'The Time Traveler's Wife' Episode 4 Review: It's all about Clare in part-romantic, part-melancholic chapter
Each episode's review of HBO's 'The Time Traveler's Wife' by MEAWW calls it a complicated love story. A man falling through time meets the same woman in different stages of life. Perhaps, it's good for Theo James' Henry De Tamble, but what of Rose Leslie's Clare Abshire? At what point does she feel she's had enough. She's been in love with him since she was six. Well, you never know what love feels like at that tender age, but she's seen him, grew up learning French and playing checkers with him, so it's only right she even ends up marrying him? Again, it's complicated.
Episode 4 finally sees the two Henry's, aged 28 and 41, spills the beans to an audience this time. There's Gomez (Desmin Borges), Charisse (Natasha Lopez) , and Ingrid (Chelsea Frei). The episode shows how Henry and Clare are both aware of how their relationship is not without flaws, and that their dynamic in itself poses quite the problem. With two versions of Henry's in her life, the traditional view of a relationship is right out of the window.
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The episode begins in the usual docu-style treatment with Older Clare and Henry talking about their relationship developing in the reverse order. The scene then shifts to him walking up a set of stairs in an apartment building. Clare attempts to unsuccessfully cook chicken risotto. Gomez, Charisse’s boyfriend, jokes that they’re finally going to meet “library boy” — and 28-year-old Henry arrives. Gomez continues with his ribbing, for which the why is revealed, while Charisse notices how her boyfriend behaves around Clare and the why of which is answered as well. Then to make things worse, the 41-year-old Henry shows up for dinner after meeting 18-year-old Clare for the final time in the past.
Adding to the complexity of it all is Ingrid, who shows up saying she's the younger Henry's lover. And she does know about the time travel issues. It's pretty much all up in the air and a rather odd place to be in until the duo explains to the rest of how their lives and how their relationships work. It's not easy, and if there's one person here who needs to be praised for hanging in there, blindly in love, then it has to be Clare, and the episode showers all the attention on Leslie as she produces a scintillating performance as a Clare whose sole focus is on the 41-year-old Henry.
'The Time Traveler's Wife' may end differently from the movie or the book. But what it does manage to do is weave a perfectly good story with time travel as a double-edged sword. This one's worth watching every Sunday night at 9 pm ET on HBO.