Review of 'The Crossing' 1.4

Well, episode 1.4 of The Crossing was moving along pretty predictably until about a few minutes to the end, when "Hofstra" was mentioned, and everything suddenly changed for the better — for the narrative, if not for one of the major characters.

Hey, I taught a few courses at Hofstra in the mid-1990s, and my wife and I were right across the street this past Fall, at the Nassau Coliseum, for a great concert by Paul McCartney. Hofstra's a good school, and this may be the first time I've heard it mentioned in a television series, definitely a time-travel series, so The Crossing deserves notice for that.

Anyway, here's how Hofstra came to be mentioned: One of the survivors, Paul, is looking for his wife. He gets an artist to draw a likeness of her, based on a precise mathematical diagram of how far apart the centers of her eyes are, etc — is there a name for that? — I don't know, but it's pretty cool. And Agent Ren gets hold of the drawing and finds Paul. He tells her it's a picture of his wife, who came here — to our time — in the earlier migration. Ren, unsurprisingly, goes looking for the woman.

She finds her, and the woman explains that she and her husband met at Hofstra — why Hofstra? who knows? — and that she learned he was part of a cult. It's not clear how much if any of this Ren believes, but before we find out, the wife shoots and badly wounds Ren.

Is she dead? Well, Sandrine Holt is a medium-big star, and her character Ren is important, so under the logic that you don't kill off a big star or a major character so early in the show, she'll likely survive. But you never know.

More importantly, the series has taken an interesting turn in the story of the early migration, which has been one of the more intriguing parts of the narrative. We now know the first migration people easily lie as well as kill to protect their secret — it's not just Lindauer who does this. And then there's Hofstra — why pull this name out of the blue? I'm hoping we'll hear more about this university in Hempstead, and how and why someone from the first migration knows about it.