Full disclosure: I’m a huge Stephen King fan, and I love time travel stories. I’m also a huge fan of JFK assassination conspiracy theories. So Hulu’s 11.22.63 seems like a complete slow pitch right to me. It’s tailor-made to appeal to viewers like myself, but it’s also accessible enough to hook newcomers to either King’s work or JFK paranoia in general. And you know what else? So far, it’s really damn good.
The show – and the gigantic book that serves as its source material – is based on a pretty insane conceit. In Al’s Diner is Lisbon, Maine, there is a closet, through which you can travel to October 21, 1960. No matter how long you stay in the past, in the present you’re only gone for two minutes. So Al (Chris Cooper, excellent), after being diagnosed with cancer, enlists high school teacher Jake Epping (James Franco, also great) to go back to 1960, hang out for three years, and prevent the Kennedy assassination. To the show’s credit, it hits the ground running with all this exposition. Time travel is a crazy enough concept that it’s best to just dump it in the audience’s lap; the more we’re able to think about it, the sillier it seems. But Jake is back in 1960 by the 25-minute mark. He rolls with it, and so must we. It’s smart filmmaking and smart pacing.
Director Kevin MacDonald (The Last King of Scotland) uses a strikingly different color palette for the 1960s and the 2010s. The ’60s are brighter, the food tastes better, and the men wear suits and hats. But 11.22.63 doesn’t make the mistake of idealizing the past. Al doesn’t want Jake to save JFK because he idolizes the man, but rather because, from a realistic point of view, JFK’s survival possibly prevents not only the death of RFK but also the escalation of American involvement in Vietnam.
These are lofty goals, and the show is lucky enough to have Chris Cooper, a fantastic supporting actor, act as a guiding voice in Jake’s head even after he succumbs to his cancer, which is what convinces Jake to go back in time. “See you in two minutes,” he says, sweetly, to Al’s body. Franco is subtly great in the show, downplaying his natural weirdness to achieve genuine warmth.
The production design is fantastic, and does a great job of immersing the viewer in the past. Which is important, because for all intents and purposes the past is another character in the show. A creepy hobo, reminiscent of the Low Men in King’s Hearts in Atlantis, repeatedly tells Jake that he “shouldn’t be here.” More pointedly, Al tells Jake “If you fuck with the past, the past fucks with you.” Jake narrowly avoids getting set on fire, hit by a car, and crushed by a chandelier; worse than that, his boarding house burns down. The active role that the past takes in the story keeps the viewer on edge, and lends a real sense of unpredictability to the proceedings (because time travel is usually so predictable). In fact, much of 11.22.63 is thrilling in the same way that undercover cop movies are thrilling: there’s the constant threat of Jake being found out.
So far, 11.22.63 is off to a damn good start. Its 80-minute pilot episode breezed by, and the story coupled with Franco’s engaging performance ensure that boredom won’t be an issue. Sure, we all know how this story “technically” ends, but that’s the fun of “what if,” isn’t it?
A Few Thoughts
- What a pleasure to watch Chris Cooper and James Franco act opposite each other
- That was a great guest turn by Leon Rippy, late of Under the Dome, bringing real heart to the role of Harry
- “I’ve been eating hamburgers from 1960?”
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