The Time Traveler's Wife 1.6: Brutal Truths and a Ray of Hope

Well, I thought The Time Traveler's Wife finale on HBO Max was superb, even though ...

[Big spoilers ahead ... ]

It was the ugliest episode of the series.  Palpably brutal, with Henry's naked time traveling body hitting the floor so many times it was making my eyes sore, not to mention my soul.  And that was the least of it.  Far worse was:

1. Henry discovering that he's aging more quickly than normal, non-traveling people, and he'll be dying, what, when he's in his early 50s?  

2. He can't give Clare what she most wants, given his frequent absence even when he's alive: a child.  It seems every time he gets her pregnant, the embryo or fetus time travels and of course can't survive.

As a result, Henry has a vasectomy, because he can't bear to keep doing that her.  But in a happy ending -- at least a hopeful ending -- Clare encourages younger, "asshole" Henry to keep seeing her.  He has not yet had a vasectomy.

And there this wondrous, wild story ends?  As I've been saying, I hope not.  There are possibilities to explore.    Maybe Henry can figure out a way to extend his life.  Maybe he can connect with some genius gynecologist who can bring his and Clare's baby to term.

I don't know, I'm not a medical expert.  But I do know I much enjoyed the six episodes of this story, even though they had their flaws, and I'd be up any time for seeing more.

Great acting by Theo James and Rose Leslie in the title roles, and I thought Josh Stamberg was impressive in this episode as Henry's father.   Kudos to everyone who made this short season, and I look forward to seeing its continuation someday somewhere.

See also The Time Traveler's Wife 1.1: Off to a Fine, Funny, Complex Start ... 1.2: Fate ... 1.3: Lies and Love ... 1.4: Mercurial Stock ... 1.5 Hair

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The Time Traveler's Wife 1.5: Hair

A less momentous episode of The Time Traveler's Wife -- 1.5 -- on HBO Max last night than usual.

***

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

No deaths, though Henry, arriving through time naked, is beaten by bikers and rescued by Gomez.  It just occurred to me that Henry arriving with no clothes at all on when he time travels is akin to how we non-time-travelers all come into the world, naked.

I guess the most significant event is Henry becoming his older self -- the Henry Clare fell in love with -- not by living through time and aging, but by Clare's younger sister cutting his hair.  That was a nice touch.

As to the dinner with Clare's family, I'm getting a little tired of dinners being such a central means of exposition in this story.  And Clare's family is no great shakes either.  The parents are close to cliches and Clare's brother is annoying and annoyingly predictable.  Only Clare's younger sister Alicia (Taylor Richardson) is interesting, and she does a good job cutting Henry's hair, as I said, and fixing up the bruises from those bikers.  I would have liked the hair cutting even better, though, had we actually seen that happen.

Looking ahead, the season finale is next week.  And that's only episode 6!  There's a lot more story to tell here, and one would expect at least a second season, but HBO hasn't announced that yet either.  I sure hope they do.  Despite the uneven pace, there's a lot of beauty and profundity in this story, it's an excellent exposition of time travel, and I'd like to see where it goes.

As I said in an earlier review, I haven't read the book, but I've seen the movie. At this point, the TV series has more than a few elements that are better than the movie, but if the series ends with one more episode, it will be far weaker and unsatisfying than the story told in the movie. 

See you back here next week.

See also The Time Traveler's Wife 1.1: Off to a Fine, Funny, Complex Start ... 1.2: Fate ... 1.3: Lies and Love ... 1.4: Mercurial Stock

The Time Traveler's Wife 1.4: Mercurial Stock

A wittier than usual episode 1.4 of The Time Traveler's Wife on HBO last night, and the dialogue in the series has been pretty witty so far.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

Grey haired, short haired Henry is with long haired young Henry at a dinner party with 19-year old Clare and some significant friends.  Before the evening is over, we have older Henry from 2021 sharing stock tips with the group in 2008.  Buy Netflix and face masks are noted by Gomez, and from here in 2022 they are interesting choices.  In 2021, both were riding high.  A year later, Netflix posted some big losses, and face masks have gone out of favor.  (Not be me, by the way, and I also still think Netflix has a great future.)

But the even deeper question is one which has challenged medical ethicists for who knows how long.  Do you tell a person who's going to die that that's going to happen?  The current thinking is yes.  But there's an argument that a white lie is better -- let the person enjoy whatever life they have left, to the max. (See Sissela Bok's Lying for more on this, which I recommended in my review of TTW 1.3 just last week.)  Henry, under pressure, tell's a character she's going to die, and that she doesn't have much time left, but refuses to tell her exactly when.  That's a sensitive choice.

I think the best part and deepest value of The Time Traveler's Wife is how it handles such ethical issues.  They arise all the time in our off-screen real world where time travel is almost certainly impossible (it engenders too many paradoxes).  But time travel puts them in high relief, and it's both fun and mind-charging to see how well they're handled in this series.

See also The Time Traveler's Wife 1.1: Off to a Fine, Funny, Complex Start ... 1.2: Fate ... 1.3: Lies and Love

The Time Traveler's Wife 1.3: Lies and Love

A powerful third episode of The Time Traveler's Wife on HBO last night, in which Henry and Clare both lie to each on crucial, life-shaking matters.

[Spoilers follow ... ]

Clare as a tweener and teenager repeatedly asks Henry on his many visits if they will be married in later life.  He repeatedly tells her no, and eventually shouts out the truth when the guy who raped the teenaged Clare demands to know why Henry is so upset about what happened to her.  Ironically, though that's not quite the word, Henry knows that the rapist burned Clare with cigarettes but not that he raped her, because Clare repeatedly told Henry that the guy had hurt but not raped her.

What are we to make of these mutual lies?  They are born of love, or at least good intentions.  Henry thinks knowing too much of her future will damage Clare.  And she thinks telling Henry the full extent of what happened to her might get Henry to really kill the rapist.  But you might not agree.  Some observer of human nature -- maybe Albert Schweitzer? -- once remarked that lying, whatever the lie, is a "treason of the soul," that always diminishes the liar.  On the other hand, Sissela Bok in her excellent 1978 book Lying evaluates various kinds of lies, and singles out "white lies" as sometimes justified and doing some good in this world.

The Time Traveler's Wife, like all excellent fiction, deserves credit for addressing such complex moral issues.  And this episode was especially well acted, not only by Rose Leslie as the 16-year old and older Clare, but Caitlin Shorey as the tweener and Everleigh McDonell as the younger Clare.  They join Theo James' Henry in a really effectively acted drama that doesn't miss a beat.

And I'll see you back here next week with my review of the next episode.

See also The Time Traveler's Wife 1.1: Off to a Fine, Funny, Complex Start ... 1.2: Fate

The Time Traveler's Wife 1.2: Fate

A powerful episode 1.2 of The Time Traveler's Wife just on HBO tonight, because--

[Spoilers ahead ... though, actually, a lot of the story of The Time Traveler's Wife is Henry telling his younger selves, as well as Clare at various ages, spoilers of one kind or another about what's going to happen, and/or what can't happen, regardless of what Henry or anyone at any age may want or not want to happen.  So maybe, if I'm being true to this story, I shouldn't warn you about spoilers.  Though, come to think of it, you and I live in a world in which there is no such thing as time travel, as far as we know, so what goes on in a time travel story doesn't really apply.  Anyway ... ]

We learn in an hour of details that cut like a thousand knives about a pivotal life-changing event in Henry's life.  It wasn't starting to time travel and having his older self coach him about it.  It wasn't about Clare in his life.  Both of those of course are crucial to Henry, to say the least,  But the pivotal event explored from a myriad of intersecting angles tonight was the death of Henry's mother, who died in an automobile accident, with young Henry, already time traveling, in the back seat.

Obviously, Henry survived.  Also obviously, any time traveler would devote the rest of his or her time traveling life to saving their mother.  But as an older Henry demonstrates to Henry as a boy, he can't change what will happen in history.  This excruciating plot point puts Henry in a class of distinct minorities in time travel stories, who travel to the past and indeed change history (though a nice twist on this which I sometimes myself have employed as a writer is the time traveler goes to the past to stop something from happening, and learns too late that this very trip to the past made the unwanted event happen in the first place ...)

So we and Clare and Henry's younger learn tonight that events that happen are immutable.  There is no free will.  What will happen will happen.   This is a trenchant philosophic proposition, which can't in our reality be proven or disproven.  And that's one big reason why I think time travel, as much fun as it is in fiction, can't happen in the real world.  If you travel to the future tomorrow and see me wearing a light blue shirt, well, good for you, but I like to think and in fact I do think that I can put on dark blue shirt tomorrow, or maybe a shirt of a different color altogether, if that's what I want to do.

These, I think, are both profound and fun to think about.  And I credit The Time Traveler's Wife for raising them so effectively.  I'll see you here next week with my review of the next episode.  Unless I don't want to write it.  But I think I will.

See also The Time Traveler's Wife 1.1: Off to a Fine, Funny, Complex Start

The Time Traveler's Wife 1.1: Off to a Fine, Funny, Complex Start

The Time Traveler's Wife debuted on HBO last night. Based on the 2003 novel by  Audrey Niffenegger which I haven't read, made into a movie in 2009 which I saw and really liked but didn't review (because I was too busy promoting the first edition of my then new book, New New Media), HBO's offering is a brand-new series.  I thought the first episode was excellent.

The set up: Henry is the time traveler, pulled into the past, sometimes the future, with nothing but his skin, not of his own volition, usually in the timeframe of his own lifetime.  He can meet earlier and later versions of himself, and often does.  Clare is the wife.  Henry, already a man, and already married to Clare, travels back in time and meets her as a girl (first time in her life she's seen him).  They love each other, but their lives together are certainly not easy.   I know some of what will happen in subsequent episodes because I saw the movie, as I said above, but this review will be spoiler-free.

There's probably more humor than heartbreak in this story, but I wouldn't call it a comedy, and it's a frothy mix of frivolity and potentially life-and-death situations and predicaments at hand.  Henry and Clare are both highly intelligent, which makes the challenges they encounter, together and separate, a lot of fun to see. Also, intellectually provocative.

The acting in the lead roles is great, just what you'd want in narrative like this.  Theo James, last seen and missed now as Sidney in Sanditon, is perfect as Henry, irreverent, fast thinking and fast acting, and pretty good in a fight.  Rose Leslie, who lit up the screen as Ygritte in Game of Thrones, ranges as required from spitfire to vulnerable, as good at strategizing as Henry, and at least as important a mover of events in the story as Henry.

So we're off to fine start with our central couple.  We'll meet other characters, of course, as well as seemingly insurmountable problems -- as befits the genre of time travel -- in the episodes ahead, and I'll be back here with reviews of each of them.

Looper: Close Knit Time Travel

What better way to start of the new year than with a review of a fine time travel movie - Looper, which came out this past Fall.  I almost never dislike a time travel movie, so to say I liked Looper is no big deal.  But I more than liked it, and think it's a minor classic in what I think of as the close-knit time travel subgenre.

Big throttle time travel movies entail stopping an event - or trying to stop it - that literally destroys or shakes up the world.  12 Monkeys, the best time travel movie ever made, in my opinion - and also starring Bruce Willis, the big name star of Looper - does this end-of-the-world business par excellence. Source Code and Deja Vu don't involve apocalypse, but the time traveler strives to prevent events that would kill lots of people.

Close-knit time travel movies focus more on human relationships.   The Time Traveler's Wife is a strong example, as is The Butterfly Effect, and, for that matter, Peggy Sue Got Married.  Looper would be on the violent end of this realm - people get killed, and crime abounds, but the heart and soul of the story, as we're correctly told in the last scene, is love, of husband for wife, and mother for son.

The set-up is a 2072 world in which the mob has to find a better way of killing people, because bodies and their histories are too easily traced.   The fortunate invention of time traveling provides a solution - send the body back in time 30 years, where it can be killed, and nobody in the future will be the wiser.  The only loose ends are the killers 30 years in the past.  As they grow older, they provide a growing cadre of witnesses to the mob boss's executions.  But there's a solution to this problem, too:  when the killers get older, send them back so their younger killing selves can kill the older version.  Why would the youngos do this?  Their older versions are sent back with a ton of money, which allow the young killers to live high on the hog for 30 years.   Given the impetuousness of youth, it's a safe bet that this system is working.

But not that safe, and Looper tells the story of what happens when the older version of the killer - Old Joe - breaks free of the death cycle,  and comes to see that the best way of staying alive and saving his beloved wife is to kill the mob boss and end the whole insane business.   This requires meetings between Old Joe and Young Joe, and we get some good time travel epistemology here. Old Joe knows that his very meeting with Young Joe will change who Old Joe is and what he remembers.   In an excellent scene, he explains that all of his memories are now fuzzy, because they're in jeopardy of being erased or replaced by the interaction of the two Joes, and they become clear only at the moment that young Joe actually does something.

That kind of carefully plotted time travel reasoning always wins me over, and shows that the movie is worth watching.   The resolution of the movie is heart-rending but also in good logical shape in the way the future is changed so it does not have a Murder, Inc across time.

Of course, as is the case with all things time travel - and its most endearing quality, I'd say - there is and can be no ultimately satisfactory resolution.  Because if the sending of people back in time to be killed is stopped, then there would be no old or young Joe, because there would be no looping killers, and therefore no movie.   But, hey, this can't be helped when you jump onto the horns of paradox.

Meanwhile, on the acting ledger - Bruce Willis is ok, Piper Perabo (of Covert Affairs) is ok too, but it was little Pierce Gagnon who just stole the show.



Praise for the novel...

"...challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"...a fun book to read" - Dallas Morning News

"resonates with the current political climate . . . . heroine Sierra Waters is sexy as hell . . . . there's a bite to Levinson's wit" - Brian Charles Clark, Curled Up With A Good Book at curledup.com 

"a journey through time that'll make you think as it thrills ... so accessible, even those generally put off by sci-fi should enjoy the trip." - Rod Lott, bookgasm.com

"Levinson spins a fascinating tale ... An intriguing premise with believable characters and attention to period detail make this an outstanding choice... Highly recommended." - Library Journal,*starred review

"Light, engaging time-travel yarn . . . neatly satisfies the circularity inherent in time travel, whose paradoxes Levinson links to Greek philosophy." - Publishers Weekly

"A thinking person's time travel story... I felt like I was there." - SF Signal