Stasis
Episode 3 of Tales From The Loop sees us follow May as we peer into her life and learn more about this quiet girl. She heads down to the lake with her Father and while she looks at the tranquil water, contemplates just why she can’t hold onto that feeling of falling in love. She find a strange contraption in the water and decides to take it home with her.
Discontent with her current life, May decides to head off for a walk with the boy she saw earlier in the episode – Ethan. As they talk, May requests to see his foot which is badly swollen. Despite them getting on well together, Jakob (who is really Danny, remember) calls for her and distracts them from their conversation.
They do meet up again later that day though. In her garage, Ethan and May talk about her hobby of taking items apart and he enthusiastically comments how interesting this is. In particular, she continues to tinker with the contraption she found down by the lake. They then head to her room where Ethan comments on the drawing Jakob made of her. Things are awkward at first but the two start to grow closer. As they start kissing and things get heated, May’s Mum bursts in and sees the two of them together.
That evening, May manages to get the strange device to work and after snapping the silver bracelet on her wrist, everything in time appears to freeze. After testing it at home, May heads to school and shows Ethan, with them both wearing similar rings as a way of “being together” during this frozen moment in time.
Out in the street they take advantage of everything being frozen and make love right in the middle of the road. May heads to the top of a car afterwards and tells Ethan that this moment can last forever, with the duo sharing in this eternal splendor.
They spend over a month like this, in each other’s company but when the time comes to switch the machine back on it doesn’t work. As May looks around the neighbourhood, she finds her Mother midway through having sex, cheating on her husband. It’s something she can’t stomach seeing and ironically echoes her own situation with Jakob and Ethan.
Outside, she and Ethan get into a fight and she calls him a cripple. It’s a horrid thing to say and something that sees him leave in silence as she heads back inside the house to mull over what she’s done. Now all alone, May is overcome with fear, given she hates being alone, and subsequently ends up wandering around to find him.
She eventually does find Ethan up on the tower but unmoving, she realizes he’s taken his bracelet off. Unwilling to be along, she does the same and their momentarily lapse in time is over. Unfortunately it’s too late, and he walks away.
As May and Ethan return to their familiar lives, they run into one another on the street they made love. As they talk, Ethan recites the Chinese he learnt from her but it’s no good, that fleeting moment of happiness is gone and they walk away on their separate paths.
With beautiful themes around forbidden love, time and happiness, Tales From The Loop delivers a really interesting and well written episode that stands out as one of the best here. Seeing May discontent with her real life and come alive during the time freeze is a great bit of character development, while seeing her Mother cheating on her husband echoes exactly what she’s doing with Ethan. This particularly important to note as well given Ethan asks her to break up with Jakob and she dances around the idea.
The exploration of fleeting moments of happiness, played out in this “what if” scenario of time freezing, prove that you can’t dwell on the past and have to make the most of time, even if everything is frozen around you. If there’s one lesson to take from this it’s to make the most of every second of your life and that is certainly a great lesson to take from this excellent episode.
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Episode Rating
(4.5)
Mr Pig was pretty accurate. I don’t think the entire episode was garbage though because it’s not like any episode so far had a happy ending. It was already hinted that Mei might have bitch qualities on the 2nd episode when Jakob smiled and waved at her and she looked away as if he didn’t even exist. Mei is an attention whore, plain and simple. You don’t really notice it until she BSes Ethan about breaking up with Jakob. On the second episode when all the kids were hanging out, she likely ignored Jakob because her friends were there and he’s not exactly the popular type. Just the same as on the third episode, she ditched hanging out with Ethan the moment her friends arrived nearby because of his foot. People will say “you don’t know that’s why she left”, but I do because the moment her and Ethan got into an argument the first thing to come to her mind was to call him a cripple.
At the very end, she still manages to be a bitch and actually brings up a promise that was broken because of her, as if a person should stick to an abusive relationship. What really sucked in this episode was Ethan actually trying to reconcile as if he had done anything wrong. It’s almost as if Mei could have chopped his foot off while he was asleep and when he gets upset and leaves her the only thing that matters if that he broke his promise. HOW STUPIDLY RIDICULOUS.
I hope in further episodes Ethan finds someone who really cares about him and Mei loses her crap. Hopefully her device no longer works because to be honest, I’m surprised she didn’t push Ethan over the side of that banister while he was frozen. She seems like psychopath with adorement issues. She’s not afraid of being physically alone, she’s afraid of people not worshipping the ground she walks on and constantly making her feel like she is on cloud nine. She’d likely spend her whole life, just like her mom, just sleeping with people until the next person shows interest. To be honest, I had high hopes for this episode and from the moment she hesistated about breaking up with Jakob, everything went left.
What I thought could have happened was that her and Ethan got pregnant in the time freeze and only find out once they unfroze time. Her parents would have been a problem, so her and Ethan go back to frozen time to wait out the pregnancy. When it’s time to give birth, they unfreeze time because the baby wouldn’t have a bracelet on their own and plus they need a hospital. Then they come back to her parents and somehow have to explain how they had a whole baby in 24 hours and they won’t be believed until there is a DNA test. That would have been amazing but no, instead we just got Mei being a bitch for a whole episode. I should have known this episode would be screwed, seeing as Jakob isn’t really Jakob in the first place, and who knows where they put Loretta.
Beautiful my ass, this was utter garbage.
Selfish bitch with no regard for the people around her in her life goes on a whiny rampage about how life isn’t fair coz she deson’t feel “doki doki” all the time. At a friends wedding party, she makes it all about herself as she uses this opportunity to flirt with an unsuspecting loner, and brazenly leaves said party with this guy in toe. Along the way, she notices the guy is club-footed, and immediately draws attention to it, pressuring him to talk about it and manipulating the loner into close quarters. Her family shows up, concerned for her sudden disappearance, and she leaves him alone in the woods.
Later, they meet again while her parents are out and tinker about in the garage with plot device, until loner asks to see her room. Selfish bitch does not batter an eyelid, and quickly drags loner into her bedroom. After a brief moment of awkwardness from the loner, selfish bitch presses the attack with a predatory look – until her mother returns home and walks in on them. Scowling, selfish bitch shouts at her mother to leave, who steadfastly refuses and the loner, feeling guilty leaves.
Some time later, plot device reveals it’s power, and selfish bitch’s first thoughts are to use said plot device to get her own way. The next day, selfish bitch drags the loner into a quiet area of their school, coaxes him to put on a bracelet, and stops times with plot device. There is a very brief moment of elation until selfish bitch cajoles the loner into doing everything she wants to do, including very brief, very awkward sexual play on main street.
The loner remains her captive for approximately a months worth of distilled time, looting the town, breaking into peoples houses and generally sating all selfish bitch desires until she gets bored and decides to end things. The loner suggests the return to “normal life” and ask selfish bitch to break up with her current boyfriend , which she half-heartedly agrees to, then quickly covers when questioned.
Unfortunately plot device is broken, in the same manner as originally found (no prizes to guess why it ended up in the ocean to begin with) and the couple scout the town to search for a replacement part. During the search, selfish bitch discovers her mother is the same kind of cheating bitch she is, and hypocritically is disgusted by it. The loner walks in, makes light comment before noticing who the trysted couple is, and is vented on by selfish bitch. After a failed apology, the loner walks out selfish bitch stalks him and calls him a cripple, the straw breaks and the loner walks off.
Alone, selfish bitch starts to panic, and gives chase. Selfish bitch catches up with the loner, but is too late as he has already rejoined the frozen world by removing his bracelet. Seems he realized it is better to be a statue forever than trapped in a world with no one other than a selfish bitch. Not noticing at first, selfish bitch switches on crocodile tears and spouts a tirade of scripted nonsense that serves no purpose other than to convince the loner than she is not at fault, but the act drops the moment she notices the fallen bracelet.
Switching off plot device, the world is set in motion again, and the loner leaves.
Untold time passes, and the two chance meeting on the same street they once made the beast with two back on. Selfish bitch stares at the loner, who does not notice at first, but gradually breaks under that destructive gaze, and begins to cross towards selfish bitch. Selfish bitch immediately runs off, making herself the victim. The loner attempts to forgive, but selfish bitch remains forever the selfish bitch and walks off.
As stated initially, this episode was garbage. Selfish bitch learned nothing throughout the experience, and likely returned to her safe, if unfulfilling life from beforehand. The loner, used and abused is now even more closed off to the world. Seriously, who wrote this trash? Did they just take a page from my ex’s diary?