Review of 'The Crossing' 1.3

With episode 1.3, it's clear that The Crossing not only has some elements of Lost and FlashForward, but also of Stephen King's The Dome — probably why King, on Twitter, said the first five minutes of The Crossing were "jaw-dropping". Which it was.

But as the series is progressing, it's less jaw-dropping, and more the kind of mix of good and bad and in-between characters we encountered on The Dome. And also, at the same time, a mix of characters who know a little to a lot of what's going on, with no one knowing everything.

Those mixes can make a series work, but in order to be truly revolutionary and mind-blowing, like Lost at its best, it needs to have more. At this point, although the repeated demonstrations of Reece's super prowess are impressive—especially last night, quickly recovering from a bullet, and killing someone played by Steve Harris, meaning he could have been a major character—they're beginning to wear a little thin.

Possibly this is a problem of anything on traditional network television, which is increasingly struggling to keep up in narrative daring with cable and now Netflix and Amazon Prime and Hulu streaming. That was one reason why The Dome faded. But I still think The Crossing has potential.

Someone invented the time travel that has twice gotten people from the future to the present. If Apex are the super-human group in the future intent on destroying what's left of normal, i.e., our current, humanity, why would one one or a group of them try to help normal humans by giving them a way to escape to the past? Or was the time travel invented by some normal human genius (how's that for an oxymoron?) in the future, intent on helping his/her, i.e., our own kind?

Such questions don't even need to get into the metaphysics of time travel. They're just the makings of good espionage narrative, and I hope we start seeing more of them addressed in The Crossing.