orward Into the Past
orward Into the Past
It has been more than forty years since Nick has seen his close friend, Katherine Barrington, and her secretary Madelyn Pinchot. Now, after Madelyn has been murdered, Nick knows that Katherine will be next if he doesn't find her before the killer does.
This seemed to be a very standard sort of episode, without even very much character development to advance the series. It followed the usual plot sequence: people are killed, Nick has a "hunch" that someone out of the blue committed the crimes (really, he just has more information, but from his vampire side), he makes a quick stop at the Raven, and his knowledge of the past helps him stop the killer before it's too late. Nothing even remotely out of the ordinary happened. Still, there was nothing that made me really hate this episode.
Stephanie Morgenstern plays the young Katherine Barrington, who is actually seen much more often than her present day self. A great deal of this episode occurs in the flashbacks, which might explain why the modern events don't seem well fleshed out.
Nick doesn't seem to be his normal self throughout the episode (and the flashbacks). He comforts Katherine (in the flashback) by saying "dreams are protable; I carry mine with me" -- a bit more flagrantly optimistic than I'd expect. And why did he confront Jeremy Stanton, asking questions about the murder of Madeline, and indicating that he knows of the strong conflict between Stanton and Katherine? Not only does this warn Stanton, but it almost cries out "yeah, I'm that Nick from fourty years ago!".
It's also kind of amazing that Nick managed to find Katherine so quickly, when Stanton had failed for so long. Ok, so it's not too amazing that he looked for owners of that antique car, but the way he thought of it (seeing a shadow in a blown-up picture of Katherine) was bizarre. I expected him to stumble onto that train of thought by reason, and not by chance.
In fact, the Captain's performance was kind of odd, too. She openly supports Nick's hunch (well, she does warn him to be sure and get enough evidence...). And at one point she comes in, looks at a clock, says 'hi', complains about the clock, and leaves -- for no apparent reason, except that they needed to use the clock as an entry point for a flashback.
There's also one small timeline flaw. When Nick is trying to talk Aristotle into hiding Katherine and Madeline, he says something like "you still owe me for that time at the Battle of Hastings". Sure, a nifty literary device, referring to true historical events -- except that the Battle of Hastings was in 1066, 162 years before Nick was brought over.
Episode rating (0 to 10): 4
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