The Time Traveler’s Wife – Season 1 Episode 5 Recap & Review

Meeting the Parents

Episode 5 of The Time Traveler’s Wife begins with 28-year-old Henry meeting up with Gomez for a beer. The men are trying to become friends, but Gomez has an outburst when Henry assumes that he likes Clare.

Later, Clare takes Henry to meet her family, and things get off to a rocky start. Henry wants to see the clearing where he’ll meet with Clare’s younger self in the future, but Clare hesitates. She still doesn’t see him as her Henry, and that was their special space.

Henry then meets Clare’s sister Alicia, whom Clare has already told about Henry’s time traveling gene.

Right before lunch, Henry disappears. He reappears in another time and gets beat up until Gomez arrives to save him.

After a few drinks, Gomez admits that he’s in love with Clare. Henry thinks Gomez might want him out of the picture, but Gomez tells him he’s his best friend. It would break his heart to lose Henry. Before Henry disappears again, Gomez tells him to make a note of today’s date and to tell Gomez’ past self.

Henry returns to Clare’s house, cut and bruised from the fight. He and Clare try to make excuses for his injuries at lunch, but Clare’s brother Mark sees holes in their story. Clare gets angry at this point and yells at her brother, as well as her parents. She even lets slip that she’ll be marrying Henry.

Clare then runs to the clearing, hoping that an older Henry might appear there and comfort her. Henry realizes this and asks Alicia to help him. He shows up to the clearing with a haircut so that he’ll look more like his older self. He goes to embrace Clare.

She tells him he asked her a question in this clearing once before (if she would marry him), and her answer is yes. She also apologizes for how she’s treated him, claiming she loved him from the moment she saw him in the library. They kiss in the middle of the clearing.

The Episode Review

Finally, Clare seems to accept Henry for who he is in her own timeline, rather than for the person he will become. It’s a touching moment they share in the clearing, but I’m not totally convinced of Henry’s feelings for Clare. He simply doesn’t have as much history with her. It seems that he likes her, but that he’s mostly going through with their relationship because he knows it will happen anyway.

Overall, this was one of the more enjoyable episodes, and it delivered the show’s most hilarious moment yet (all thanks to the inquiries of Clare’s brother, Mark).

With just one more episode left, I’m expecting to see a rush forward into Henry and Clare’s relationship. We know that something dangerous happens to Henry, supposedly when he’s around 40, because he has never seen himself older than that. It doesn’t look like things are going to end well for the time traveler, but maybe there’s still a way for the characters to get the happy endings they deserve.