[This technically has spoilers, but they're not really anything that wasn't revealed in the promo. Or anything you won't know by the time the promo for the next episode airs]
So it opens with this probably-supposed-to-be-ominous voiceover:
"Twelve is a magic number. Twelve is divine. Twelve is both the beginning and end of time"
Yay, yet another show that makes me think the writers have been watching too much Doctor Who!
As far as I can tell from the preview, this show is about clocks. True to this implication, we see a flashback sequence where people are building clocks. At least, I think it's a flashback, because there are candles, but everyone looks suspiciously modern, like this is still the original pickup pilot.
Yes, it is a flashback! Apparently in the 1940's, because we see that there are Nazis. One of the characters quotes the "Nation against nation, kingdom against kingdom" Bible verse about the "End of Days." Another character says what turns out to be the most rational and intelligent statement in this entire episode: "Every generation has thought it applies to them and them alone. Every generation has been wrong."
Speaking of being wrong, the person quoting the verse cites it as Luke 4:22. But, wait! Luke 4:22 actually says, in the NIV:
"All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked."So, aside from the fact that this show involves many elements of Catholicism and therefore managing to get a Bible reference wrong is an especially egregious research fail, let's continue.
Then, his friends retorts, "But never before have the dead risen!" That's right, readers! This show doesn't just involve Nazis, but Nazis and zombies! And it gets better! As they're sneaking around in this secret Nazi facility, they run across a baby with white eyes, and say "This child was born of no womb." And, because this isn't enough, a Nazi is shown holding a cross with the Rosicrucian symbol on it!
Then, the Nazis storm the cathedral, as people sneak something away. One old guy says "Not even God can help any more. Only the Twelve can." Seriously, this is so heavy-handed, who was writing it?
Anyways, so now that we've stuffed enough conspiracy theory elements for a Dan Brown novel into the first four minutes of the show, we go to modern-day Brooklyn.
We see a couple - later revealed to be the lead character and his wife - strolling through a flea marked or something. The woman buys a clock and goes somewhere, while the guy goes to his job. His job is running a magazine of some sort, which seems to be largely focused on cryptozoology, with a staff of precisely two assistants, a guy and a girl.
Then, he gets a phone call. His wife's shop is being broken into! When you discover that someone's breaking into the building where you are, is the proper reaction to:
- Call 911?
- Call and ask for your husband to call 911, who then shuffles off that task to his assistant.
If you guessed #1, congrats, you're right! If you also guessed that the reason #2 exists is because that's precisely what our intrepid heroes did, you're also correct.
Next scene, the police have arrived, and the wife is missing. The main character is angry that the police only asked "generic" (yes, that's the exact word he used) questions and haven't tried to figure out why the thief didn't take anything other than the wife. Apparently, the ideas that a) maybe the break-in was simply the means for a kidnapping and/or b) maybe he was scared off when he realized that someone was inside, calling for help, are both unsatisfactory. No, this must be a conspiracy!
A few hours later, the FBI stops by the guy's home! They say they know more than the local police, because they've "been working on this case for a very, very long time." Then, they ask this man if the name "White Vincent" means anything. They claim that he's the world's "highest-paid mercenary" (again, exact words) and that he's "on every no-fly list we've got." Because, in alternate-conspiracy-world, the TSA's no-fly list that nobody can even find out if they're on is insufficient.
Then, the FBI agents start asking him questions about his wife, trying to figure out if she had any connection to anything that might make this "White Vincent" character take notice of her. This prompts a complete 180 in our character's behavior. Rather than being angry that people aren't going enough to find his wife, he now seems entirely concerned about the fact that the FBI thinks that maybe his wife was somehow involved with something less than perfectly pure and legal, and unbelieving of the idea that they may still want to find his wife.
So, after they leave, the guy pulls out the clock his wife bought earlier that day, which he correctly (but through an inexplicable leap of logic) assumes is the thief's highly sought-after item. So he takes the clock back to his office, where the assistants gather around and pull out a diamond. They see a "flaw" on the diamond, but after examining it closely and shining some light so it refracts on the wall, it's a map! With a spot somewhere in Canada marked! This is starting to feel almost like a plotline in Alias... but not as much as it feels like National Treasure 5 or whatever they're on by now.
Now, they're arguing about whether or not treasure maps really exist. Now, regardless of what they think, this is a map, with a spot marked and labelled on it. It seems pretty obvious that there's something important that someone wanted hidden at that spot.
So, they've decided that the only person who can explain it to them is a priest that this guy know. The priest explains to them that this involved Rosicrucians, but as monks or whatever, they probably didn't do the whole "treasure" thing, and therefore the map Priest points out that rosicrucians probably didn't do treasure, so the place marked on map is probably lost city, in arctic circle.
Just as the plot might slow down, this guy gets a call on his cell phone! The person basically keeps asking questions about the clock, and asks the guy to exchange the clock for his wife. The guy agrees to that, and leaves the diamond in the church safe with the priest.
But, when the guy informs the FBI about this, he inexplicably decides to fudge the truth and tell them that the caller is demanding a cash ransom for his wife, not a clock. So, the FBI runs him through it, and says they'll track the caller. As the exchange goes down, although it's not clear which item is being exchanged, the FBI discovers that the caller was routing everything through a room in an empty building.
Then, it turns out that the priest was attacked, and the diamond was stolen from the church safe. The main character guy tells the FBI that "We are done" and says that the caller "got what he wanted." When the FBI asks what it is that the mysterious caller wanted, the guy apparently decides that finding his wife is not remotely as important as taunting the FBI, so he refuses to say and storms off.
Anyways, he decides that this mysterious person has gone to New Bartholomew, taking his wife along with him, and decides to go up there himself. The female FBI agent catches up with him at the airport, and once again he refuses to do more than obnoxiously hint at the fact that the FBI has no idea what's going on. The FBI agent points out that there's nothing he can do to stop her following him, and that she also has a gun and is allowed to take it on the plane, and says something about terrorists and convinces him to grudgingly cooperate with her.
Then, the two assistants, annoyed at being left behind, decide to track down the person who made the clock. They find out that he's 93, living in Bulgaria, and has neither phone nor email so the only way to talk to him is to fly out there and go to the address in person.
Then, we see someone who's presumably the kidnapper. He scratches a "zero" on the bathroom mirror, and takes out contacts, revealing creepy white eyes. Presumably, he is the white-eyed baby that the Nazis created. Presumably, this is also what the "white" in "White Vincent" refers to.
Anyways, the guy and the FBI agent have managed to get to the location of this "New Bartholomew" with almost GPS-like precision, only to find a Nazi submarine with a variety of bodies frozen inside. Apparently, they have managed to beat the kidnapper to this site.
The assistants track down the clockmaker, and show him the clock. Eventually, the clockmaker explains that in 1938, in a move so secret that not even the Pope knew because something secret could bring about the end of the world, so the Church invited twelve "New Apostles" to keep this secret. They were named things like "New Luke", "New Peter", and - you guessed it! - "New Bartholomew." Apparently, New Bartholomew was both a Catholic and a Nazi!
So, apparently our Nazi/Rosicrucian apostle, like all the other ones, had an individualized clock. The clockmaker goes on to give us a final voiceover. Apparently, the Nazis had figured out the first steps to achieving eternal life! And he says that it's important to find the clocks before "the enemy" does (what enemy? Are there still Nazis around?) and that the secret thing will pit "science against religion, country against country..." and that this giant upheaval is called "zero hour," because in the middle of hiding world-changing secrets from Nazis the most important thing to do is to come up with clock-themed names for everything.
So far, I've got two reactions: One, I'm disappointed that so far, we haven't seen anything about the dead having risen, and two, I'm wondering what kind of secret the writers could possibly dream up that could be that important.
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