relationship of Jake and someone he met in the past, and it was my favorite moment in the series.
I guess the focus on character-moments makes more sense with this series’ twist on time-travel. Jake is only able to time-travel to a certain street on October 21, 1960. So if he does decide to stop Oswald, he has to live out 3 years of his life in the 60s. Interestingly enough, no matter how much time you spend in the past, if you go back through the portal, only a couple minutes will have past. But he’ll still have aged. Every time-travel media has it’s own little hook and I really like what King decided on for the book (and this show as a result).
The parts directly related to dealing with Oswald and his plan are fascinating. It really gets into the nitty-gritty of “Okay. We’re okay with killing baby Hitler. How are we actually going to do it?” There’s a lot of talk about how to spy on him without tipping him off and eavesdropping on CIA agents. It’s great amateur-espionage stuff.
The acting is fantastic. I haven’t read the book, although I kinda wanted to before watching the show, so I don’t have a mental image of what the characters “should be” from the words that Stephen King wrote. That being the case, fans of the book might disagree with me, but I loved James Franco as Jake (the main character). I can’t really recall any serious roles I’ve seen him in. The only films that come to mind are Seth Rogen films and Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy. His chemistry with Sarah Gadon as Sadie is what makes this show great. She’s so good as Sadie, she just registers to me as a person from the 60s. Her vocal-inflection combined with her line delivery really sells the idea that she’s actually from the 60s. She did it so well, I feel like it’d be weird to watch interviews with her and see her talk about smartphones or some shit. People in the 60s didn’t have smartphones.
I’ve put forth a lot of things I like, so I’m sure you’re wondering about what I didn’t like. Straight-up, I barely have any gripes with the show.
My main problem with it, is a problem I have with a lot of pieces of media. Too many interpersonal problems in media could be solved with simple communication. There’s a handful of pretty important events in the show that could be easily resolved if the people involved just talked plainly or was willing to listen to the other person.
I get that you need a character to be so frustrated that they don’t want to hear ANYTHING the other person says for the plot to progress in a lot of stories. But it’s extremely frustrating as a viewer when you know that a conflict spanning multiple episodes could be easily solved if both parties just talked.
I don’t think this show does that too much, but it’s still annoying. I mainly just wanted to vent about that trope as a whole.
But that’s about the only bad thing I can say about the show. The acting is great, the plot is great, the set decorations are fantastic. A lot of things went right in the production of this show.
Would I Recommend It?
11/22/63 is a solid recommendation. I don’t think I mentioned this, but it’s a miniseries. There’s only 8 episodes. I don’t really watch many TV series at all, because I feel like the best ones are shows that benefit from having slow character development over like 6 season with 10 episodes each. I just don’t have time for that.
This show made me realize I should be looking for more miniseries. The ~8 hour runtime allows for a lot more character development than not only a single film, but even a lot of trilogies. But it’s also all within a reasonable runtime, so you could binge it in a weekend and not dedicate weeks to a single show.
11/22/63 has a lot of positive aspects, and I can’t really think of any huge negatives. If you have a weekend off and are looking for a show to watch AND finish in that time, this ain’t a bad choice by any means.