It's hard to imagine NBC's new series TIMELESS running for two seasons.
It's all confection as well but seems to believe it can trick viewers into thinking it's a hearty meal and not a tiny cupcake.
The show has four main stars.
The only one that actually succeeds is Matt Lanter.
What's he doing on the show?
No writer appears to have ever asked that question.
But just as Lanter made his role on STAR-CROSSED believable, he makes the even less fleshed out sketch of Wyatt Logan appear real.
Goran Visnjic doesn't have it so easy.
As Garcia Flynn, the man who is both a criminal and someone who wants to change history, Goran is stuck playing a character the writers have overthought and it's to his credit that he rises above the laughable scenes he's forever stuck in.
Garcia has stolen a time machine. He has possibly kidnapped Anthony Bruhl (Matt Frewer) or possibly Tony's working with him.
If you can't figure it out, don't worry.
It doesn't appear that the writers have yet either.
Using a second time machine, Wyatt, Abigail Spencer's Lucy (a historian) and Malcolm Barrett's Rufus pursue Garcia.
It should be exciting, at least the time travel.
Instead, it's plodding and dull.
The only thing that's been less thought out than characterization is storylines.
If you had a machine for time travel, what would you do?
Let's say you were a Barack Obama supporter.
You might want to go back to August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, wait around the hospital and make sure photos are taken of Ann Dunham and newborn Barack leaving so that the myth of him being in born in Kenya never has a chance to get started.
Or maybe you want to try to influence the 1998 impeachment of Bill Clinton -- either to stop the House from impeaching or to see the Senate remove him from office -- and you'd use the time machine for that.
Possibly you want to go to Brentwood for the night of August 4th and the morning of August 5th to figure out what really happened and how Marilyn Monroe died.
Instead, the show goes to the Hindenburg crash and the assassination of Lincoln.
They do make time to go to Las Vegas, when JFK is screwing Judith Campbell.
Historian Lucy sees Judith Campbell -- who slept with JFK and mob dons Sam Giancana and Johnny Rosselli -- as a breakout woman.
If any of this makes sense to you, the show's for you.
But it's not for most people.
That's obvious from the ratings.
Over 12 million viewers watched the first episode.
Every week has seen a fall off in viewers.
The episode where they went to the Alamo?
Only 9.11 million viewers watched.
Apparently, the viewers patience isn't timeless.
And you don't need to hop into a time machine to know where this is headed.
