Sometimes, you come across a new TV show that mostly is ridiculous but opens up a small window of intrigue that keeps you coming back.
It’s like watching “Dancing with the Stars” just to see if Olympic swimmer — and favorite person of the Brazilian legal system — Ryan Lochte can salsa his way to the next round or watching another unhinged “Real Housewives” attention seeker flip over a restaurant table before dessert arrives. Pineapple-upside-down-drama cake, anyone?
“Timeless,” a new NBC series that airs Mondays at 9 p.m., falls into this category for me.
The best way I can describe the premise of each show is if “Back to the Future” met “Scooby-Doo.” Instead of teens and a dog hopping in a 1970s conversion van to go solve mysteries, we have a time-traveling trio, including college professor and historian Lucy Preston (played by Abigail Spencer), to chase down time-traveling villain Garcia Flynn (played by Goran Visnjic, who also starred as Dr. Luka from the show “ER”) from altering history.
I want to talk about the show’s time machine for a moment.
The vehicle chosen for whisking Team Timeless back through the calendar looks nothing like Doc’s cool DeLorean from the movie “Back to the Future.” And it doesn’t look as practical as the transporter room from “Star Trek.”
Instead, the producers decided on a goofy, gigantic-steel-pinball-looking time machine with two enormous tractor tires that whirl around it at high speed. The centrifuge-like contraption then disappears in a paper-flying whoosh, sending the big pinball and passengers into a time warp.
Frankly, Sherman and Mr. Peabody’s cartoonish Wayback Machine looks jazzier than the “Timeless” pinball. I can’t believe Michelin Tires didn’t jump at this great opportunity for product placement.
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But “Timeless” does score points for bringing important moments in history to life and introducing viewers to historical figures who influenced the future. Younger viewers definitely would appreciate seeing people in places that they’ve studied for social studies and history tests weave their way into the show’s plotlines.
The best part of “Timeless” happens when the time-traveling crew returns back in the big pinball to the present day. In each episode, the historical events on their time-travel trips undergo changes, which affects the personal lives of the time-traveling characters when they … go back to the future.
In one early episode where the team went to the site of the Hindenburg disaster, the massive passenger airship ended up safely landing in New Jersey, instead of exploding in a fireball.
After returning to the present and learning of the changes to history that followed, Lucy returns home to find her previously ill, bed-ridden mother healthy, energetic and coherent.
After realizing how events in her own life have changed since her trip back in time, Lucy asks where her sister Amy is, only to hear her own mother reply, “Who is Amy?”
With each trip Lucy Preston and her two companions take back in time to chase down the time bandit named Garcia Flynn, viewers see how history slightly changes after their return home and the effect their adventures have had on Lucy’s life. For that angle alone, I feel like I have to keep watching to see how history changes then and now.
You also can throw in a little taste from “It’s a Wonderful Life” into “Timeless.” But maybe the show can borrow Clarence’s wings and duct tape them to the big pinball for a more hi-tech look for the time machine?
Eric Scott is a freelance columnist for Pioneer Press.