'The Way Home' Series Review
Image Source: Fangirlish
In 2023, mother-daughter team Heather Conkie and Alexandra Clarke brought a new kind of show to the Hallmark Channel. The show was billed as three generations of Landry women healing generational trauma. The twist is that instead of therapy, they enlist the aid of a time-traveling pond. But the pond has a few rules. For some reason, only those directly in the Landry line can use the pond, and the pond will only take them between the present and the past. The future is firmly off-limits. The pond is an excellent allegory because, as a character in the show says, “it’s all about reflection.” The pond can be a gift or a curse but it is a tool of healing as it reveals answers about the family’s history.
The setup of the show is that Alice's parents, Kat and Brady, are separated and getting divorced. Kat has just been fired from her job, and Alice gets suspended from school. Kat has not talked to her mother, Del, for 17 years, but one day a letter arrives from Del, inviting them to come home to Port Haven. The family history is a dark one as Kat’s little brother Jacob goes missing in 1999 and her father Colton dies in a mysterious accident. Del and Kat’s grief fractured their relationship until Kat and Alice arrive in 2023 and Alice discovers the pond. In town, Elliott, Kat’s childhood best friend and now Alice’s science teacher, acts as a guide to the pond as Alice reveals her secret to him during her first trip.
RELATED:
Image Source: The Silver Petticoat Review
The show introduces something usually missing from the channel: stakes. The first season had the trauma of a missing son and brother and a dead father, and a husband. The grief is what carries the show and drives the characters to make choices. Another subtle theme is addiction. Kat and Alice become addicted to the pond after its discovery. Kat especially treats the pond as an escape from reality, even when the times she travels to are dangerous and life-threatening. This naturally causes more trauma and fighting as the women try to heal old wounds. This is actually a strength for the series. It shows that healing is more than one grand gesture that suddenly makes everything okay again. Healing is a process, and the show is not shy about depicting the backsliding that often accompanies that process.
One of the show’s biggest strengths is its music. Music is often a way to tie two time periods together. For example, while Alice is time-traveling in the 90s, Kat’s at a karaoke bar singing Alanis Morissette’s “You Learn”. There’s another strong example where Alice in the present day sings “Superman (It’s Not Easy)” after visiting 2001 right after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The show doesn’t just rely on existing music. It uses original songs, including some folk songs, that are just as important and period defining. The best examples of these are Colton’s love songs to Del, especially “Everything I Wanted” and “Breathe.” Sadie Laflamme-Snow (Alice) and Jordan Doww (Young Colton) are talented musicians, and it’s always a joy to hear them sing. The show creators are so aware of how important music is to the story that every episode title is the name of a song. Earlier this year, The Way Home released a soundtrack featuring the original music and score for fans to relive the series. Adding the music featured in the series makes for a fun summer playlist.
The first season sits right up there with great drama TV. It’s engaging and intense, and there’s no looking at your phone without missing something important. As is the case with many series, the second season introduces new characters but keeps the focus on the family drama. By the third season, the cast has expanded so much, and much of the trauma is resolved, so the plot has wildly departed from the show’s inception. The finales of the third and fourth seasons managed to bring it back home, but both seasons felt like a major detour before arriving at the finale.
Image Source: Cinemablend
With the way the story unfolds, this is a very rewatchable show. Going back to the beginning after having all the answers can make the viewer feel like a time traveler in their own right. The series does an excellent job of foreshadowing. It’s worth noting that the show was cancelled as they were filming the fourth season, so they had to do a quick about-face to wrap up the whole series by the end of the season. The original plan was for five seasons, and the plot was negatively impacted by this decision.
Overall, the show has a great, diverse cast, strongly written female characters, a compelling storyline and plot mechanics, and awesome music. It’s not the greatest show ever written, but given the channel it’s on, Hallmark found its unicorn and then promptly cancelled it. The Way Home is a compelling drama that will leave fans invested in the story long after the main plot has flown the coop.
Rating: 7/10
CultureSlate: Made by humans, for humans.
Please consider supporting our AI-free content via our Patreon page.
READ NEXT:
Source(s): TV Insider
Latest News
Featured
