Loveday Writing

The finale kicks off with an Older Henry on video saying how much he hates video. As Henry is stressing about the wedding because he fears travelling during the ceremony, as well as the fact that he simultaneously feels hope and fear for his and Clare’s future, he is travelling more frequently in the lead up to the wedding. His first trip is in his sleep, travelling to his and Clare’s future house, where he sees a tree in the backyard and finds a TV screen focused on a desk and chair, which he sees across the room. He discovers it’s a wheelchair, with his future self’s clothes folded up, waiting for his return, and two video tapes of his and Clare’s wedding, one of them labelled ‘final edit’. An older Clare calls out to Henry, offscreen, asking if he’s back, but the 28-year-old Henry disappears.

We then cut to the opening credits, with the song ‘Get Me to the Church On Time’ playing as 14-year-old Clare goes to the clearing to see 42-year-old Henry. When she gets there, she finds a pair of shoes in the box and asks him about it. Henry is sad as he can hear the song playing, Clare tells him that Lucille is having a garden party and playing old records. Clare then asks him why he’s sad and he says the song is triggering memories of ‘shoe polish day’.

We then cut to Richard watching his own wedding video whilst drinking. As he goes to get another bottle out of his liquor cabinet, he smells it and goes to find Henry. When he walks into 16-year-old Henry’s bedroom, he finds him with another 16-year-old Henry (this moment was shown in an earlier episode). One of the Henry’s goes downstairs to talk to Richard, the other version of him disappears. Henry tries to tell his father he’s not gay repeatedly, only for Richard to tell him he doesn’t care if he’s gay, he cares more about seeing two of him. This forces Henry to reveal his condition to Richard. Richard doesn’t believe him, until Henry recalls Richard’s first kiss with Annette in great detail.

When Henry asks Richard to turn off the wedding video as he hates video, this transitions to 28-year-old Henry and 20-year-old Clare in Clare’s apartment wedding planning, as she asks Henry why he hates video, as she wants a wedding video. Charisse then asks him if Richard is going to be there, which leads to the reveal that Clare hasn’t met him yet.

Later that night, he travels to the house again, this time the tree is bigger, and he finds the wheelchair in a closet and Clare crying as she watches the wedding video. He then travels back to his apartment, Clare tells him that he was gone most of the night, and it’s five weeks to the wedding.

Clare and Henry go to Richard’s, Clare looks through Richard and Annette’s wedding album and they joke about why she’s interested in him and the moment that Richard walked in on Henry. Later that night, Henry travels in his sleep again, this time to when his 30-year-old self and 22-year-old Clare are looking at the house they end up buying. He also tells his younger self, hiding behind boxes, to get that night’s lottery numbers for them. He writes them down and puts them in a book for later.

We then see Henry visiting Richard, looking for tranquilisers so he doesn’t travel on his wedding day, which is now four weeks away. Richard tries to reassure Henry and tells him to go to a doctor to get what he needs and there’s no secret government agency after someone like him. Henry travels again to find Clare crying in bed, clutching onto a box on her bedside table. When he comes back, he finds the box in the apartment and asks her about it. She tells him it’s for all her precious jewellery and it’s currently empty. When Henry and Clare are out shopping, Henry is on the phone to Richard talking to him about his travels, and sees Clare looking at baby clothes.

Henry then travels again to find his older self and Clare in bed. After he watches Clare go to the bathroom, he tries to see what’s in the box, but is thrown back to his apartment. We then cut to a week before the wedding, with Richard meeting Lucille and Philip, who talk about Annette. Clare finds Henry reading through and making notes from The Physician’s Desktop Journal.

Two days before the wedding, Henry is sitting outside a house waiting for someone when Gomez comes by as he’s meeting a client. Henry is waiting on Ben, a drug dealer he knows with AIDS, and asks him if he has anything to knock out his dopamine receptors. Ben gives him a pill he calls “morphine plus” and he swallows it. Meanwhile, Clare and Alicia go to Clare’s apartment, where Clare hears ‘Get Me to the Church on Time’ playing in Charisse’s room. Clare tries to ask her about it but Charisse won’t tell her anything.

We cut back to Ben and Henry, where Ben is dragging Henry’s unconscious body into another room. His doorbell rings, with Gomez angrily demanding to let him in, Ben lets Gomez in and they find Henry has disappeared.

Henry has travelled to his backyard and witnesses 29-year-old Clare and 36-year-old Henry arguing, with Clare throwing a wine glass at 36-year-old Henry. He then travels again to see another older version of him in a wheelchair outside. He travels back to Ben’s where it’s evening, only to travel to the backyard again where he sees a little girl (Alba) running in the house. He travels again and finds Clare and Gomez hugging at what looks like his wake. He then travels back to the argument and back to Ben’s, where Richard is there waiting for him, as Gomez called him for help. Gomez reveals that it’s only seven hours until the wedding and that he’s been gone a whole day. Henry then travels back to the house after the argument has ended.

He puts a robe on and goes down to Clare’s studio, where he finds the box, he opens it to find multiple positive pregnancy tests, and that her artwork focuses on the miscarriages. He then finds 29-year-old Clare crying on the floor. He goes to 36-year-old Henry’s office, where he finds him on the phone to Dr. Kendrick, and asks him why Clare is crying, 36-year-old Henry reveals to him that miscarriages keep happening because the babies inherit his time travelling gene and they travel out of the womb.

The older Henry tells 28-year-old Henry about the marital strain the miscarriages have led to, when the 28-year-old version of him asks what he’s done that Clare hates him for. He eventually figures out that his future self had a vasectomy without telling her. They end up fighting, with 28-year-old Henry punching 36-year-old Henry so hard he travels away. His younger self travels outside to the front door. Clare comes out of the studio to ask Henry who he was shouting at, she hears a knock at the door and lets younger Henry in, with his 36-year-old self travelling to Ben’s on his and Clare’s wedding day.

“Shoe polish day” is revealed to be about 36-year-old Henry using black shoe polish to cover his grey hair for the wedding. Richard then asks Henry why he’s looking at him like he hasn’t seen him in a while. Henry then asks Richard if marrying Annette was worth losing her, he says yes, it wasn’t easy but it was worth it because of him, and tells him to give Clare a child.

We then cut to 29-year-old Clare and 28-year-old Henry watching the wedding video, where he finds 36-year-old Henry taking his place. He then tells Clare that he thought she’d be angrier, she tells him she is angry and to shut up and watch the wedding video. He tells her that she looks like she hated him, but she admits that she never hates him. He tells her that he hates what his future self did to her, she tells him that he did it because he couldn’t take it anymore. She also tells him that she wanted his children, but he gave up after five tries but she wouldn’t have given up, she would have done anything.

Clare tells Henry that their marriage isn’t about making each other happy, it’s about setting sail into a storm and hanging onto each other while they can. Clare tells Henry she misses him, this version of him, and asks if she made him change or chase him away, and asks him to come and see her sometimes. Younger Clare tells 36-year-old Henry that she’s missed him. Charisse then surprises Henry and Clare with a performance of ‘Get Me to the Church on Time’. The episode then ends with all the different versions of Henry and Clare, including an older, alone Clare, singing ‘Get Me to the Church on Time’.

Overall, I felt that Moffatt’s choice to end the season with Henry and Clare’s wedding was a fitting one due to this season mostly focusing on the establishment and growth of their relationship, as well as the fact that their wedding is the end of the first part of the novel. The wedding and its lead-up were very true to the book, and I appreciated that Richard got more screen time and his bond with Henry was explored. I also appreciated that the tree in Henry and Clare’s backyard was used a motif to indicate all the different periods of time he was travelling through, as well as the ‘Get Me to the Church on Time’ song uniting all versions of Henry and Clare.

This was an incredibly dark episode, so I appreciated the moments of humour revolving around Henry interacting with himself, both in-person with their fighting and through the wedding video. I also appreciated Moffatt showing a transition of sorts with Henry and Clare’s married life, with 20-year-old Clare missing 36-year-old Henry, and 29-year-old Clare telling 28-year-old Henry that she misses him, the younger version of himself. This transition is almost like a ‘passing ships in the night’ moment between these versions of Henry and Clare.

Overall, I’ve enjoyed reviewing the first (and hopefully not the last) season of The Time Traveler’s Wife. As I mentioned in my review of the pilot, I always felt that a television series would be a better form of adaptation for the novel than the 2009 movie. Even though I enjoyed the movie and felt that the cast and crew did their best with it, a television series is a better platform to explore and portray the depth and nuance of the novel. I also appreciated how loyal Moffatt was to the book, and with his love for it, he was definitely the right choice for the series’ scriptwriter. I knew to expect necessary deviations to the novel, and in all honesty there weren’t that many and they served the story very well. My favourite moments had to be Henry interacting with himself. On a smaller note, I would have liked to have found out who Henry and Clare were making the videos for, and why.

I also appreciated the cookie crumbs that Moffatt dropped for a second season (if there is one). If there is a second season, there will clearly be a focus on Henry and Clare’s attempts to conceive and eventually have Alba, as well as the impending amputation of Henry’s feet, and his death.

I’m hoping that The Time Traveler’s Wife is renewed for a second season.

Stray Observations:

-This episode depicts some of the events from pages 238-251 (Henry experimenting with drugs so he doesn’t travel during the wedding), 254-268 (the wedding, but not every single little detail), 278-283 (finding the house they live in), as well as 316-322 and 333-362 (Clare’s multiple miscarriages and Henry’s vasectomy) of the novel.

-38-year-old Henry marries 22-year-old Clare in the novel, as opposed to 36-year-old Henry and 20-year-old Clare in this episode.

-Henry and Clare’s wedding takes place on October 23 both in the series and the novel, although in the novel, the wedding takes place in 1993.

Best one liners and interactions:

• “Nostalgia for a time traveler is a bear trap.” (Older Henry on camera)
• “Henry, I don’t care if you’re gay, I’m a professional musician, everybody’s gay!” (Richard to 16-year-old Henry after walking in on him on the receiving end of oral sex from another 16-year-old Henry)
• “I’m so bored, I’m growing new parts of my brain to be bored in!” (Gomez to Henry and Clare on wedding planning)
• “Happiness is suddenly having an opinion about the future.” (28-year-old Henry to 20-year-old Clare)
• “You seem quite lovely, what on Earth is your interest in Henry?” “Well to be honest, he’s exceptionally good in bed.” “Well I know he thinks so.” (Richard-Clare-Richard)
• “Is anything allowed to be spontaneous anymore?” (22-year-old Clare to 30-year-old Henry when they’re looking at the house Henry knows they’ll buy together)
• “Just to be clear, I am not a drug dealer, I supply unauthorised medical care to the genuinely ill.” “You’re also a drug dealer.” (Ben to Richard and Gomez, then Gomez to Ben)
• “Oh, we’ve got a joke thing.” “It’s really sort of an in-joke.” “Yeah, people won’t find it funny but they’ll be totally wrong.” “If nobody laughs at a joke did the joke really happen?” “Yes.” “Are you sure?” “I make a lot of jokes like that.” “Good jokes?” “Great jokes.” “How do you know?” “Comedic instinct.” “But nobody laughs.” “Some people don’t have my instinct.” “A lot of people?” “So many.” (Gomez-Charisse and then Gomez and Mark going back-and-forth)
• “Did you just punch my husband?” “You’re welcome.” (29-year-old Clare-28-year-old Henry)
• “Don’t let anyone get a good look at you in case they notice how old and shitty you are.” (Gomez to 36-year-old Henry at the wedding)