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12 Monkeys: Not Just the Best Time-Travel Show, But One of the Best Shows Ever
Where are you right now?
On the first sunny and temperate Friday night in at least two weeks, after a deluge of storms, I stayed in and watched TV. There is nothing special about that, in fact it might seem a little sad. But shed no tears and spare no pity for me. The reason I stayed in to watch TV was because the SyFy series 12 Monkeys aired its two-hour series finale. More like a feature film than a double-episode on basic cable, the episode (and the series) raised the bar on excellence in storytelling, especially when the story happens all out-of-order.
When I was about sixteen, I vividly remember sitting in my Grandmother’s bedroom (she was in the hospital at the time) and watching Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys on TV. The story, partly cribbed from a 1960s Left Bank art film, details a bootstrap paradox involving a time-traveler, a plague, and a violent shooting. I recall as the film ended and the strains of Louis Armstrong’s “It’s a Wonderful World” played, I began to cry. In that moment, my hormone-addled teen-brain understood something about life, fate, and our helplessness to affect either thing. Stone sober though I was, the clarity disappeared from my mind after a few seconds but the tears kept flowing. For reasons I could never fully explain, I love this film. So, when Terry Matalas, Travis Fickett, and the SyFy network said they were rebooting the story for their television show of the same name, I was intrigued but skeptical.
As much as I still love the film, the television version of 12 Monkeys is the far superior version of the tale. It’s faithful enough to the original film that it’s recognizable, but by the end of the first season the differences are what makes this show more intriguing. They raised the stakes considerably, which is no small feat when the inciting incident is a viral plague that ends the world. The show should be remembered as one of the best-crafted shows of all time. The writers — along with the cast and crew — really told a complete story here, one that fits together in ways that other wonky sci-fi concept shows often fail to achieve. One of the show’s axioms holds true: Nothing means “nothing.”
