The Time Traveler’s Wife Episode 1 is the first instalment of a science-fiction romantic-drama television series written by Steven Moffat and based on the novel of the same name by Audrey Niffenegger. The novel was previously adapted as a film in 2009 and received mixed reviews.
S P O I L E R S
The Time Traveler’s Wife Episode 1 introduces to us the basic premise of the series.
It is a love story about Henry, a man with a genetic disorder that causes him to time travel unpredictably, and about Clare, his wife, an artist who has to cope with his frequent absences. (Wikipedia)
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Niffenegger herself has described Henry’s time-travelling disorder as a metaphor for a failed relationship and in The Time Traveler’s Wife Episode 1, there is little doubt that the series – like the film adaptation – will lean heavily on this analogy throughout.
However, as depicted in Episode 1, there are two serious flaws about the story. First, while the time-travelling trope is interesting initially, it gets rather tedious very quickly and loses its novelty factor, especially when the film has already covered this aspect well already. So how will expanding the concept into a six-part series improve this? Of course, the first episode ends with a mystery – Henry’s severed feet appear in the early 2000s which is intended to set up the rest of the series.
Secondly, and more critically perhaps, there is the issue of Henry – as a man in his late thirties – travelling back in time and ‘grooming’ Clare when she was six years old! This idea told from the individual perspectives of Henry and Clare is absolutely creepy and never gets better the more one thinks about it. Sure, this plot point was also in the novel but can nobody see how wrong this is? Almost 20 years have passed since the novel’s publication and certainly that has not aged well at all.
The Time Traveler’s Wife Episode 1 is too problematic to recommend checking out this series. Will episode 2 save the day? We shall see…
Now streaming on HBO Max.
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