Note: Major spoilers for the first episode of the 11.22.63 mini-series, you have been warned.
The mini-series 11.22.63 is based on the best-selling novel by Stephen King (my favorite author), and so when I found out they were making a television series based off of the book, I was extremely excited. I wasn't as excited when I saw that James Franco would be playing the lead of Jake Epping, but he has always been kind of hit or miss for me, so I tried to save my judgment until I actually saw him in the role. After watching the first episode, I must say that Franco did a pretty good job in the role.
For those that don't know what the book/mini-series is about, it is about a teacher that is frustrated with the way his life is going, as nothing seems to be working in his favor. His wife is leaving him, his writing career has gone nowhere, and his teaching life is not going the way he had hoped. One day, while eating at a diner in the local town, the owner of the diner informs Jake that there is a "time portal" in the back of the diner that will transport you back to 1960 (1958 in the book, but they chose a later date for the mini-series to speed up the process a bit). The diner owner has gotten cancer, and so he has decided that he won't last until 11/22/1963, which is the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and so he asks Jake to go in his place and to save JFK on that date to make the world a better place. After some reluctance, and then the death of Al, the diner owner, Jake decides he will go through the portal and try to fulfill Al's final wish.
The book and the television show differ in several ways, so I will stick to the television series for the rest of this article. At the beginning of the show, we are told a story from one of Jake's students, Harry Dunning. Harry Dunning is a janitor at the school, and when he was a young boy, his father killed his mother, brother, and sister on Halloween in 1960, and Harry was the only one to survive. It is made very apparent the effect that this has had on Harry's life, and why he is an old man now that is just a janitor at a school and never really made anything of his life. This was obvious foreshadowing for the show, but it does a nice job of setting up something else for Jake to do after he goes back and has to wait the three years until the assassination of JFK.
The next bit shows Jake finding out about the portal, going through it for the first time, and trying to come to grips with what he has seen and trying to make sense of it all. Al tries to explain everything to him, and shows him the notes and ideas he has come up with during the times that he has gone through the portal and tried to make the changes himself. He also explains that when you try to change something in the past, the past kind of pushes back at you, because the past doesn't want to be changed.
After Al dies and Jake goes back, they show that Jake is not quite taking the caution that Al had told him to take, as he buys a flashy, expensive car, and he makes a bet on a fight with extremely long odds with a bookie that doesn't take kindly to being made to look like a fool. I thought this whole scene was well played, showing the profound effects that could happen without really knowing that you were doing anything too dramatic. The bookie sends one of his men after Jake, but Jake knocks the man out and leaves town to drive to Dallas, Texas, where the assassination will take place.
At this point, Jake starts doing a lot of research on the events that will be taking place. He finds a place to stay in town, and begins to do some of the things Al has suggested he do. He begins to follow George De Mohrenschildt, which is Lee Harvey Oswald's soon to be best friend, to try to find out if Lee Harvey Oswald was really the man who shot JFK, and if anyone else was involved. Jake gets very sloppy during all this and gets caught at one point, but he talks his way out of it, saying he was an obsessed fan of JFK, and that was why he was sneaking around.
At one point, he decides to go to a phone booth on the street and call his father. As he does this, the "past pushing back" really comes into play, as the connection is bad and so he can't really talk to his father. He hangs up and goes to walk away, but then he turns to try again, and a car comes speeding through and wipes out the phone booth. I felt that this scene was one of the better scenes of the episode, as it really showed that if Jake is not careful, things can go very bad, very quickly.
After this, the place that Jake is staying burns to the ground, and all of his papers that he had brought with him are gone. He decides to give up his journey and go back to Maine, and go back to his own time. But on his way, he decides to stop in Kentucky, which is where Harry Dunning was from. They show some kids in Halloween costumes, and then they show the young Harry Dunning and his family, and Jake stares at the father as he picks up the kids and drives off. This is where the episode ends, and so we have to wait until next time to find out what is going to happen when Jake tries to stop the father from killing the whole family except for Harry.
Overall, I thought the opening episode of the mini-series did a good job of setting up the storyline, and really making you wonder what is coming next. I thought the acting performances by both James Franco (Jake) and Chris Cooper (Al) were pretty good, although they never were really great performances, just solid. I'm anxious to see how things turn out, and I wish this was more like a Netflix show that I could just binge watch through, but instead we will have to wait until next week to find out more of the story. I hope the rest of the mini-series really capitalizes on the solid start, and I think this mini-series could turn out to be really good. I have found that sometimes the work of Stephen King doesn't translate well to the screen, but I'm pretty optimistic that 11.22.63 is going to be one of the few that does.
My rating for the episode is 7/10
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