Becca rushes to NY Metro to check on Andy and gets details of what happened from her father, who works as a surgeon. Andy was headed down the Jersey Turnpike before a car spun right into him, inflicting internal injuries that will have to be assessed once he gets into surgery. After going to the bathroom to collect herself and telling herself that this is her own fault, Becca goes to meet with Andy’s parents Frank and Jane, distraught after talking to their son just recently. Their main concern: why was he on the Turnpike when he said he was going to stay in that night?
Back at the apartment, Lolly’s sadness over the state of things with Jamie and anxiety at the thought of calling Kevin get in the way of Paige’s rehearsals. To speed along her friend’s emotional progress, Paige dials Kevin’s number, but Lolly isn’t ready to go there yet, so she hangs up and answers the knock at the door. It turns out to be Jamie, which sends Paige flying to the nearest quiet place so she can have the chance to study. Later, Lolly then gives Jamie a textbook back and the two get in bed, but Jamie can tell that she’s not that comfortable being around him and that the distance he feels isn’t from her long trip to North Carolina. Meanwhile, overwhelmed at everything that’s happened, Becca heads to the hospital chapel and prays for guidance in this trying time – she wants to follow her heart and do the right thing, yet those are feeling like they’re mutually exclusive. Lincoln comes to comfort her and gets her to tell him about her feelings for Andy, feelings that she regrets letting herself feel considering the universe is doing everything it can to push the two apart.
Andy successfully makes it out of surgery, yet he doesn’t remember anything that happened after leaving his house. While his parents and Becca’s dad go off to get a drink, Melanie stays at the hospital and Becca volunteers to get some things for Andy. She then calls Lolly to come and help her, which Lolly does despite it being four in the morning; Lolly assures Jamie that she’ll be alright before heading over to Jamie’s to comfort Becca. Though Becca loves him, she’s been responsible for two incidents of bodily harm that’ve befell Andy and she doesn’t want to keep trying to force things considering the destruction she’s already wrought. Lolly points to the photo of Becca Andy keeps in his video game collection and wonders whether the universe has no skin in this game; maybe there’s always going to be a risk of being hurt in a relationship. Maybe that’s what it means to be alive. As Becca packs a picture of Andy and Melanie, Sean stumbles upon Paige running lines to an empty chair at the bar. It turns out that she got the lead in her friend’s play after the lead dropped out and she has until the following day to learn her part. Sean offers to house Paige while she studies for the play, saying that they can be two artists creating together, though she’s initially wary of the idea.
Becca brings back everything she got for Andy and Melanie warns her against being nice. She wants to be able to hate Becca, but she can’t when she’s being nice at a time like this. Melanie owns up to being a little crazy to her lately, which Becca chalks up to how much she cares about Andy, and confesses that she picked the fight that sent her running up to her parents’ house. All she wanted was for Andy to react and she believes that’s what he was doing when he was on the road – coming to get her and make amends. Thrown for a loop by Melanie blaming herself, Becca sits down with Lolly to try and figure out whether this incident is her fault or not. If he was actually going to see Melanie, this wasn’t her fault, but the two might not be meant together; however, if he was coming to see her, the two might be meant together, but it was her fault that he nearly died. Lolly tries to get Becca’s mind off everything by bringing up Jamie and how she thinks she might have to break up with him. Becca advises her to be honest and try to have the cleanest break possible, but does she want that for her sake or Jamie’s sake?
While Paige ends up going to Sean’s place and admires the art work he’s been working on, which includes a series of sketches of Becca, Lolly takes Jamie to a local diner where the two break up. When he asks whether there’s another guy, she doesn’t know what answer to give, uncertainty that drives Jamie to leave before she can really explain her feelings. At the hospital, Becca gets to see Andy by herself and he confirms that he was going to see her that day, not Melanie. That guilt that she feels for “causing” the accident, combined with the guilt from going after him in the first place, forces Becca to end things with Andy before they begin. She doesn’t know how she’ll feel about anything within a day, week, or month and she doesn’t want to subject him to that; instead, she thinks he should be with someone safe like Melanie. Despite Andy not wanting safety out of his life anymore, he kicks Becca out of his room and tries to make up with Melanie, only he gets a bit too honest with the latter when he tells her that he was going to see Becca that day. But he does go on to say that what he was chasing with Becca wasn’t real and what they have, what they’ve built, is what’s real.
Distraught over the break up, Jamie gets drunk with Stanton and laments the loss of Lolly, his version of a unicorn. Since he doesn’t want to let go of someone whose equivalent he might never meet, Jamie decides to do a bold gesture to get Lolly’s attention. That gesture? A nod to the climactic scene in Say Anything, boom box and all. But after the batteries run out, the cops show up and take Jamie in, with Lolly being the one to bail him out. She takes him to talk about their relationship and warns him to watch it with the alcohol; he assures her that he’ll be fine moving forward and makes a joke to deflect the pain that he’s feelings. Becca, meanwhile, gets read the riot act by Melanie for making her think that she was the reason for Andy’s accident. Even when Becca tries to take the full blame for what happened, Melanie tells her to go to hell and get over herself.
During Paige and Sean’s rehearsal, things get too intimate and nearly lead to a kiss, but she’s saved by the fact that she has to be at the theater in a bit. She gives him the address, though, just in case he wants to come watch the play. Becca goes grocery shopping and when she gets her bags out onto the street, one of them breaks and spills her stuff everywhere. Luckily, Xavier is there to help her and after he gets her situated, he takes her to a nearby diner to talk. She believes she’s the common denominator in every bad thing that’s happened since she got back, but he gives her a Latin proverb (“The end depends upon the beginning”) that makes her decide to retrace her steps. While Andy turns over the picture of him and Melanie, Becca goes to Sean’s just as he is leaving for the play. Since she tells him that she needs him, he decides to stay with her instead of going to watch Paige.
Additional thoughts and observations:
-“My grandma gave me pepper spray for Hanukkah, so…”
-“I can’t believe you went to God before you came to me.”
-“Are you a God? Sorry, that was Cookie Monster.”
-“I came to save you from the conspiratorial whispers.”
-“Becca, I’m an adult now. Call me Neil Armstrong.”
-“I was just gonna ask you to pee for me.”
-Non-Exhaustive List of 90s Songs Included on Hindsight: Natalie Merchant “Carnival”; KWS “Please Don’t Go”; Tori Amos “Precious Things”; Bush “Glycerine”; Gin Blossoms “Hey Jealousy”; Sarah McLachlan “Fear”.
-The choice to send Becca back to Sean completely worked for me. It could’ve easily read as Becca being wishy-washy and the show shielding its depth with love triangle melodrama, but I think her decision was the product of both circumstance and intellectual curiosity. She was feeling guilty about busting up Andy’s relationship with Melanie and being the reason for Andy’s car accident, so even with the path cleared for them to get together, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She didn’t want this living, breathing reminder of the destruction she’s caused since she came back to the past, with her telling Andy to go with the safer option a verbalization of what she needed to tell herself.
-Additionally, Xavier’s appearance played into Becca’s ego, in that she took on the “mission” of going back to the beginning of her past journey and redoing everything once again. It’s a second Hindsight experience, this one being one for Becca to “solve,” and she gets to explore what feelings she has for Sean along the way. If things change between them, that’s okay. If things don’t change, Becca knows that she and Andy are getting together in the future anyway, so she can just ride out the storm until then.
-I love the show offering a wrinkle to the Say Anything scene, which was already a fun callback to the pilot. That wrinkle, with the boom box failing and Jamie getting arrested, was an interesting move tonally, as it was immediately comedic and led to some heavier emotional material with Jamie spiraling after the break up with Lolly. It’s especially ironic considering Becca’s advice to Lolly (give it a clean break) was the instigator in her brother’s breakdown, given that she’s spent so much time trying to protect him. Could this be evidence that no matter what Becca does, the events of her past are going to play out in the way they already did?
-This was the episode that made me feel for Melanie. She had been especially prickly for the first five episodes of the series and frankly, a lot of that prickliness was justified; it’s just that it was hard to root for or sympathize with someone who continued to push you away and who we only knew from antagonizing the main character. However, once she started blaming herself for what happened to Andy, those parallels to Becca humanized her and gave some additional context to her scenes in earlier episodes. It also helps that Jessy Hodges is performing the crap out of the material she’s been given, really managing to cut through Melanie’s icy exterior to show the pain that she’s been going through with Andy.
-It was nice to see Xavier again. My guess is that he’s a guardian angel of some sort, watching Becca’s progress and stepping in when she hits a dead end. He doesn’t necessarily point her in the right direction; he just points her in a new direction, which is an interesting idea.
-I kind of hate that Paige and Becca’s tenuous friendship will be made super awkward by the latter getting together with Sean. The idea of having Paige into the fold was promising after the most recent episode, where we learned about her past and she found some common ground with Becca, and this felt like a step back for the show. Even if she and Becca were never going to be best friends, Paige was on the verge of becoming a character and someone whose contribution to the show could only increase in the coming episodes; now it feels like she might just be an obstacle – someone who stands in the way of Becca’s friendship with Lolly and relationship with Sean. And that’s disappointing because this show is otherwise so positive, but Melanie and Paige have been underwritten and not as fleshed out as they could’ve been.
-I loved Becca trying to figure out the ramifications of Andy’s accident and whether she was at fault or not. It was some nice bonding with Lolly and it felt like a self-aware wink to the show’s kaleidoscopic view of the future and Becca’s journey therein.
-Was I crazy or did this show give a (subtle) 13 Going on 30 shout out during Lolly’s first scene with Paige? The whole “I feel like I’m 13 again” in a time travel show? C’mon.
-Okay, you guys. We’re entering into the back half of the season, so these next few weeks are super important as far as ratings and visibility and whatnot. If you can’t watch this show live at 10:00 on VH1, it repeats at midnight; you can also watch on the (free) VH1 app and VOD, both of which count for ratings. VOD, in particular, is even more important/lucrative than DVR, per this article from TV Guide. And as always, tell your friends about this show. Post about it on social media. Anything to show VH1 that this show has an audience and that it deserves another season.
-Next week on Hindsight: Becca and Sean adjust to being a couple again, while Lincoln learns about Jamie’s academic probation and Andy poses a game-changing question to Melanie.
