S01.E07: The Romance & The Bromance

[Trini]

A bookworm who wants to say yes to life goes back in time to meet her favorite author, and a competitive survivalist learns that the ultimate challenge is something he hasn't trained for.

Airdate: Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2021

[AnimeMania]

Woman disappears during her vacation to the Islands!

She was pretty bold to kiss another person's wife the second you meet them.

Isabel seemed like she had never heard of their publisher Mr. Walsh, but later she knew everything about him, what did she do, sneak back to the present and GOOGLE him?

The episodes don't seen to have a lot of depth to them, they could use a little Oomph! to make them more compelling.

[DanaK]

So were Isabel and the lady author, or her husband, actual cousins, albeit distant, or did Isabel just use that as a cover? Either way, eww on the boinking even if they just thought they were cousins. Get past the ew, cousins factor and it was a nice story

[AnimeMania]

3 hours ago, DanaK said:

So were Isabel and the lady author, or her husband, actual cousins, albeit distant, or did Isabel just use that as a cover? Either way, eww on the boinking even if they just thought they were cousins. Get past the ew, cousins factor and it was a nice story

They were kissing cousins 😁, I think she eventually told her she was from the future, before any actual boinking started. I was waiting for the end of the episode to see if they used the ending where they say that Rachel was a Renaissance cosplayer portraying her favorite author and Isabel finds out as they are boarding the plane.

[Chaos Theory]

I want to like this show more then I do.     Yes the girl goes back to fall in love with a girl in the past was sweet but ultimately felt flat to me.  I actually kinda enjoyed the guy talks to the boy he once was before a really traumatic event in his past that changed him for good alot more.  I really liked the whole "I turned into such a douchebag"   "I got the girl of my dreams and I lost her" motif that was going on between them.   It was a good story about rediscovering who you really are.  

[mythoughtis]

I liked the man meets  his inner self  story.  Didn’t care for Isabelle at all. 
I’m supposed to believe that Isabelle will have a  nice life in the past?  Ruby supposedly couldn’t live the life she wanted with Meredith 50 years ago, but Isabelle  will live happily ever after with Rachel back when a female wasn’t allowed to write books, own property, etc?  

 

[izabella]

28 minutes ago, mythoughtis said:

but Isabelle  will live happily ever after with Rachel back when a female wasn’t allowed to write books, own property, etc?  

Right?! 

She also better hope she never gets sick.  Bring out the leeches!

[chaifan]

I hope Roarke's ongoing personal fantasy is never having to be investigated for mysterious disappearances of her guests!  Seriously, how do they explain Isabel never returning to her normal life?  And if Reginald has a real cousin Isabel in Rachel's timeline Isabel is just impersonating her, so what happens if/when the real Isabel shows up? 

I don't feel like either fantasy really hit the mark this week.  Isabel wanted to "say yes" to life and get out of books, but she ended up in her own personal fantasy for life.  How is that saying yes to life?  To me it seems like the ultimate escape from life, retreating back into the books.  And I didn't feel like Brian really needed the "ultimate challenge" to arrive at his epiphany that he's somewhat of a dick. 

As for the comment above re "kissing cousins", Isabel and Rachel aren't cousins.  They're related only by marriage.  Isabel was boinking her cousin's wife, not her cousin.  And since it was a marriage of convenience I wouldn't consider it adulterous in spirit.  So no ick factor for me there. 

[Trini]

I wish the survivalist guy had more screentime for his story. The Isabel story seemed like standard romance novel fare, which I wasn't into. Not to mention, it's supposed to be a temporary fantasy, not a complete life change, so letting her stay in the past (!) forever didn't seem like a good resolution. And of course, what happens to the life she leaves behind??

I wasn't sure what they were going for with the survivalist and his younger self at first, but I liked that it turned out to be about him dealing with his past trauma. I think I liked the younger actor better. Again, I wish this was the story that had more time/deeper writing.

Costume department continues to be amazing. Props to Locations, too.

[Chaos Theory]

This isn’t an incredibly deep show.  It’s funny the previous episode had three of the actors from Melrose Place and that is about as deep and meaningful as this show gets.  Fun and glitzy with a little bit of a lesson if you don’t dig to deep or think to much.    The girl gets a storybook happy ending which is what she secretly wants and the guy who spent his entire adult life trying to prove he was a “man” gets confronted by his inner child about all the things he lost and at the end goes home to try to win back the woman he always loved.    Not too incredibly deep but effective.  

Edited September 16, 2021 by Chaos Theory

[HurricaneVal]

20 hours ago, chaifan said:

Isabel wanted to "say yes" to life and get out of books, but she ended up in her own personal fantasy for life.  How is that saying yes to life?  To me it seems like the ultimate escape from life, retreating back into the books. 

Yeah, this fantasy was all kinds of wrong for me, but interesting nonetheless.  If Isabel's fantasy was to escape into the world of her favorite books, then that was perfect.  However her fantasy was to turn away from books and say yes to real life.  I guess Roarke's twist was to offer the life in the books as real life?  My problem with the premise was that the series of books that Isabel, then later Ruby and Roarke, were raving over were absolutely not Victorian era novels.  The books were definitely swashbuckling bodice-ripper racy romances, and those sorts of books were definitely not published in Victorian times.  Or if they were, they were secretly published as pornography and in a shorter form.  I don't mind Rachel entering the world of the books, but pretending that the books were written back in those times is ridiculous.  

I also watched this episode fully amazed at how far TV shows have come from the days when married couples slept in separate twin beds and every show had a "Standards and Practices" rep on set to make sure things weren't getting too titillating.  There was a barely veiled scene talking about masturbation with the two women fingering the flower in a demonstration of how they liked it best.  I think that was the most sexually explicit thing I've ever seen on TV!  At least on a major-ish broadcast network at 9PM.  Forget the lesbian kisses which used to be shocking but now are standard fare, they were straight up violating that peony.  Then when Isabel is headed back to the house, I nearly choked with laughter at Roarke's (or was it Ruby?) dry comment that she needed to get those flowers in water before they wilt.

Is nobody going to mention that Eric Winter, who played Brian the douchebag adventurer, is married to Roselyn Sanchez in real life? 

Edited September 16, 2021 by HurricaneVal
Called Isabel "Rachel" a few times

[Lugal]

This one didn't quite work.  She wants to get away from books and into real life, but then she ends up disappearing into the books (or at least the time period) forever.  The Isabel story felt...off.  Like it was being told a little too much through a lens of how people now think the Victorians were.  And the whole "it must be published under her husband's name" fell flat.  I get marrying him for his publishing connections, but women had already been publishing under their own names decades.  Isabel mentioned Dickens as a contemporary, which would place this in early Victorian times.  Jane Austen (another of Isabel's favorite authors) wrote probably a generation before this and Mary Wollstonecraft even earlier.  And while out lesbianism was frowned on, Boston Marriages were a thing back then.

I did enjoy the survivalist meeting his younger self.  I wish that would have been the A-story.  As it was it felt kind of rushed which was a shame because there was a lot more they could have explored with that.

8 hours ago, HurricaneVal said:

Is nobody going to mention that Eric Winter, who played Brian the douchebag adventurer, is married to Roselyn Sanchez in real life?

I guess they didn't want to show favoritism by giving him the A-story then?

[JH Lipton]

On 9/15/2021 at 2:20 AM, DanaK said:

So were Isabel and the lady author, or her husband, actual cousins, albeit distant, or did Isabel just use that as a cover? Either way, eww on the boinking even if they just thought they were cousins. Get past the ew, cousins factor and it was a nice story

I don't think that Isabel was related to either of the Coldwaters.  That was just the first thing that popped into Rachel's head as to why this stranger was in their house.

On 9/15/2021 at 12:05 PM, mythoughtis said:

Im supposed to believe that Isabelle will have a  nice life in the past?  Ruby supposedly couldn’t live the life she wanted with Meredith 50 years ago, but Isabelle  will live happily ever after with Rachel back when a female wasn’t allowed to write books, own property, etc?  

 

On 9/15/2021 at 6:43 PM, chaifan said:

I don't feel like either fantasy really hit the mark this week.  Isabel wanted to "say yes" to life and get out of books, but she ended up in her own personal fantasy for life.  How is that saying yes to life?  T

Isabel's fantasy certainly didn't work.  There have been other guests who didn't want to leave and unless they could sleep for 7 years, they all had to go. And what did she say "yes" to that she couldn't have had, much easier, in the current day?   How does she know that won't end up like the mistress, or worse?  Lesbians who were caught were sent to Bethlehem Hospital (aka Bedlam, the major insane asylum in London) for the rest of their short lives.  Why not find someone at a Regency or Victorian ball to say "yes" to?  All the fun and none of the problems of the past.  

14 hours ago, HurricaneVal said:

Is nobody going to mention that Eric Winter, who played Brian the douchebag adventurer, is married to Roselyn Sanchez in real life? 

He also plays a bit of a douchebag (softened up after the first season on The Rookie.

[AnimeMania]

8 hours ago, JH Lipton said:

On 9/15/2021 at 5:20 AM, DanaK said:

So were Isabel and the lady author, or her husband, actual cousins, albeit distant, or did Isabel just use that as a cover? Either way, eww on the boinking even if they just thought they were cousins. Get past the ew, cousins factor and it was a nice story

I don't think that Isabel was related to either of the Coldwaters.  That was just the first thing that popped into Rachel's head as to why this stranger was in their house.

Not quite, Roarke handed Isabel a letter of introduction when the fantasy first started.

[statsgirl]

The husband said that he hadn't seen his cousin (Isabelle) since she was 3 years old so she was a real person in the fantasy world. No one noticed her 21st century accent.

[Daff]

2 hours ago, statsgirl said:

The husband said that he hadn't seen his cousin (Isabelle) since she was 3 years old so she was a real person in the fantasy world. No one noticed her 21st century accent.

In a quick line of dialogue, husband comments “definitely American”, regarding her amazed blabbering.  She then tones it down. 

[JH Lipton]

On 9/17/2021 at 8:09 AM, AnimeMania said:

Not quite, Roarke handed Isabel a letter of introduction when the fantasy first started.

I forgot that -- thanks.  

[Joimiaroxeu]

The whole "I'm you" thing was giving me a headache.

"You're far too generous with your commas." This would be the last show where I expected to see snark about the Oxford comma.

So if Isabel is going to remain in the past does she lose her current memories because that seems like an unfair advantage for her to have. There are so many ways she could alter the future, especially with investments and betting. Or she could do it by accident.

Quote

There was a barely veiled scene talking about masturbation with the two women fingering the flower in a demonstration of how they liked it best.  I think that was the most sexually explicit thing I've ever seen on TV

It was an eye-opener for sure. I think I would've been more shocked if I hadn't already heard the line about reading something with one hand on another show recently. Only then it wasn't so much a sexual reference because the reading material in question was some relatively boring non-fiction.

[AnimeMania]

3 hours ago, Joimiaroxeu said:

It was an eye-opener for sure. I think I would've been more shocked if I hadn't already heard the line about reading something with one hand on another show recently. Only then it wasn't so much a sexual reference because the reading material in question was some relatively boring non-fiction.

That was the same show.

[Joimiaroxeu]

Quote

That was the same show.

This was not the show I had in mind. When I saw that bit used here I wondered if Hollywood writers go from show to show using the easily identifiable same ideas.