Dallas welcomes Lee Harvey Oswald.
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode follow.
Coming off a tense but ultimately fillery episode, this week’s 11.22.63 got back to the meat of the story and introduced a host of new characters. While Bill made his first appearance last week, his status was bumped up to “sidekick” in “Other Voices, Other Rooms” as he joined Jake in his effort to stop JFK from being assassinated. On the one hand, it was nice having someone for Jake to bounce his thoughts off of and keep the viewer in the loop so that he didn’t have to talk to himself or flashback to Al over and over. On the other hand, Bill himself was pretty frustrating as a character and didn’t have much chemistry with Jake once they became allies.
Regardless, this episode moved at a good clip. The Jodie sequences, for example, were a welcome addition here, and those characters worked better than Bill. It made sense that Jake would eventually need to find employment in order to blend into 1960s society, and teaching at a high school seemed like the obvious choice given his modern-day occupation. I particularly enjoyed his interview with Deke Simmons (Nick Searcy) and his answer to the Catcher in the Rye question. (“Land of the free, home of the brave — I think we can handle it.”) Jake’s handful of scenes with Ms. Mimi (Tonya Pinkins) were also sweet and, again, emphasized the American culture of the time.
We want to hear it.
I was also surprised to see this episode make a two-year time jump to 1962, as both Lee Harvey Oswald (Daniel Webber) and Sadie Dunhill (Sarah Gadon) hit the scene. We met Sadie briefly in the premiere, but her role was much more prominent this time around. And unlike Jake’s static relationship with Bill, Franco and Gadon’s rapport felt very natural. (The dance scene was a fun break from the more serious moments in this episode.) Granted, it was a little weird that Jake wasn’t more hesitant to date someone from the past, which was something Al clearly warned Jake against before he died. Undoubtedly, this will factor into future episodes. Regardless, their subplot this week was one of the better through lines of the episode and offered a nice emotional counterbalance to the more plot-driven Oswald storyline.
Speaking of which, “Other Voices, Other Rooms” also did a good job of pushing the espionage elements, and most of these sequences were suitably taut and well-executed. I got kind of a Coppola’s Conversation vibe, particularly with the bug-planting scene. I also couldn’t help but laugh when Jake and Bill finally got Oswald and George de Mohrenschildt’s first meeting on tape only for them to realize the two men were speaking a different language. (“F***, I should have spent the last three years learning Russian!”) That said, the fact that Jake and Bill’s landlord Raphael stole all their tapes and ripped them to shreds seemed a little contrived, after all they’d done to get that far.
This episode also gave us our first taste of Oswald’s home life and his family dynamic. Understandably, this seemed to give Jake a little pause in doing what needs to be done when the time comes. However, the final scene at the Walker rally offered a sobering reminder of what Oswald is really capable of and that he is more dangerous than he first appears.
While not as harrowing as “The Kill Floor,” this week’s 11.22.63 brought Jake and us back to the task at hand, as the rest of the series’ main players were introduced. In addition to bringing in Lee Harvey Oswald, “Other Voices, Other Rooms” began a charming (though ill-advised) romantic subplot between Jake and Sadie, which was handily more engaging than Jake’s continued “friendship” with Bill. This episode also jumped ahead two whole years, advancing the historical timeline considerably — another advantage to this only being eight episodes long.
