Is The Time Traveler’s Wife the “thinking man’s” Loki?
Genre: TV Pilot/Drama/Sci-Fi
Premise: A relationship is put to the test due to one of its participants randomly jumping through time.
About: Despite its failure as a movie, The Time Traveler’s Wife apparently became a high profile project that many studios bid on. HBO won out, attaching Dr. Who writer Stephen Moffat as the showrunner. Moffat was a huge fan of the original novel. He believes that TV is the proper medium for this complex unique story. The series will star Rose Leslie from Game of Thrones.
Writer: Steven Moffat (based on the novel by Audrey Niffenegger)
Details: 61 pages
Readability: Medium
I went back and forth on whether to review this one.
The 2009 movie was a disaster.
It didn’t have a narrative.
I even tried to read the original book in which I struggled to understand why anyone would think it was worthy of printing.
The reason I’ve changed my mind is because this is an HBO pilot. And HBO continues to be, by far, the most consistent channel when it comes to content. Having hundreds of projects in development. Having a model where you’re not afraid to tell people like David Fincher, “No.” Only allowing the creme de la creme of projects on air. All of that has resulted in the best programming of any channel.
I noticed several of you chirping about an HBO show I had no interest in checking out – White Lotus – which I finally watched. And even that show was good.
So I’m thinking HBO must have figured out an angle to make this story work. I mean, heck, it’s got time travel in it, right?
When we meet Clare Abshire, she’s being interviewed, I think by herself – I have no idea – in a home video about what it’s like to be with Henry Detamble, who is also being interviewed on home video – probably also by himself – about what it’s like to time travel.
We never get any explanation as to why these two are being interviewed. But that’s par for the course with The Time Traveler’s Wife, which seems to have no qualms being a random directionless mess of a pilot.
Oh, yeah, Henry is a time traveler. But not willingly. He periodically gets sucked into a time hole, or something, every once in a while, wakes up in the new time without his clothes on, must then find clothes (I do not say this lightly – 80% of the plot of this show is about how important it is that Henry find clothes whenever he time travels), and eventually keeps running into Clare, who becomes his girlfriend. Well, not all the time. Sometimes Henry will meet Clare when she’s six. In those times, he must be delicate about explaining their future together.
After a lot of jumping around, we settle into a time when Clare is 21 and Henry is 28. He works at the library – because, of course, that’s a normal occupation for a strapping 28 year old male – when Clare walks in, sees him, walks up to him, and tells him they’re going on a date. “But I don’t even know you,” he says.
During their date, Clare informs Henry that, in the future, they’ll be married to each other! Henry is shocked by the news but rolls with it, especially because it means Clare wants to have sex tonight. So they go back to Henry’s place, bang, and then Clare sees another woman’s bra in the bedroom. What’s this, she asks? Oh, I’m seeing someone, he says.
Pissed off, she storms out, seemingly unaware of the possibility that a man who had no idea who she was four hours ago might have a girlfriend. Clare would not do well on The Bachelor. While moping in her apartment, Henry comes to apologize. But not 20-something Henry. 30-something Henry! Ahh, and here’s where we see our unique premise at work. In this relationship, you can recruit your older self to take care of your problems for you.
And that’s the end of our pilot. Which, believe it or not, expects you to want to watch more of it.
Good God.
I am going to go so far as to say this is the worst thing I’ve read all year.
The number of things wrong with everything about this show/pilot/book/movie is endless.
Literally nothing works.
And it all goes back to the source material. The source material turns a weak directionless juvenile concept into a 500 page story. And then, for some reason, someone wanted to make a movie out of it. And when that didn’t work, a TV show.
Where is the narrative here?
What is going to keep people watching?
There is no goal. There is no purpose.
Are we going to be in episode 37 with Henry still hopping around in time before we realize there’s nothing here? “Oh hi, Clare! I’m 51 now and you’re 12. Let’s play hide and seek!”
Seriously, why are we continuing to watch? What is the overall purpose of the story?
On White Lotus, in the very first scene, we’re told that somebody was murdered. We then jump back in time to when everybody got to the island and watch the story play out as we wonder who it is who’s going to die. There’s a purpose.
Here it’s just a guy, at different ages, showing up and going on dates with a girl. How quickly is that going to get old? 10 minutes into the first episode? 20 maybe?
Who thought this was a good idea? It’s so bad it actually hurts my brain to think about.
Honestly, HBO is risking this becoming their worst show ever. If they want to go down that road, great. They’ve built up enough credit to have a few failures. But man. This one is going to hurt badly because it’s going to get roasted.
This goes back to an issue all writers must watch out for.
Which is that not every concept is meant to be a movie or a TV show. This is one of them. You can tell it’s one of them because there’s only one scene that the writer had in mind when she came up with the idea. The moment where a woman invites a guy out on a date and tells him that they get married in 15 years. You get to play with the shock from the guy’s side. “What?? I don’t even know you!” He says. It’s an effective trailer line moment. “I know you don’t know me. But you and I are married in the future!”
And they literally have ZERO PLANS for a story after that. That was clear in the novel. That was clear in the movie. And it’s clear here. There’s no plan.
In fact, it doesn’t even make sense!!!
Why is Henry confused by a woman telling him that they get married in the future? If there’s anybody who would be able to believe that… IT WOULD BE A PERSON WHO’S SPENT THE LAST DECADE OF HIS LIFE TIME TRAVELING!!!! Pretty much any time some random person says they know you, you’d have to give them the benefit of the doubt, right? Why would Henry act like Clare is crazy with this proclamation?
The bad ideas don’t stop there. We get a scene where Henry time jumps into some year, encounters a couple on a date, throws up, then uses the “toxicity” in his vomit as a weapon to distract the man so he can beat him up and then take his clothes. That’s right. There is a scene where our hero scrapes up some vomit with his finger, flicks it into a man’s eyes, and then beats him up. I did not know it was possible to come up with an idea that bad.
Now I do.
If you put a gun to my head and told me I had to give you ONE THING about The Time Traveler’s Wife that worked, you’d be reading my obituary now. But the argument I *might* try and make is that, at least you have a unique relationship to explore.
Because every love story has been told a million times over, it’s impossible to come up with new angles. The Time Traveler’s Wife is a rare example where they’ve come up with a unique relationship angle. Clare and Henry are constantly coming at each other at different points in their lives. So no conversation is quite the same.
But even that part of the story only works conceptually. In practice, it sucks. The conversations between these two are boring and predictable 99% of the time. You have a good feeling of what they’re going to say to each other before they say it because that’s how little thought has been put into this world beyond the initial concept.
There’s one moment in particular in this pilot that symbolizes how dumb this entire pilot is. Early on, when 30-something Henry meets 6 year old Clare and tells her he’s a time traveler, she asks him if he’s ever seen dinosaurs before. He answers, “I tickled a dinosaur’s tummy once. Actually twice. But that was in a Natural History Museum.”
Then, later in the pilot, 10 year old Henry is at the Natural History Museum and an older Henry comes to him and tells him he’s from the future and he needs to teach him about time traveling. While walking around, he lifts young Henry up so he can tickle the belly of a T-Rex model.
That’s right. We actually go through the trouble of paying off the most random line in the entire pilot. That’s not how setups and payoffs work. Setups and payoffs are for things that actually matter to the story. But not for The Time Traveler’s Wife! Nosiree. There’s so little going on plotwise in this disaster that it becomes imperative we pay off someone saying they once tickled a fake dinosaur.
The irony is that you would’ve had the ONLY INTERESTING MOMENT IN YOUR ENTIRE PILOT if Henry had actually time-traveled back to the prehistoric era and touched a dinosaur.
There is nothing worse in the world of fiction than something that thinks it’s clever when it isn’t. The Time Traveler’s Wife is a weak idea in search of a narrative that covets boredom at every turn. If I could give this less than a what the hell did I just read, I would.
[x] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Beware the script idea that you only have one good scene idea for. Before you write a script, you should have at LEAST five killer scenes in mind. Preferably more. If you only have one, I can pretty much guarantee your script will be as bad as The Time Traveler’s Wife.
