Loveday Writing

The episode got off to a surprising start with the appearance of a much older Clare on camera, apparently making another video about her and Henry’s life, which made me wonder if she’s making these videos for Alba (I won’t spoil who she is for people who haven’t read the book or seen the movie) or whether she’s been interviewed by an unseen journalist, or whether she’s making them for herself to document hers and Henry’s life together, but I digress.

Older Clare explains on camera that she spent most of her childhood waiting for Henry’s next visit. It’s also revealed that she got the notebook to list the dates of Henry’s visits from Mark and the box that she kept clothes for Henry in from Nell. Older Clare than comments that she was visited by many different versions of Henry over the years, from the dark haired 32-year-old who was the funniest, to the 36-year-old version that felt more like a dad by making sure she did her homework, to the 41-year-old sad version of him. One day Henry explains the nature of his condition and what information he can share with her using the analogy of shuffling cards, and Older Clare describes the different versions of Henry she’d encounter as “the same Henry, just shuffled”.

Not only do we see different versions of Henry, we also see different versions of Clare, from the inquisitive child from the ages of six to 12, to the 13-year-old who is upset at the fact that Henry apparently didn’t marry her, to the 16-year-old horny teenager that would hide his clothes from him. To cool her down, Henry eventually wins his clothes back from her in game of Checkers and he buys her an ice-cream in town, where we see Clare’s classmates from a distance. We also get another glimpse into Henry’s fate when we hear Henry scream out to a 13-year-old Clare in the middle of the night after he’s been shot, only for him to disappear before she sees him, but she does see the pool of blood, which also disappears when she tries to show Philip that he shot someone.

One night when Henry travels, Clare leaves food and a note with his clothes, apologising for not being there as she’s at a party. At the party with her friends, they ask her about Henry and whether she’s had sex with him but she changes the subject. She notices her classmate, Jason, from afar and he notices her. Later that night, echoing Henry screaming from the distance earlier, Clare runs to the clearing screaming for Henry, her dress ripped. She falls and as he goes to catch her, he disappears, travelling again.

When Henry travels back to the clearing on a different day, Clare comes up to him and tells him they’re going for a drive. Clare drives erratically, speeding and veering from one side of the road to the other, telling Henry that they’re not going to die today as they both know they’ll see each other in the future. They eventually end up stopping and getting out of the car, with Henry chastising her for her recklessness, especially due to his trauma from his mother’s death. Clare asks Henry if he’s ever been arrested, he tells her that he has due to arriving naked and having to steal to survive. Clare then asks if he can get away with anything as he’ll disappear eventually as she needs him to kill Jason for her. While Henry thinks she’s joking, he quickly sees that she isn’t and asks why. We then see 24-year-old Henry take a call at the Newberry Library from 32-year-old Henry, with the latter telling him not to be alone tonight to establish an alibi. His younger self jokes about killing someone, Henry tells him again not to be alone.

Clare and Henry continue on, with Clare telling Henry there’s a gun in the glovebox that she took from Philip’s collection. They then make their way to Jason’s house where Henry points the gun at him, telling him to get in the car’s trunk. When Henry and Clare are driving along and hear Jason having an asthma attack, Clare drives back to get his inhaler, making it clear she wants to hurt not kill him. When Henry again makes another joke, Clare gets out of the car and shows him the injuries Jason inflicted on her by having the car’s headlights shine on them.

Henry gets out of the car and asks if Jason raped her. Clare says no and tells him that Jason wanted to have sex with her and beat her out of anger when she said no. When she shows him cigarette burns on one of her breasts, Henry’s anger intensifies and tells her to go and he’ll kill Jason. Clare tells him this isn’t about his anger over the situation and that he’s going to hurt and not kill him. Older Clare admits that Jason did rape her but she didn’t tell Henry as she wanted him to be the man she lost her virginity to. We then see Henry go to a store to buy duct tape and a marker.

We then cut to Henry using the duct tape to tie Jason to a tree in the middle of nowhere. Henry tells Jason he knows what he did to Clare, Jason tries to justify his actions by the fact that Clare texted him to “thank him for a great night”. Clare quietly admits to Henry that she did send Jason the texts to subdue his anger not because she actually had a great night. When Jason claims Clare liked it rough, Henry gets so angry that he tells Jason (and Clare) that he’s her husband. When he starts coughing, he realises he’s about to leave. Clare begs him to stay, but he gives her the marker telling her that he thought she’d need it but doesn’t know why, he tells her he loves her, and then leaves.

We then see Clare calling every girl she knew, asking them to come over, setting the rule that they could only come if a boy had hurt them. While she waited for them, she wrote what happened to her that night with Jason on Jason. She let the other girls do the same, showing the words, ‘psychopath’ and ‘no’ and ‘do not trust this’ written all over him, including his face. She said it was her first sculpture, implying that the experience led to her pursuing an artistic career. Henry is then seen returning home to a 24-year-old Clare, finding the marker on one of her sculptures.

Older Clare than says that she only saw Henry one more time in the clearing when she was 18 and he was 41, but that’s another story, and two years after that, she met him at the Library, which we saw in the pilot, but he was an arsehole.

Overall I felt that this was the strongest episode so far due to the perspective change and the crucial event in Clare’s teenage life explored. I appreciated that the incident with Jason was explored and that it was realistic and mostly true to the book with a few creative differences, the most obvious being that Jason did rape Clare in the TV series. I honestly wasn’t surprised by this choice from Moffatt as I felt in the book that it didn’t make sense that Jason would go to the trouble to beat Clare severely for saying no to him and not rape her (not that I wanted her to be raped, of course not, but logically it didn’t make sense). I also appreciated the exploration of this incident as the movie didn’t explore it at all.

I also appreciated the humorous moments of Henry and Clare’s relationship progression during Clare’s childhood years, as well as Henry’s interaction with his younger self, which I will always love. I also appreciated that Henry’s actions also provided an insight into Clare as a person, when for the last two episodes due to the focus on Henry’s perspective, this has been the other way around.

Also, Rose Leslie’s performance was spectacular as both the traumatised teenage Clare and the haunted, older version of her looking back on this traumatic and life-changing event.

I’m looking forward to seeing what’s explored next now that we’ve passed the halfway point of the season. Judging by the promo for next week’s episode, we’ll see Henry’s condition and his relationship with Clare from the perspective of Clare’s friends and Ingrid, which I think is the next best logical step.

Stray Observations:

-The title card shows Clare’s feet moments before Henry arrives at the clearing for the first time.

-Henry tells Clare that he’ll meet her family in 2008.

-The events in this episode are from pages 71-80 and 84-100 of the novel.

Best one liners and interactions:

• “They say it’s a magical time, childhood. But people’s memories are so selective. It’s mainly just waiting.” (Older Clare on camera)
• “No-one should meet their soulmate when they’re six years old.” (Older Clare on camera)
• “I just set a new record, I mansplained the rest of your life.” “What’s mansplaining?” (Henry-Clare)
• “Worst murder ever!” (Henry to Clare)
• “You don’t admit that a monster was the first man inside you when you’re talking to the man it should have been.” (Older Clare on camera)
• “Kill you? You’re an asthmatic who smokes, who needs to kill you?” (Henry to Jason)
• “Being old is like being very young, boring.” (Older Clare on camera)