While countless films and TV shows feature journeys surrounding grief, few truly frame the majority of the series around it. Today, Shrinking, Severance, and The Way Home are three series that brilliantly balance the plot with nuanced portrayals of grief that allow viewers to connect with the characters in a poignantly healing manner. In The Way Home Season 3, exploring grief comes from identity revelations and five more minutes. It manifests through every storyline and every character, and today, we’re breaking it down through Colton and Alice’s five more minutes.
In her review of the Season 3 finale, our very own Amanda Prahl says it best; “I’ve rarely seen a show that understands this kind of multi-generational love — or the grief that inevitably follows.” The choice that director Grant Harvey and editor Daniel Sadler make to frame the revelations through three different segments allows the five more minutes to stretch out and settle in a place where we can fully grasp the gravitas of the pond’s gift. Because of these scenes, the revelation doesn’t just become a healing point for Alice and Colton, but it later allows Kat to forgive herself, too. It’s the type of narrative that could’ve been overly sentimental if it weren’t so tremendously heartfelt, and because it is, it makes it transcendent to the viewer, too.
Colton’s First Moment of Understanding
As all actors in the show, Jefferson Brown and Sadie Laflamme-Snow are frequently great scene partners, but because of the friendship the series solidified with 70s Colton and Alice, these moments in the 90s grow sweeter. The history and the heart are strengthened more. The respect grows deeper. The goodbyes become even sadder.
A montage opens up The Way Home Season 3 finale with a cover of Coldplay’s “The Scientist” playing, and viewers get confirmation of what we’ve all been pondering: a clear shot in the shed that indicates Colton recognized Alice. The validation that he’s known she’s a time traveler. She’s the same Alice from his past. The scenes first flashback to the two of them singing together in the 70s then cut to a shot of them with 90s Colton singing in the living room. Brown’s performances give us everything we need to understand that all those small what-ifs were answers instead. Every smile is intentional, and every word spoken is full of heart. The music makes the opening scene swell, and even when we see the title card, it doesn’t feel jarring that it cuts to the present day.
Then, when we’re back in the 90s one last time as Alice plays MASH with Kat and Elliot, her emotions are what elevates the conversation at the pond with Colton. She explains the rules of time travel, stating that 90s Alice doesn’t exactly know what 70s Alice does, and she can’t answer the questions he’ll have for her. Respecting that bit of information, Colton instead asks why she’s here, stating that he knows the pond takes its travelers places for a reason. Alice admits that this conversation is the reason, and Colton pleas with her to tell him something more.
Here, Sadie Laflamme-Snow shines brilliantly as Alice maybe understands, somewhere in the back of her mind, that this is all she’ll ever have with adult Colton. (Maybe it isn’t the case, and there might be another time, but it’s still a moment that punctures deep within here.) Because of everything she knows and understands, it allows her to do the one thing we all wish we could do when faced with someone who’s no longer with us. It compels her to tell Colton about how much the time with him and Evelyn had meant to her—special, magic, and so groovy, in her own words. She tearfully says she’ll never forget them and jumps, leaving Colton with the same understanding. And it leads to a conversation with the Landry women.
My Katherine—My Daughter
When we see adult Colton next, he’s talking to Evelyn, battered, defeated, and heartbroken. Jacob’s still missing. Everything hurts a bit too much. He comes to the realization then that the My Katherine photo is of his daughter. Piecing it all together, he runs back into the pond, and there, Alice has returned. Brown’s performance in this scene is so crushing that it makes the revelation that much more heartbreaking.
And in come the waterworks, as Alice says, “Wait, you know who mom is?” And Brown subtly shows us how it all clicks right before he asks the question we’re all hoping for. Alice immediately breaks down, and Colton wraps his arms around her, the same tears trickling down his face. There’s so much heart in this single hug as the next scene shows us Del and Colton’s wedding. So many of the intentional scene shifts in the episode reflect the generational love that makes the Landrys who they are, allowing the scenes to feel that much more relatable.
Back at the pond, Colton opens up everything, admitting that what he told Alice back in 1974 was true. The pond never worked for him again, so the thought of telling Del felt like it’d do no good. He didn’t want to burden her. He didn’t want her to carry one more painful what-if or failed glimmer of hope either. He explains how Jacob went in once, but he never considered the pond because Jacob wasn’t anywhere near it the night he disappeared. Through broken sobs then, Colton begs Alice for the truth—just one thing about the future. He wants to know whether Jacob will return, and Brown’s performance is astonishing in the colossal pain that exudes from him. A father still harboring a plethora of guilt and indescribable pain.
The time Alice is now in is also the year Colton dies, so his hope that he gets to see his boy again is immediately crushed when Alice starts sobbing again, and he realizes what his future will hold, flashing back to a conversation with adult Kat where she tells him she lost her dad.
He accepts his future, but he sees the gift of it all—a chance to play music with his granddaughter—in not one but two eras. So Colton uses this moment to tell Alice to keep singing, and that’s where we get the culmination of all these moments and what they’ve led to. The road leads to Alice again, and he tells her she needs to go. He tells her he loves her, and she says it back, calling him grandpa, making the entire moment that much more indescribable.
Even as I write this, having had almost two weeks to sit with the episode, I still can’t stop crying. Few scenes in TV or film history manage to do this after the initial viewing, and they’re often the ones that gently nudge us to focus on our own present. They’re the scenes that make us think of what we’d say if we had one more chance with our grandparents, friends, parents.
Or, in my case, I think of my own dad. I wonder what it’d be like if time travel was real, full of rules and all. I think about which point the pond or machine or whatever would take me to and how I’d ask him if he really knew I’d end up writing like he always believed I would. I’d ask him if all those trips to the video rental stores made him wonder that I was growing into the biggest little nerd. And then I’d remind him that I love him because when someone’s gone, that’s the part that hurts the most, where all we have is the hope that when we maybe say the words aloud again, they’ll travel to where our loved ones are. Shows like The Way Home and these particular scenes with Alice and Colton feel personal because they’re so beautifully executed they’re going to evoke something different in all of us. From the performances to every little frame, these scenes are special.
All three seasons of The Way Home are now streaming on Hallmark+.
First Featured Image Credit: ©Hallmark+