I’m going to go out on a limb here and say: Pass on this one.
Frequency is a one-season CW show which originally aired in 2016/20177. It has been cancelled, although it isn’t entirely clear why because despite what I’m about to say, it got a fairly positive audience reception. They apparently released an epilogue to provide closure, which is a decent thing to do although I didn’t feel like it ended on a cliffhanger. The ending barely hinted at more conflict to come.
So why am I not feeling the same positive energy as others on this show?
Logic problems.
Time travel is becoming popular again, which is fine. As a long-time scifi fan I’m intrigued by time travel and have considered its myriad implications. Is time travel all part of a single continuum in which everything that has happened, has already happened, meaning time travelers can’t change the future? Or does every minor change spark a new reality, making it impossible for time travelers to truly find their way home again? How does it work? Why does it work? I’m not talking about quantum physics here; I just want to know that there are rules, that they make sense, and that the show is working within them.
This show begins with an intriguing pilot episode that sets up the rest of the series. A woman, fumbling with her old HAM radio, finds herself talking to her dad 20 years ago. And as they both figure out that this communication is real, she tells him he’s going to die the next day. Forewarned is forearmed and all that, so he survives. But at a cost …
There was a serial killer called the Nightingale who had killed a few women back in 1996 in the original time line. Somehow, when dear dad survives, that all changes — the Nightingale has now been active for 20 years and worse, he’s going to kill her mom in a few months in the 1996 timestreame.
Sounds pretty good, right? I thought so! The race is on to save her mom and mend personal relationships that were also torn asunder by these events. Over the course of the season they follow leads, sometimes changing the timestream more — sometimes with more serious consequences than others.
So the problem, without giving away the ending for those of you who want to try to figure out whodunit, I feel like I need to say that the show never satisfactorily explained the key point:
What changed when dear dad lived? How did his survival cause the dramatic new path for this serial killer?
Not only was this not answered, but it became clear within a few short episodes that it never would be. They forgot, as they chased down this that and the other lead, that this was a TIME TRAVEL story, not just a parallel police procedural running in two different decades. This means that ultimately, even though I did work out who did it, the ending was unsatisfying and senseless. It didn’t help that they paused mid-season for a chat with a crazy prisoner who also claimed to talk to a different time who claimed that you had to “chop it off at the trunk” — ie killing a person was the only way to make real, effective changes in the timelines.
Ummm … clearly not?
I’ve forgiven many a fantasy and scifi series for bungling science now and again, but when a show can’t even stay consistent throughout a single 13-episode series, particularly regarding its defining characteristic, we’re done.