S01.E12: Resurfacing

[Lisin]

Audrey and Nathan investigate when a gust of wind seemingly throws a woman into a wall following an argument, and the FBI agent suspects some children may have telekinetic powers.

[Tabbyclaw]

Approaching the end of the first season. I'll probably end up watching "Spiral" tomorrow (or, more likely, later tonight).

 

This episode has always been kind of a non-entity for me. The A-plot is just a vehicle to get us to the reveal, which I think was less "reveal" and more "confirmation of what we all saw coming," and despite the B-plot being a beautiful source of banter it's pretty flimsy. That said, there are certainly things to like about it. For one thing, I find myself unexpectedly fond of Tracy, who was the heart of the episode despite not actually being the Troubled person of the week. As it does so often, the show found an actress who just fit the part perfectly and made her weariness and worry for her family feel real.

 

And of course, this is the episode with The Story About the Tacks. I've always had some sympathy for Nathan's attitude towards Duke,

at least in the early seasons,

 but this is one of the times when I really identified with him about it. I totally get that feeling of this one thing being a microcosm of everything that someone's done to you, and how hard it gets your back up when they don't recognize how significant it was. Although given how quickly and vividly Duke remembered the incident, he may be more aware of that than he'd like to let on. I really liked the way they wrote his eventual apology, having it happen unsolicited and at a moment when he no longer needed Nathan's goodwill.

[Shanna Marie]

I'm finally getting back to the rewatch. This disc has been sitting in my player for about a month.

 

I'm trying to remember if I saw the big reveal coming before this episode or not (I suppose I only have a few days left to look back at the TWOP forum). I think I started suspecting when James talked about the scar and saw Audrey's reaction, but I still got a shiver when I saw the scar.

 

I get a little irritated with Duke when he held that information about who supplied the parts back for so long, talking about how he didn't have time to tell Nathan, and then he was able to just toss off the names off the top of his head. I guess he was afraid Nathan wouldn't help him if he had the info he needed, but he had plenty of time to tell during the thumbtack conversation, and that gave the bad guys time to get the family and Audrey cornered.

 

But I don't mind too much because the interactions between Nathan and Duke are wonderful. They lucked out with those two actors and the kind of rapport they have that really gives the vibe of a deep-down friendship even when they're being antagonistic. Them playing cards for the confiscated counterfeit money is one of my favorite little moments in the series. However, the thumbtack story gives us yet another timeline issue. We already had Nathan saying he broke his arm and triggered his Trouble in February of 1983, when he was seven. Then this story takes place in spring of third grade, when both Nathan and Duke were eight. That would seem to put it in spring of 1984,

but as we later learn, the Troubles ended in the fall of 1983.

[Elsinore]

But if the Troubles disappear when the Entity does, they should have ended in May or June of 1983, depending on how long Lucy was hiding with her real counterpart.

 

Technically, if they didn't then Jordan shouldn't have been so upset when Audrey in the Barn wasn't a magical cure all.

 

Do we have to spoiler first season type stuff? I assume that everyone posting in this thread has been watching the show long enough to know the grander outlines and anecdotes so they're not really spoilers.

[Shanna Marie]

I think they've retroactively changed their minds about the timeline, since they apparently don't own calendars, never bothered to figure out when, exactly, episodes were taking place until they had one specifically time-stamped (Halloween) during a season that had a countdown, and didn't figure out how to use the Outlook calendar to give them any year they wanted. Plus, I don't think they ever tell the props department much of anything, so random dates get stuck on anything in writing, like missing persons flyers, tombstones or newspaper articles. They've even moved major events around. The date on the Colorado Kid newspaper article is May, but they've since then established the meteor storm as the key date, and that takes place in the fall.

 

So now, I would bet the handwave is that the thumbtack incident took place in 1983 when Nathan and Duke were in second grade and seven years old, since the sledding accident now took place during the Christmas holidays instead of February, and may have taken place a year or more earlier. Otherwise, Nathan would only have had his Trouble for less than a year.