Dial-up internet and Britney Spears. Alice falls deeper into the rabbit hole that is 1999. Meanwhile, Del wrestles with giving up something important to Colton, and Kat finally gets a writing job.
Most would probably save the best for last, but I want to jump right in and talk about my favorite part of the episode first. Can we take a moment to appreciate how far Del and Kat have come? I LOVED their relationship in this episode. Clearly, the moment they shared at the end of last episode, writing Jacob’s date of death in the book, broke down some of the walls between them. All of the tension that has been lingering over their scenes was absent this week. As a perfect example, this episode begins with Del wishing Kat good morning and smiling. Obviously they are still mother and daughter, so Del still has an opinion about Kat’s employment status… or lack thereof. It’s a fully understandable concern. However, the conversation about it isn’t ever confrontational. She does offer a challenge for Kat to prove that a writing career is sustainable in Port Haven, but it feels far more good spirited than any of their previous conversations. We see this kinder nature extend in both directions. Later in the episode when the subject of selling Colton’s boat comes up, Kat actually sticks up for Del when Alice gets upset. She acknowledges that she’d rather keep the boat, but concedes that it’s ultimately Del’s call. That’s a far cry from her admonishing her mother for getting rid of all the memories in the house. Later, when Del starts having second thoughts, Kat comes to talk with her, telling her that it’s okay to keep the boat if she wants to. She offers the advice that getting rid of reminders of the past doesn’t make you strong, it makes you lonely. Del is receptive to the advice, and tells Kat that she’s a good mom, and to trust her instincts about Alice. This particular mother and daughter pair are finally finding their footing again. It’s beautiful to watch. Del proudly reading Kat’s article at the end of the episode was so precious. I love these two!
The other mother daughter duo is not fairing quite as well. While Kat and Alice aren’t necessarily at odds, Kat is struggling to figure out what is going on with her daughter. After Alice disappeared for 12 hours…which, if I understand correctly, Kat still believes was an attempt to return to Minnesota…she’s hesitant to trust her, or take what she says at face value. I don’t blame her, especially given how terrible Alice is at coming up with excuses. Sun storms? Really? The part that especially sucks about the whole situation is that the second that Kat lets her guard down, and decides to trust Alice and ignore her instincts, she finds out Alice has been lying. You can see the disappointment on her face. Did Alice honestly believe that in small town Port Haven, word wouldn’t get back to her mom that she wasn’t at Spencer’s party? Now, jumping ahead a little… or a lot… this dynamic gets really interesting when Kat decides to follow Alice to figure out what she’s been up to. Off to the woods they go, where she proceeds to watch Alice dive headfirst into a pond, and not resurface. As any sane person might do, she jumps in to rescue her daughter… but Kat doesn’t resurface either… which we know means she can time travel too!!!! It has to be a Landry trait. That is my only explanation. Unless Elliott just didn’t have any past or future traumas that the pond needed to show him, it has to be something specific to Landry genetics. That of course begs the question of whether or not Del could time travel, given that she married into the family and the farm, and if she knows about the family secret. If Landry genetics are at play, then Jacob most certainly should be able to time travel like his sister and niece. Also, Elliott is in big trouble when Kat gets back to 2023.
Most would probably save the best for last, but I want to jump right in and talk about my favorite part of the episode first. Can we take a moment to appreciate how far Del and Kat have come? I LOVED their relationship in this episode. Clearly, the moment they shared at the end of last episode, writing Jacob’s date of death in the book, broke down some of the walls between them. All of the tension that has been lingering over their scenes was absent this week. As a perfect example, this episode begins with Del wishing Kat good morning and smiling. Obviously they are still mother and daughter, so Del still has an opinion about Kat’s employment status… or lack thereof. It’s a fully understandable concern. However, the conversation about it isn’t ever confrontational. She does offer a challenge for Kat to prove that a writing career is sustainable in Port Haven, but it feels far more good spirited than any of their previous conversations. We see this kinder nature extend in both directions. Later in the episode when the subject of selling Colton’s boat comes up, Kat actually sticks up for Del when Alice gets upset. She acknowledges that she’d rather keep the boat, but concedes that it’s ultimately Del’s call. That’s a far cry from her admonishing her mother for getting rid of all the memories in the house. Later, when Del starts having second thoughts, Kat comes to talk with her, telling her that it’s okay to keep the boat if she wants to. She offers the advice that getting rid of reminders of the past doesn’t make you strong, it makes you lonely. Del is receptive to the advice, and tells Kat that she’s a good mom, and to trust her instincts about Alice. This particular mother and daughter pair are finally finding their footing again. It’s beautiful to watch. Del proudly reading Kat’s article at the end of the episode was so precious. I love these two!
The other mother daughter duo is not fairing quite as well. While Kat and Alice aren’t necessarily at odds, Kat is struggling to figure out what is going on with her daughter. After Alice disappeared for 12 hours…which, if I understand correctly, Kat still believes was an attempt to return to Minnesota…she’s hesitant to trust her, or take what she says at face value. I don’t blame her, especially given how terrible Alice is at coming up with excuses. Sun storms? Really? The part that especially sucks about the whole situation is that the second that Kat lets her guard down, and decides to trust Alice and ignore her instincts, she finds out Alice has been lying. You can see the disappointment on her face. Did Alice honestly believe that in small town Port Haven, word wouldn’t get back to her mom that she wasn’t at Spencer’s party? Now, jumping ahead a little… or a lot… this dynamic gets really interesting when Kat decides to follow Alice to figure out what she’s been up to. Off to the woods they go, where she proceeds to watch Alice dive headfirst into a pond, and not resurface. As any sane person might do, she jumps in to rescue her daughter… but Kat doesn’t resurface either… which we know means she can time travel too!!!! It has to be a Landry trait. That is my only explanation. Unless Elliott just didn’t have any past or future traumas that the pond needed to show him, it has to be something specific to Landry genetics. That of course begs the question of whether or not Del could time travel, given that she married into the family and the farm, and if she knows about the family secret. If Landry genetics are at play, then Jacob most certainly should be able to time travel like his sister and niece. Also, Elliott is in big trouble when Kat gets back to 2023.
Speaking of Alice and time travel, at this point she has almost completely checked out of 2023. Aside from lying to her mom and grandmother, she’s also bailing on other real life opportunities to connect with her peers in Port Haven. Spencer seems like a nice guy. Bailing on his birthday party, particularly after she had told him she would be there, was not Alice’s best move. I think on some level she knows that. Especially when her mom starts praising her for making an effort to find her place in Port Haven. If she didn’t believe that what she’s doing is problematic, she wouldn’t have looked so guilty during that conversation. What she’s experiencing in 1999 is incredible, but it’s not her life. Let’s also acknowledge that Alice is terrible at keeping time travel a secret. We already mentioned her lackluster excuses with her family, and much to Elliott’s chagrin, she has no problem talking loudly out in the open about it. Meanwhile, back in 1999, she keeps dropping hints about the future, calling mixtapes vintage and telling Elliott what a big deal the internet will become. I did find it funny when young Kat gets defensive about the vintage comment, saying that her tape recorder can play CDs too. Ah the cusp of late 90s, early 2000s media. Mix tapes were awesome. As were mix CDs. I’ve made plenty of both. The topper on the ‘can’t keep a secret cake’ is the fact that Alice literally tells young Kat she can time travel, in no uncertain terms. Fortunately, Kat merely finds the suggestion hilarious, but the fact that Alice had no hesitation whatsoever in telling her seems concerning to say the least. She doesn’t appear to be thinking at all about the consequences or how sharing too much info, or the wrong info, may affect or change the future… aka her present. The only time she shows concern is when she sees the polaroid from her first visit in her mom’s copy of Alice in Wonderland. It’s not the timeline she’s worried about though. She’s more worried that if her mom finds out, she won’t be allowed to go back to 1999. Alice is raising enough suspicions that even Jacob has started asking questions about her visits, despite his family’s assurances that she is welcome anytime. This begs a question… is it possible that it is Alice’s fault that Jacob goes missing? As much as I do not want to believe that this is the case, there is an argument to be made that her carelessness with the secrets of her time travel adventures could maybe cause him to follow her to the pond like Kat did, or cause some change in time that results in his disappearance.
It’s one thing to be spending all this time in the past getting to know her family, but Alice has basically started living in the past. After the pond jumps two months forward from her last visit, Alice gets major FOMO and doesn’t want to leave 1999. When young Kat invites her to a party at the cove, she decides to stay instead of going back home to attend Spencer’s party. While there, she meets a guy named Nick, an aspiring musician, whom she eventually shares her first kiss with. On the surface, it’s very sweet. He seems like a nice guy, and the fact that they bond over music makes him feel like a perfect match for Alice. Except for one hitch. How exactly does she, a teenager from 2023, expect to have a steady boyfriend from 1999? Let’s forget the fact that in present time Nick is a man 20+ years her senior. So, she can only be with him in the past. However, even if she were to ‘date’ him in 1999, how does that work at all as any sort of healthy relationship? Unless she decides to stay there permanently, every time she comes back to the present, she has no idea how much time will pass before she sees him again. How is that fair to him? How is that fair to her? Alice, why can’t you date someone from your own decade!
Qualms about Alice’s overattachment to the past aside, I am loving the friendship she is developing with young Kat. It’s such a crazy and unique experience to be able to get to know her mom through her younger self. Yes, it’s fun watching them bond over clothes and music and boys, but the heart of their relationship best comes through when they are connecting on a deeper level. The scene where young Kat tells Alice about meeting Brady at camp was a great example of this. First of all, Alice is heavily invested in hearing about her parents when they first met. She knew this was coming. However, I’m guessing she’s never gotten to hear about how Kat struggled to tell her parents about Brady, or how she felt torn between two worlds given Brady’s wealth and city life. Given that adult Kat has been so far removed from her own home for the last two decades, I doubt these were conversations that came up. Alice tells her she thinks Del will understand, and expresses frustration with the fact that her own mom doesn’t trust her. Kat, not knowing Alice is obviously talking about her, calls it ‘brutal.’ The more Alice is learning about her mom as a teenager, it seems like the more she’s seeing her as a person. She acknowledges to young Kat that her mom isn’t so bad. It was a nice moment for Alice.
Poor Elliott on the other hand is having a heck of a time wrangling this whole time travel situation. He’s attempting as best as he can to be the voice of logic and reason, but Alice has a mind of her own when it comes to how she’s going to navigate things. Whereas it feels like Alice has begun to view her mom in the present and her mom in the past as two separate entities to interact with, she seems to treat Elliott the same in both timelines. For example, we never hear Alice call her mother by her name in the present, but she has no problem calling her Kat in 1999. I know very few teenagers that comfortably refer to their parents by their first name, so there is a clear distinction there. Meanwhile, Elliott jokingly mentions how he wishes just once that she’d start a conversation by calling him Mr. Augustine in the present. Maybe it’s because he’s in on the secret. Alice doesn’t have to compartmentalize his past and present self, because she doesn’t fear slipping up and saying or doing the wrong thing. This is a little bit ironic given the number of times she has used poor phrasing when talking to him in front of his colleagues in 2023. His exasperation with that fact is warranted. Amusing, but warranted.
The friendship they have formed in 1999 is very sweet to see. Teenage Elliott has embraced the role of helping Alice with her time travel adventure. He’s leaving her dry clothes so she can stop looking like she’s been swimming in the lake, and the scientist in him has been keeping notes about the pond and its rules. I also loved when he gets excited about dial up internet and she assures him it will be a big deal in her time. Previously I had questioned how much adult Elliott really knew about the pond’s mechanics, but we find out that his limited advice has been of a practical nature. Unlike Alice, he is being far more cautious about revealing too much future information to her. When Alice and Elliott discuss the pond jumping forward in time, he reveals he knew it would happen. He also hints that he knows how complicated life can get when someone tells you your future, so that’s why he’s only been sharing rules and details as needed. I’m assuming he’s referring to her telling young Elliott that he wasn’t her dad, but there may also be other examples we haven’t yet seen. I laughed when he tells her that she didn’t mess up his life, but that she will if she doesn’t stop talking about the time they almost got arrested while on school grounds, referring to the cops breaking up the cove party. What I am loving about their scenes is the humor and levity that is injected due to the fact that they are navigating knowing one another in two realities, one in which they are both teenagers and one in which one is an adult and the other is a teenager. Despite the somewhat serious nature of what they are dealing with… essentially space and time… their scenes rarely delve into serious territory. It remains light and theoretical. The closest they get to serious or foreboding is Elliott’s comment about the struggle of knowing too much about his future. Now, I have to wonder, given that we know Kat time travels at the close of the episode, did Elliott know this was going to happen? Did he meet adult Kat in the past? Regardless, as I said earlier in this review, Elliott has some serious explaining to do the next time adult Kat finds him. He broke the best friend code by not telling her. Particularly given that her daughter is involved.
Besides Alice herself, the one common thread between past and present in this episode is Colton’s boat. When Del is approached by some tourists offering to buy the boat, it quickly becomes clear that it holds a great deal of family memories, some of which Alice gets to experience during her time travels. Colton bought it, seemingly on a whim, with plans to fix it up and make it seaworthy so he could take his wife and family out on the water. The flashbacks where he is doing everything he can to convince Del to let him keep it are a great insight into their relationship. It is evident how much love there was between them, and how charmed she was by his excitement and sweet talking. We also see that the boat was a point of bonding between Colton and Kat, whom he recruited to help him convince Del that it was worth keeping. Seeing how much joy it brings to certain members of her family, Alice falls in love with the idea of the boat, not knowing what its future would hold. In what is yet another example of Alice failing to consider the consequences of having knowledge from another timeline, she completely freaks out when Del suggests selling the boat. She accuses her mother and grandmother of not caring about what it means to the family, and makes grand assumptions about family adventures on the water without knowing all the facts. No pun intended, but It felt like dangerous waters for Alice to tread. If she’s trying to keep her mother and grandmother from finding out what she’s been up to, it seems reckless to reveal details and stories of events that she technically should not know about. Her outrage is a very teenage reaction, and given her strong attachment to 1999, it feels realistic. However, the unfortunate fact of the matter is that the boat never held the adventures Alice thinks it did. In what appears to be its only voyage, Colton took it out to search for Jacob after he disappeared - a painful memory for Del. Still, it is sweet to see how excited Alice gets when Del decides not to sell the boat. Perhaps the fact that she’s tasked Alice with fixing it up will give Alice a reason to spend some more time in the present.
We find out that the reason the tourists approached Del about the boat in the first place was because Rita sent them her way. I mentioned in my last review that, while I could appreciate Rita being there for Del and helping her deal with the tragedy in her life, I thought she was overstepping to the point of meddling. This time, she does go too far, and Del gets angry. Rita was honestly rude this whole episode. As if meddling with the boat wasn’t enough, she’s seen rolling her eyes and mocking Byron when he stops by the Landry house to drop off keys for Kat (read flirt with Del). Is Rita jealous of Del because of Byron? When Del confronts her about overstepping, she gets offended and implies Del is a charity case that she has been helping out of the goodness of her heart. Pro tip, if you’re really helping someone out of the goodness of your heart, you should be happy for them when they start getting back on their feet, and they should never owe you anything in return. Otherwise, you’re probably just a jerk looking for praise and thanks. I was proud of Del for telling Rita off and sticking up for herself.
I have mixed feelings about the story surrounding Kat’s new writing gig at the Herald. In fairness, there are things that I love about it. Firstly, I think it’s the perfect job for her. The conversation she has with Elliott about her history with the paper and him suggesting that she return to her roots was great. Best friend advice for the win. Kat and Byron getting to interact was also an excellent benefit of this story, especially given the fact that Byron is crushing on Del. That knowledge is bound to come to Kat’s attention sooner or later. He’s not subtle at all about the fact that he wants to hire her because of Del, which was amusing, as was Del’s reaction when Kat tells her she got the job. Del knows exactly what’s going on, pointing out that he’s never needed another employee before. The part of this story that didn’t work for me was the suggestion that Kat thinks she’s ‘too good’ for the people of Port Haven and her repeating over and over how she’s an award winning journalist. Given the fact that we’ve watched her get rejected more than once while looking for book deals, the hubris feels like it comes out of nowhere. I guess I just wasn’t convinced that this was a lesson she needed to learn. She was the one telling Alice when they drove back what a special place Port Haven was. The story of the giant cucumber felt a bit gimmicky. I understand it was supposed to tie back into her learning to trust her daughter, but the whole arc felt off from the character we have seen Kat to be thus far.
Kat and Monica’s budding friendship is an interesting one. On the one hand, as grown adults, it seems petty to continue a childhood feud. On the other, it seems like a fast change. We start the episode with Monica making jabs about doing yoga and Kat being jealous that she stole her nickname for Elliott, and then suddenly Monica’s breaking out the alcohol and wants to be best friends. Complaints about timing aside, I do actually like their bonding moments. It’s great for Kat to have both another female and another mom to vent to and to discuss life with. Admittedly, I wasn’t super crazy about Monica encouraging Kat to give her number to Andy. Andy seems like a very nice guy, but… I happen to be on team Elliott. Maybe Kat and Elliott never become a thing, and Andy is this super amazing partner for Kat and I’ll be eating my words in five episodes. Anything is possible, but for now, my hopes are tied with the nerdy science guy.
Other moments of note:
-We see a younger version of Danny, the guy Kat said hello to in the cemetery last episode. We learn he was Jacob’s best friend, which explains his standoffish reaction to Kat. Does he know anything about Jacob’s disappearance?
-Alice gets the chance to play and sing with Colton again. She hears a song he wrote for Del.
I love how quickly this story has moved over the course of just three episodes. Every week is packed to the brim with meaningful scenes and moments that have done so much to flesh out the world and characters in such a short time. The relationship development has been such a joy to watch, particularly in regards to Kat and Del, and like Alice, I’m enjoying the opportunity to get to know the Landry family better through the trips to 1999. My only real issue with this episode was that I had trouble fully buying into some of the elements of Kat’s reporting story. Aside from that, Hallmark delivered another strong episode in what has become my new favorite show on television. The prospect of Kat getting to partake in the time travel story has me immensely excited for next week. The end of the episode was a perfect cliffhanger. Now, if only I had my own time traveling pond to jump forward to Sunday.