S03.E09: Sarah

[Tabbyclaw]

Duke and Nathan are sent back in time to 1955, and Audrey is the only one who realizes that their actions are having serious consequences in present-day Haven.

 

[Elsinore]

Oh, Sarah.

 

I really wish someone would have told ER there was no need for a 50's movie star accent. I think she only spoke in a normal tone of voice in that last scene before the boys go back.

 

I go back and forth on this one, since the post episode discussion on whether or not Nathan was right almost killed my love of the fandom. On the other hand, it's nice to see one of the previous Entities being fleshed out so much. I want a similar Lucy episode (sans the moral backlash of Nathan/Lucy shenanigans because no) in season 5.

[BlueJay81]

I think ER's portrayal of Sarah is the thing that makes me dislike this episode the most,  It wasn't very good IMO, too much of a caricature. Plus the fact that I expected and hoped for more backstory of the other characters and the whole Sarah and Duke's grandfather thing was so random, just didn't work for me but I guess that wasn't the point of the episode. Regards the whole Nathan thing

The whole one night stand thing goes against his established personality. I remember in Ball and Chain, Nathan criticizing Duke for his one night stand with 'Helena', I guess in this case they are pushing the whole destiny/fate thing but it still didn't work for me with regards to Nathan's personality.

 

I also hope to see Lucy, because the glimpses of her we've seen make her seem very interesting. Plus all the important stuff seems to have happened in 1983. It may come at the very end of the series though.

[Tabbyclaw]

Sure it's affected, but I find the accent weirdly charming.  O'course, I find almost everything Emily Rose does charming.

 

Time-travel episodes in non-time-travel shows are always such a weird combination of clever and contrived. And the contrivance is obviously allowable and even necessary in a stable time loop, but it still rankles my storytelling heart. I also tend to grow weary of references to the "future" in time-travel episodes, but the Beatles/the Who exchange between Duke and Roy makes me laugh every time.

[Shanna Marie]

The Terminator is one of my all-time favorite movies and I'm a sucker for time travel, so I really can't resist this one.

 

I don't think the Sarah voice and accent are all that bad in this one. It fits the character pretty well (and it makes me want to meet the real Sarah). When it doesn't work is

later in the season finale when we revisit Sarah, and it seems like she doesn't quite manage to recapture the character

.

 

One thing I love is how well Nathan blends into 1955. There's no fish-out-of-water stuff for him. Just give him a hat and he fits right in. Even his keys work in the jail (that was a nice touch with him realizing he needs to change the locks in his time if his keys work in 1955). I get a little misty-eyed when he meets Baby Chief. Meanwhile, Duke is a total fish-out-of-water who's constantly making future pop-culture references and not fitting in. I've always thought there was something rather unworldly about Nathan, where he's a bit out of time in his own time. I'm actually rather surprised that they didn't depict any dilemma about him staying with Sarah in 1955, but he was good about being focused on not changing the past. I think most shows would have made that choice be a big deal, but he never acted like he had a choice at all.

 

It was good to see the Chief again in the alternate future, though I wonder how he managed to survive after Nathan's death. You'd think that Nathan dying would have kicked his Trouble up a notch or two. One thing I found rather amusing: I have a friend in real life who's named Nathan and who calls his father "The Chief," though it's in the Navy sense, not the police sense. The way the Chief looked in this episode is almost exactly the way I imagine this friend will look in about a dozen years. His hair, beard and facial structure are very similar, just a little greyer than my friend is now. I was having weird double-takes through the whole episode every time the Chief appeared.

 

The timeline does get wonky because we know this is taking place maybe a couple of weeks after Halloween in the present, yet it's August in the past, and yet Duke in the present comments on his father's birthday, and in the past Roy is writing a birthday card to Simon. My mental handwave is that Roy was writing the card early in case something happened to him, but it actually seems like that in spite of writing a Halloween episode, the writers totally forgot that these episodes therefore had to be taking place in November and ended up just setting them around the time they were shooting in the summer.

[anstar]

Given the DOB shown for the Colorado Kid in one episode (I can't remember the date now) I think I had it calculated out that the events in Sarah couldn't have taken place any earlier than December, which seemed like a bad time of year to have sex in a convertible on the beach in Maine, but then I remember that I'm not supposed to think too hard about the timeline, especially using props as a guide.

[MarkHB]

Given the DOB shown for the Colorado Kid in one episode (I can't remember the date now) I think I had it calculated out that the events in Sarah couldn't have taken place any earlier than December, which seemed like a bad time of year to have sex in a convertible on the beach in Maine, but then I remember that I'm not supposed to think too hard about the timeline, especially using props as a guide.

December is a time when it's unlikely the beach will be overrun with tourists, and we Mainers are hardy folk ;)

[Shanna Marie]

The 1955 portions of "Sarah" were set in August (unless they got a lot of props horribly wrong) because on the obituary and in Roy's journal the date was given. Those dates were tied to the plot and those pages were focused on in tight, lingering shots multiple times, so I'm a little more inclined to trust those than the random "missing" poster that was only briefly seen. Things do look a lot more August-like than December-like in the way people are dressed.

 

You'd just think that they'd have already planned the "Sarah" episode when they were doing "Real Estate," and could have made the poster fit the timeline instead of apparently throwing on random dates or using some crew member's birthday, or whatever they did.

 

That Halloween episode really screwed them in giving a firm date stamp, especially combined with the countdown. That set the rest of the season in November. I guess they were sort of hanging a lantern on the fact that they're filming in summer, regardless of when the episode is taking place, when they had older Stuart talking about it being past the season for tomatoes. Or would that be true of August in Maine? In Texas we get a second growing season in the fall when we could probably still be getting tomatoes in early November (I know I spent Thanksgiving helping my mom deadhead her rose bushes, which were still blooming), but I somehow doubt that's true of Maine.

[MarkHB]

Tomatoes are a PITA to grow in Maine, as our season is short enough that they have to be started indoors.  That being said, I wouldn't think of August as "past the season" at all; we don't usually see a killing frost until October.  For plant mavens, in my area we're Zone 5b.

[Shanna Marie]

I guess it's just one of those things where you have to handwave the weather and figure that Marian Caldwell's having a good day, since they have to film in the summer, regardless of when the show is taking place. Season two was apparently a bad weather year, and that's when the show was actually taking place in the summer, but they were always in the rain and wearing coats. Then season three, which should have been mostly in October and November, was all warm and sunny most of the time. When it's cold but on the show it's not supposed to be, they torture the actors by making them go coatless or in light jackets (like the season 2 premiere when they had to keep brushing away the snow between shots), but they don't seem to go the other way around and make them wear coats when it's warm but when it's supposed to be cool on the show.