Review of 'The Crossing' 1.9

Lots of important time-traveling things happened on The Crossing 1.9 last night, the last episode before the two-hour series finale this coming Saturday night (maybe season finale, if ABC comes to its senses, see a little more about this below).

Among the most significant threads is Naomi using her knowledge of the future to gain agency, as I've been hearing said in the news these days (that is, people having "agency," or some kind of power over events). People from the future getting power by leveraging their knowledge is always implicit in time travel stories, but you don't see it utilized in this way too often.

Another important development: Lindaeur aka Noah is displaying some more leanings towards humanity—especially in contrast to cruel Greta—and we learn tonight that that's because he's a father, of the one child who came along in the first crossing (assuming the boy we see at the end of the episode is that child). Whatever the child's origin, Lindauer as a father is bound to look at such profound issues as life and the future in a more compassionate way.

But the most important development in last night's episode is Diana's revelation that she has a way of making people disappear, without time-travel. This means the device she has in mind is, what, a teleportation machine? Should be fun to see, and I hope we find out next week.

Which brings me back to ABC. Hey, you have an opening, now that you've canceled Roseanne. Why don't you fill it with a renewal of The Crossing? There are some rednecks in the story, and the general message is people needing to get along (a big improvement over the real Roseanne). I saw today that there's a good chance that Roseanne will be rebooted without Roseanne—even if that happens, you can't go wrong also keeping a time-travel story with a sense of humor (like a character in The Crossing confusing Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio last night—they did look a lot alike when they were younger, right?) blended into the drama with hope for the future.

Here's Bill O'Reilly interviewing me the other day about Roseanne Barr, and I'll be back here with a review after what I hope is just the season finale of The Crossing, on Saturday night.