Notes

100 émissions préférées :
“Sometimes, people have to do terrible things to make the world a better place.”
[Disclaimer: In January 2018, James Franco, the lead on 11.22.63, was accused by five women of behavior that was deemed “inappropriate” or “sexually exploitative.” The full details were reported by the Los Angeles Times.]
Stephen King is a prolific, storied author, who seems to churn out one or two books every year. Although, something about his 2011 novel, 11.22.63, was enough to grip acclaimed filmmaker Jonathan Demme even before the book’s release. Maybe it was the thrilling sci-fi plot of a man, Jake Epping (James Franco), thrust into the past to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Maybe it was the beating heart romance between Jake and Sadie (Sarah Gadon) at the center of the novel. Either way, development on a film adaptation from Demme began instantly before it eventually morphed into a television miniseries after King insisted on contributing as a producer. From there, a curating team that included Bridget Carpenter and J.J. Abrams worked to bring the story to Hulu, where it debuted in February 2016 and ran for eight episodes. Since then, 11.22.63 has garnered immense acclaim and a fervent fanbase that continues to find the series years after it wrapped. Some stories are just timeless.
(This essay does contain 11.22.63 spoilers, but it also contains specific details pertaining to Stephen King stories. If either of these skeeve you out, take a time portal to minutes before you opened this link.)
As the winter transitioned to spring in 2016, I would come home from school on Monday afternoons and fire up the latest episode of 11.22.63, a thrilling new miniseries from a then-fledgling (in terms of original productions) Hulu. This was before I became a religious listener of television review podcasts and devout reader of Alan Sepinwall/Brian Grubb recap columns, mind you. The series was interesting to me merely because I found the concept accessible and was intrigued by James Franco flexing his dramatic chops on a prestige television program.
It was definitely a bit of a new direction for my experience with afternoon television. Growing up, SpongeBob SquarePants and Drake & Josh dominated the after-homework rush when it was too cold to go outside and play. But now that I was in high school, I felt prepared to begin navigating the experience of “peak TV” by first entering through the lens of 11.22.63. I was ready for a sci-fi plot merged with a period drama, where the set decoration and production design were as much a part of the narrative as the flashy acting. I was ready for a series that withheld bombastic direction in favor of restrained, story-focused framing on every shot. I was ready for a series that built its pitch on a major star in the lead role but sung loudest through its supporting cast comprised of beloved character actors. 11.22.63 was one of my first exposures to a rich, thrilling weekly story that unfolded in a way that was mysterious to me. After all, I hadn’t read the book.
At the core of 11.22.63, it’s a “stranger comes to town” kind of tale. The only difference between this miniseries and the majority of shows that fell into the same trope was that Jake Epping was not only visiting Kentucky from a different place altogether; he was coming from a different time. To fit the lead into the 1960s landscape seamlessly, the production behind 11.22.63 pretty ingeniously slotted Franco into the role of Jake. Having portrayed James Dean in a 2001 biopic, Franco was a perfect pick, as he brought the old-timey star quality to a series that required a character from our time to reasonably blend into a foreign landscape.
Furthermore, Franco’s myriad, wide-ranging pursuits on screen ascribed to him the writerly attributes that helped contribute to Jake’s feeling of displacement. Not only was the time period and location unfamiliar to him, but he was also not in the company of his intellectual peers. Instead, Jake was labeled a “fancy pants writer” (almost like when Frasier Crane entered Cheers) and dismissed as some counterculture yuppie who sought to upend their down-home way of life. In reality, Jake was only there to upend American history, but his quiet confidence and ability to use privileged knowledge of the future to his advantage (he covers his Korean War story with the assertion that his unit was a MASH: the 4077th) resulted in Jake’s making the most sizable impact on a local community, even as he sought to change the world.
Obviously, an eight episode miniseries like this couldn’t spend all of its time preoccupied with the JFK Assassination. That would result in needless plot barricades and interminable frustration on the part of the viewer. Instead, the majority of the series concerns the relationships Jake developed when he traveled back to 1960 because, for a man who thinks himself capable of preventing an awesome tragedy, it’s impossible to not forge an attachment to the people you encounter.
This manifests directly in the series’ second episode, “The Kill Floor,” as Jake (referred to as the “time travel man” by local resident Bill Turcotte (George MacKay)) attempts to develop his new time traveling powers by running a trial to see if he can actually prevent murders. In this episode, he’s not worried about JFK or Lee Harvey Oswald (Daniel Webber), though. He’s instead focused on helping a student from his present timeline, Harry Dunning (Leon Rippy).
In 1960, Harry’s father, Frank (Josh Duhamel), murdered the entire family (sans Harry, of course, as he’s a student in Jake’s night class in 2016), including Harry’s mother, Doris (Joanna Douglas). With this knowledge in mind, Jake embarks on his own step of a warped hero’s journey, running a series of trials to test his new skills on a smaller scale before eventually applying them in a grander capacity. Along the way, he’s able to help a student to whom he feels attached (and, soon enough, Jake would feel that same bond for the other Dunning victims) because Jake’s plan actually works.
On Halloween night (decked out in an aesthetic similar to the third stage of Disney’s Carousel of Progress, which I believe actually matches up with the timeline), he manages to intercept Frank’s violent attack of his family and save the trauma of one child, at least. It’s a chilling moment that results in no feeling of victory for Jake, after he strangles Frank to death (trick-or-treaters on the outside of the home ask if the blood on Jake’s face is real or fake), but it’s a necessary one. Not only do we see that it’s possible to alter the past, but we also see that Jake is capable of doing whatever it takes to help others, even if it damages his own psyche.
Earlier in the episode, Jake’s housemate, Arliss Price (Michael O’Neill), spoke with him about the horrors of their “shared” war experience and he remarks, “Last thing you can say about killing a man is that it’s brave.” They’re words that are certainly valid and they color Jake’s perception of his journey for the rest of the series. His act will not be a courageous one; it will solely be a necessary one. At least, that’s how he manages to reframe the notion in his mind.
Throughout the series, we’re constantly reminded of the task at hand for Jake, even as wandering distractions wrestle their way into the forefront of his mind. (The time portal warps to 1960, of course. Three years is a lot of time to kill.) Episodes ending with music cues like Elvis Presley’s “It’s Now or Never” and Sam Cooke’s “Bring It on Home to Me” not only ground us in the era, but are foreboding inklings that nothing Jake accomplishes matters unless he can successfully prevent the assassination.
He’s presented with plenty of obstacles, after all, and some of them are downright scary. As thrilling and high-concept as 11.22.63 was, it still had a penchant for King’s defining streaks of horror. Frequently, on 11.22.63, the series’ writers are keen to remind audiences that the past will want to mess with Jake if he dares to mess with it. One particular character seems to embody this sentiment, as the fifth episode, “The Truth,” features a lengthy sequence centered around Jake and Sadie being held at gunpoint by Sadie’s ex-husband, Johnny (T.R. Knight). Johnny seems so cartoonishly evil (he makes Jake and Sadie kiss while he watches; he repeatedly refers to Jake as “cock boy”) that it’s hard not to see his actions as the manifestation of the past fighting back against Jake’s intentions through Johnny as a vessel. In spite of any apparent autonomy.
As he always manages to do throughout the series, though, Jake outsmarts Johnny, blinding him and striking him with a fire poker when his foe begins to run low on bullets. In the same episode, Bill, haunted by the murder of his sister, is tasked with uncovering the theory of whether or not Oswald worked alone in his plot (another mystery left to chance), but is distracted by a phantom mirage of his departed sibling. While Bill’s love for his sister supplanted the active plan he developed with Jake as a priority, it was Jake’s fighting for love that led to him conquering Johnny. In both scenarios, love derailed the plans in place; it’s just that one act of love managed to defeat the clawing back of time and the other was a result of time’s distinct meddling.
One element of 11.22.63’s relationship with the logic of time travel that I appreciated the most is that it never sought to explain how the laws worked or how “Time” essentially became a series antagonist or why the portal in Al’s (Chris Cooper) diner was so specifically programmed. The logic of it was never what was most important on 11.22.63.
When we experience one flashback to Jake’s time as a teacher, he poses the question of what his students would do if they could travel back in time and laughs off one student’s questions about how time travel would work in the hypothetical scenario. Jake waves the question away, acknowledges that it doesn’t matter, and replies simply, “You’re there.” When your story is more about what can be found in the past, rather than how to repair to past, you don’t need to waste your time developing a sci-fi bible. What matters is that you got back to the past — what are you gonna do next?
As for Jake, he frequently wanders away from his ultimate goal before being thrust into an amnestic coma at the end of “Happy Birthday, Lee Harvey Oswald.” All that time to prepare for a simple, two-second distraction of a psychologically broken shooter and the finale, “The Day in Question,” still winds up being a race against the clock. For the drama and tension, it makes sense, but come on, Jake. You just witnessed a magical portal take you back over fifty years and you didn’t think that amnesia could factor into the equation at some point, too?
Fortunately, Jake’s mission was not one he had to carry out alone. As he develops deeper relationships with characters like Bill and Sadie, he also manages to confide his mission with them, prompting much of the penultimate episode, “Soldier Boy,” to revolve around their attempts to reignite Jake’s memories. Without them in his life, he’d have lived out the rest of the decade of tumult without ever recalling why he was there in the first place.
The past, by nature of it being unfamiliar to us (especially in terms of technological advancements and routine science), is also prone to hampering Jake. After Johnny abuses and nearly kills Sadie, Jake can only look on in desperation as the paramedics (a term not even applied to ambulance workers yet) drive away from her home incredibly slowly, only giving him the knowledge that he needs to attend Dallas’ Parkland hospital if he wants to see her again. Jake is equipped with the knowledge of forthcoming medical progress and the increased speed of ambulances, but he’s helpless to watch Sadie slowly bleed out in the back of a seemingly lackadaisical vehicle.
The torment undergone by Sadie is one such example of the past messing with Jake, but the series is littered with them. In the first episode, “The Rabbit Hole,” the past fights back physically by killing the son of Al’s landlady, Henry (Joel Cox), in a fire. By the end, it’s fighting back psychologically when:
Bill winds up intoxicated by Oswald’s presence and defects from Jake’s side of the effortsSadie becomes a lost love of Jake’s due to a romance that is doomed in every simulation (either by death or by forgetting)Jake prevents JFK’s death, only to cause a completely dystopian future as a result Are these efforts from the personified concept of time horseshit or are they actually some forms of mysticism with which the characters are forced to reckon? Are they completely random or are they specifically targeted against each character’s supposedly noble efforts? By the end, it’s just one coincidence too many and even though Jake manages to achieve his goal, the past presents him the impossible Morton’s Fork (a three-way fork, at that) of honoring one’s final wishes, saving the life of his greatest love, or preventing an utter American hellscape. Jake learns harshly that time is inescapably unforgiving.
Across 11.22.63, we see how this notion weighs on the series’ characters. Jake is burdened with the responsibility levied to him by Al and Franco always portrays this sentiment with repressed melancholy. Al is driven by mad the frustration of being unable to top the past to the point where time decides to afflict him with cancer (Cooper slides into the role of a grizzled mentor perfectly). Even Oswald’s mother, Marguerite (Cherry Jones, in one of the series’ most perfectly realized (and grouchiest) turns), is worn down by the encumbering reality of a life unsatisfyingly realized.
Everyone is performing admirably in 11.22.63, but the series’ best performance (and the one most trammeled by time) comes from Gadon, as Sadie. Gadon displays the exterior demureness typically associated with a bucolic, early-60s home, but the more she lets Jake past the surface, the more we see all that is at work in her spirit. She leads with grace and poignancy, but is also marked by a distrusting empathy, a palpable sense of dread, and the ability to fight back when she has to. Gadon can turn the dial to each of these feelings at will, but there’s no other way to describe her than, simply, “a wonder,” as Jake waxes at the outset of “The Truth.”
In every Sadie scene, there is a sense of vitality and a reminder that a spirit like hers is not promised and (certainly) not immortal. She claims From Here to Eternity (another play on Jake’s understandable interest in living forever via portal) is a novel too savvy for her, but there’s no doubt that she’s the series’ savviest character. Sadie knows when to cement her trust in Jake, but she also knows when to be skeptical and prioritize her own well-being. Their romance has a pre-Avengers: Endgame sense of fatalistic doom (their dance at the end of the series is more of a “one last time” tragedy (as the older version of herself greets Jake with, “I’m Sadie” and he answers, “I know”) than when Captain America and Peggy Carter waltz out of the Infinity Saga), but Jake is just content to have known a woman like her at all.
Following Johnny’s traumatic abuse of Sadie, she’s left scarred, but Jake‘s impression was much worse; he believed she was dead. When he learns she survived Johnny’s violence, he no longer cares about whether or not she’ll remember him or whether or not she can survive a thwarted assassination attempt. For https://www.deuhr.de/FR , it’s enough that she’s breathing; it’s enough that he ever was lucky enough to know her. That was the portal’s true gift and it results in a fitting note on which to eventually culminate the miniseries, once Jake resets the events to spare Sadie and re-kill Kennedy.
This punctuality of the final episode also shows that 11.22.63 is one of King’s lighter stories, so perhaps it’s no coincidence that this is one of the few from him that actually sticks the landing. There is darkness, of course (Oswald’s inevitable corruption shades another element of tragedy into that fateful day), but the narrowest focus of 11.22.63 is love. The romance between Jake and Sadie transcends the supernatural, the ominous, and the conspiracy theories abound. Even if the characters never give over to one another with one hundred percent trust, they know that in a wormhole of world-altering time shenanigans, the only people to latch onto are the ones you love.
That’s bigger than John F. Kennedy. We see the gravity of these notions in the actions of Jake, who seeks out love in the modern timeline, but leaves the goals of assassination prevention in the past. It’s more optimal to just let it be and move on because even though the idea of foregoing a pursuit of Sadie is a challenging one for Jake to accept, he is more easily resigned to accepting JFK’s death. For Jake and for us, the past is not for us to control; it’s been decided. The only way to truly change the darkness of the past is to carry light and love forward into the future — uncertain as it may be. The best we can do is move forward.

My Website: https://www.deuhr.de/FR