Still basking in the glow of her purple Doc Martens, the final piece of evidence that convinces her of Becca’s validity, Lolly inquires about the kiss with Andy. Although Becca has shared some good kisses with Andy in her life, none of them made her feel the way the most recent one did, with her major point of comparison being a climactic scene in The Notebook. Being that The Notebook is about a decade away from being made, she then explains the significance of the scene to Lolly before wondering whether this might be the reason she’s back in 1995 – to experience this version of Andy Kelly. While the topic of whether she has the right to knowingly change people’s lives gets brought up, Becca does decide to go talk to Andy and see if she can’t gain some perspective on the kiss.
Jamie calls Sex, Lies, & Video Store around the same time Becca leaves, with the intention of getting Lolly to go out with him for pizza that night. However, Lolly turns him down under the guise of having to work when in reality, she doesn’t want to upset Becca. Speaking of Becca, she arrives at Andy’s door as he’s playing Dungeons & Dragons, but before she can get into how the kiss made her feel, he’s immediately apologetic over what happened, taking the blame for losing control. He claims to not be that type of guy and, adding insult to injury, Melanie just so happens to be at the apartment, too. After expressing concern for Becca’s precarious career situation, Melanie not only tells her about being promoted to Simon’s assistant, but invites her to a party thrown by their co-worker Lois. Initially, Becca doesn’t want to go, yet when she realizes that no one will be there, she decides to stop by and try to keep her acquaintance from being lonely on her birthday. Unfortunately for her, though, Melanie decides to tag along.
Lolly opting to come, too, helps Becca’s mood, only for Phoebe’s arrival at the apartment to send her mood crashing down. Phoebe brought back a wadded bridesmaids dress and admits to doing reconnaissance work for their family, as they’ve barely seen Becca since the wedding and wanted to know how she was. Although she pokes at Becca’s pre-partying, Phoebe jumps at the chance to go to the “exclusive” party that Lolly brags about getting into, which turns out to be the party for Lois. They arrive at the bar, where they find Lois and Melanie, and before things can even get started, Phoebe becomes judge-y when she learns that Becca quit her job. The tequila that Lolly ordered ends up loosening the mood up quite a bit, as does a game of I Never that sees everyone’s dirty laundry brought onto the table. Among the highlights are Lois’s love of one night stands, Melanie knowingly saying that she never made out with another girl’s boyfriend, and Becca nearly tripping herself up when she mentions having sex with Sean on the beaches of Aruba, something that hasn’t happened in this version of her story yet. Elsewhere, Jamie shows up at the video store looking for Lolly, only to find that she wasn’t even working that night. Disappointed, he decides to watch the movies on a list she recommended for the store and Sebastian convinces him to stay and watch one right there.
Feeling the effects of the liquor, Lolly comes at Becca over not telling her why their friendship ends in the distant future. However, Becca diffuses the situation while refusing to name the reason she and Lolly drift apart and lamenting that the beach sex question shook her up. Frustrated at herself for not embracing this second chance as much as she should, Becca decides to have a one night stand, although she doesn’t want to choose from the pool of guys at her local bar. Even if one of them is Hot Todd. Melanie gets beeped by Simon, but Lois and Phoebe are down to go to another club and extend the night. The club they go to, though, is one with complementary palm readings from actresses posing as psychics. Meanwhile, Jamie and Sebastian finish Ben Hur, with neither of them enjoying it. Sebastian manages to convince Jamie to watch one more, given that the latter mentioned that he didn’t have anything to do that night, before producing a joint from his hair.
In order to fulfill her one night stand fantasy, Becca perches at the bar and lets those interested in what she has to offer show themselves. Unfortunately, it’s a rough beginning to her search for the perfect Mr. Right Now: one douche-y guy brags about working for Enron; one couple tries to get her to be their third for the night; one guy only wants to spoon; one girl expresses her interest to no avail; and one guy is more concerned with Becca’s workout regimen than taking her home. Finally, though, she meets a random guy at the bar who’s cute and easy to talk to. While Jamie and Sebastian get high in the alley, the latter doing his best to dissuade the former from going after flakey Lolly, Lolly talks to the psychic, played by an actress named Paige, and lets out her frustrations at Becca’s controlling nature. Paige tries to be supportive, telling Lolly that she doesn’t have to be Becca’s puppet, but when Becca overhears them talking, she freaks out at Lolly sharing personal information with a stranger. Paige gets in the middle of their argument, saying that what Becca thinks about her (someone who pretends she knows what’s going to happen) is exactly what she’s doing herself, and a brief scuffle happens, which results in Paige being called into the office of her boss.
But Becca has bigger things to worry about when Phoebe reveals that not only is she going to the Waldorf with Enron guy, she blew off a blind date to be here tonight. A blind date that it turns out was with the man she would eventually marry. Feeling responsible for breaking up her cousin’s marriage, Becca follows Phoebe outside and exposes the fact that Enron guy recycles his pickup lines. It works and Phoebe doesn’t get in the cab with him, but by the time she got to the café she was supposed to meet her date Courtney, he was already gone. While Jamie watches the last of Lolly’s movies with Sebastian and heads home, having picked up on the tie that binds her seemingly random choices, Becca learns that Lois went home with the swingers and pledges to do another girls’ night with Phoebe, who she’s never had that much fun with before. However, the night takes a turn for the worse when Becca blurts out that she doesn’t believe in predestination, which causes Lolly to melt down. She lays into Becca about using her knowledge of the future only when it benefits her (e.g. saving Lois’s birthday from being a disaster while keeping Lolly and Jamie apart) and not being honest about why their friendship falls apart. The reason that Becca won’t say what happened is because she doesn’t know if she can stop it from happening, even with her knowledge of the future and what led to their demise; this refusal to be honest then causes Lolly to decide that she needs a time out from all things Becca and time travel.
While Lolly goes over to Jamie’s, where she confesses to really liking him and he tells her he found the link between her movies (alliterative director names), Becca heads to the local bar, picks up Hot Todd, and has her first one night stand with him. The next morning, as Phoebe runs into Courtney at the coffee shop, Becca meets up with Lolly at the bar and tells her about having sex with Todd. It was good, but it wasn’t sex with Sean or that kiss with Andy, so she’s still about where she was as far as her love life and general disposition. When she tries to confess what actually happened between her and Lolly to cause their friendship to end, Lolly stops her, saying that she doesn’t care why they ended as long as Becca tries to keep it from happening.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-“Lolly, program it.”
-“I’ve never sucked…the venom out of a snake bite.”
-“Excuse me, we’re looking for Sleepless in Seattle.” “Why?”
-“Well, if it makes you feel any better, there’s a pretty good chance Sean is still having sex on a beach right now.”
-“I got to lock up the store. Door’s so far, though.”
-“Looks like someone’s taking a shameful walk this morning.”
-Non-Exhaustive List of 90s Songs Included on Hindsight: Sheryl Crow “All I Wanna Do”; Spin Doctors “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong”; Montell Jordan “This Is How We Do It”; C+C Music Factory “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)”; Marky Mark & the Funky Bunch “Good Vibrations”; Robin S. “Show Me Love”; Naughty by Nature “O.P.P.”; Bell Biv DeVoe “Poison”; Crystal Waters “100% Pure Love”. Also, we got a second helping of Collective Soul’s “December”, which was also featured in the pilot. In case you’re curious, and I know that you are, every song is time period appropriate. And good, to boot.
-If you managed to miss the recaps for the first two episodes of the season, possibly because you’re just now catching up on the show, check them out here and here.
-VH1 has put together a Hindsight web series that’s a throwback to public access talk shows from the 90s. You can check it out here.
-Here’s the movie that Sebastian recommended for Jamie.
-So, I think this is my favorite episode thus far. Not only did it rely on Becca’s friendship with Lolly, the heart and soul of the show and something that has innumerable layers in which to explore, it continued the show’s trend of packaging deep questions in a light, quirky exterior. You look at Hindsight and you think it’s a sweet, romantic dramedy with lots of pop culture references and not much else, but this episode, for example, touched on the ethics of Becca’s application of her future knowledge and whether she’s doomed to simple repeat the same mistakes no matter how much self-awareness she thinks she has. Hindsight is a deceptively smart show, you guys, and I like that they sneak in that depth in between Spin Doctors songs.
-I didn’t mind the love triangle being absent for an episode. Becca wouldn’t have looked good had she went after Andy, especially since Melanie seems to know about it and this isn’t the type of show where women fight over men, and Sean was gone, so it makes sense to put a pin in Becca’s love life and focus on who she is as a friend rather than who she is as a girlfriend. I only hope the show continues being fairly balanced as far as screen time dedicated to the triangle vs. the other aspects of Becca’s journey to the past.
-Another hope: they don’t mention the end of Lolly’s friendship with Becca for a while. I’m immensely curious about what went down and who was in the wrong, but bringing it up every week and not following through on it will start to feel old a few episodes from now. I don’t mind not knowing at the moment, but letting that sit in the background for a while would make it more poignant/effective when it gets brought back up again. If only the hint of what happened can produce scenes like the one on the street between Becca and Lolly, I can only imagine what we’ll get when the secret is actually out.
-Sex, Lies, & Video Store is the best video store name in the world. How deliciously 90s.
-Jamie/Sebastian was a pairing I didn’t think I’d see, but I thought that little side story was cute. A little predictable with Sebastian being in love with Lolly and trying to sabotage things with Jamie, yet it was nice to see Jamie getting screen time without being tied to Becca or Lolly, Sebastian wasn’t painted as negatively as other shows would have done, and the encounter helped deepen Jamie’s relationship with Lolly. Prior, it seemed as if the two had a strong physical connection without much in the way of emotion, with that casualness making it harder to sympathize with Lolly. However, this hinted at there being more to Lolly and Jamie than a mutual love of kissing the other and I’m curious just how much we’ll get to see their relationship grow from here.
-Lois was a weird, wonderful delight, right? I’m always a fan of a show expanding its universe and giving itself more players to throw together, so I think she could end up being a fun recurring player for Becca to bounce off a few times this season. And it’d be nice to see who Becca is as a friend with someone other than Lolly.
-I liked seeing the different side of Phoebe. It felt like she rubbed her marriage to Courtney in Becca’s face because of insecurity at getting married second and a ridiculous competitive streak, but this episode pointed to the possibility that Phoebe was so alone during her 20s that she just latched onto Courtney that tightly, to where she wanted everybody to know that she was capital-M Married. And that loneliness humanizes her in a way that I didn’t think we would see by episode three, which is promising for the show’s development.
-Also, Phoebe running into Courtney at the coffee shop A) proved that there’ll be no butterfly effect in Becca’s future-past (it followed talk of predestination, so maybe this entire experience will be something of a simulation for Becca to work out her issues in) and B) was a nice nod to the show’s optimistic look at love.
-C’mon, why didn’t we get somebody, anybody calling Hot Todd Hot Toddie?
-So, the pseudo psychic – am I the only one suspicious of her? She was a little too vehement in her bad mouthing of Becca/support for Lolly and it felt awfully convenient for her to take the job at the bar that Lolly and Becca frequent. Could she be someone who knows about Becca’s time travelling? Or am I being way too paranoid?
-Next week on Hindsight: Lolly breaks her Halloween tradition with Becca by going out with Jamie, while Sean returns from his solo honeymoon.
