Yep, 12 Monkeys two days in a row! This pair deserves it, though – they’re
easily the best thing about an already-strong show. Here’s to one of the best time-travel duos on
TV (of course, splinter time-travel doesn’t hold a candle to TARDIS
time-travel, but whatcha gonna do?)
Cole
and Cassie form a great from-different-worlds partnership. She’s from our time, with all its technology,
convenience, and instant gratification.
Though his present is only 28 years ahead of hers, it’s the polar
opposite. His world has no society to
speak of, just dog-eat-dog scavenging in the surviving fragments of the
plague-ravaged human race. In this way,
they’re a bit like Crane and Abbie from Sleepy
Hollow – Cole has no concept of 2015 life, from license plates to
cheeseburgers, and when Cassie dresses to the nines to infiltrate a gala, his
highest praise of is that she looks “clean.”
On his trips to the past, Cassie introduces him to present-day perks
like takeout and helps him experience the lovelier things in life. It’s great to see his face when he looks at a
painting, and almost as great to see her watching him as he looks.
The
divide between their worlds extends to more than early 21st-century accoutrements. Their different experiences have led to
entirely different worldviews. Cole was
only 7 when the virus started to spread, and he had to do very hard things from
a young age to stay alive as society collapsed on itself. He’s haunted by his past sins, and his desire
to erase them fuels his mission to rewrite history. At the same time, everything he’s seen and
done hardens him, lets him pursue his goal by any means necessary. He’s stolen, lied, and killed before, and
he’ll do it all again; a recurring line of his is, “I don’t want to hurt you,
but I will if I have to.” It’s a
sentiment I hear in many stories, but I don’t often see a character express
both sides of it as earnestly as Cole.
Additionally, from his perspective, everyone he meets in 2015 is
“already dead,” which desensitizes him to any required violence – it was going
to happen anyway, right? He’s ruthlessly
pragmatic and always keeps his eye on the prize, the 7 billion people he stands
to save.
By
turns, Cassie is horrified by his callous relentlessness, both from a “but you
can’t!” moral standpoint and from a more personal concern for Cole’s capacity
for darkness. Her chief motivation is to
help people, but she’s the one who usually insists that there must be another
way. Cole sometimes sees this as
unwillingness to do what it takes, but Cassie comes at it differently. She never watched the world die or had to
kill to survive, and so her absolute beliefs have never been severely tested. It’s natural that she feels there are lines that
should never be crossed, and she gives 110% of herself on her side of those
lines. Her perspective is essential to
the show, because sometimes there is
another way, but Cole is often so laser-focused on the task at hand that he
can’t see it. Cassie reminds him that
not all costs should be paid.
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