Spoilers abound.
1.) Unstuck in Time
At their core, time travel stories are about atonement and retribution. From time loop comedies (Russian Doll, Palm Springs) to timeline-hopping adventures (Time Bandits, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure), from the “scientifically accurate” bloats (Interstellar, Primer) to the reality-altering thrillers (Looper, 12 Monkeys), characters, unstuck in time, confronted with their pasts, and even sometimes their futures, have to learn how to reckon with themselves in order to grow or otherwise risk destruction. There’s no real way to change the past. Any attempt to do so will only end in further suffering. The best we can do is learn from it.
Certainly, this is the case with “The Fifty Year Night,” written by Kenny Byerly and directed by Andy Coyle. Reeling from her grounding at the end of the previous episode, Hilda tries to find ways to occupy herself while being confined to her apartment. Then she notices something strange is going on with her neighbor, Mr. Ostenfeld. After a quick investigation, by which I mean a blatant invasion of privacy, she discovers he’s found a way to go back in time, to a fateful night in his youth, where he let the girl of his dreams get away because he was too timid to pursue her. The set itself bears echoes of Back to the Future and The Shining.
As we all know, Hilda is chaos incarnate. While old Mr. Ostenfeld is content to watch the night unfold in the company of his other selves, she immediately means to alter the events. Her intervention sets the plot into motion and practically breaks apart the world around her.
That being said, “The Fifty Year Night” has clear pity for Mr. Ostenfeld. He’s an elderly man now, easily in his seventies or eighties, and he’s obsessed with one single night from fifty years ago. He lives alone. Not like, comfortably alone, but depressingly so. His apartment is filled with stacks of a single issue of a single magazine, because it is that magazine that allows him to travel back. This one event has so overcome him, so consumed him that his life has turned unobserved and miserable.
His obsession has hindered him, “The Fifty Year Night” points out, has held him back. It’s not for nothing then that we don’t even see him leave his apartment until the end, after the story’s wrapped and Hilda’s done a royal job at messing up the space-time continuum.
1.) Unstuck in Time
“The Fifty Year Night,” written by Kenny Byerly and directed by Andy Coyle, makes for an interesting entry in the time travel lexicon. For one thing, we’re not seeing Hilda’s story play out, but rather that of her neighbor, the elderly Mr. Ostenfeld. Like most time travel stories, the episode is messy and characters have to constantly explain what’s going on to keep us up to speed with the new narrative developments and complex plotting. At least the creators know to keep the action moving and the characters doing something during these sequences, unlike some big franchise filmmakers who feel the need to stop the momentum for more exposition.
You would expect a time travel story to provide a reflection on what a character’s going through. Whether it forces them to confront a previous decision or throws them into a situation that echoes a current predicament. Precisely because “The Fifty Year Night” is someone else’s story, I’m not sure if the episode successfully balances its themes and observations. It centers on Mr. Ostenfeld. He’s stuck in the past, on the night he allowed the woman of his dreams to slip away. This cripples him. This obsession prevents him from growing, from living.
Hilda, on the other hand, still reels from her punishment at the end of the last episode. She doesn’t think her actions were enough to warrant her consequences and tries to find loopholes to exploit her confinement. I suppose you could argue her brash decisions lead to increased problems in the past that carry through to the future. And with all the time jumping, she’s eventually forced to face herself, but I think that’s a bit of a stretch.
Continued below“The Fifty Year Night” is no less compelling though. I like some of the touches they added to the time travel mechanation, especially how the past versions of characters, the one who have already traveled back in time, still run around. So we get a table of Mr. Ostenfelds and several Hildas. I do java more questions about this and the lives of the new versions, but that’s not important to the story. We’re not trying to solve a puzzle here.
1.) Unstuck in Time
Eventually, every fantasy series decides it’s time for a time travel story. From superheroes to Harry Potter, Buffy to Adventure Time, there comes a point where the creators decide they want to goof around with the timeline. Actually, I love these plots. I love watching the artists involved wind up a bunch of knots for themselves and then try to figure out how to untangle them.
It’s also fun to see how these various outlets visualize the concept of time travel. You have the fast rewind from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. There’s those suit things from Avengers: Endgame. The countless number of wormholes that loop and twist on top of each other.
Hilda goes for a three-color layered effect, liking looking at a 3D picture without the blue and red glasses. However, the actual act of time traveling isn’t where “The Fifty Year Night,” written by Kenny Byerly and directed by Andy Coyle, flexes. We see more of this in how it deals with the multiple realities the characters have created for themselves.
Namely that they don’t.
Here, anytime a character travels to the past, they leave an imprint of themselves behind. That trip becomes part of the timeline, therefore multiple versions of the same character run around at the exact same time. There’s only one universe, Hilda seems to say.
Mr. Ostenfeld, Hilda’s neighbor, whom she follows into the past, whose time travel story this actually is, is content to watch the evening passively. He and his other selves, they tell people they’re brothers, crowd into a booth in the corner and collectively wallow in their memories.
Hilda, however, Hilda, chaos personified, arrives, and immediately starts messing with the world around her. While the animators create clones of Mr. Ostenfeld, they take the time to visually differentiate between the various Hildas. It serves the dual purpose of identifying which Hilda we’re following, the past or present or future Hilda, as well as helping us quickly understand at what point each Hilda is in during her narrative arc. This is especially beneficial as the timeline collapses around them, and each Hilda bears her own motivation and desire to deal with the situation.
1.) Unstuck in Time
Behind its bright exterior, Hilda is filled with real pain. Also, probably because it’s so beautifully animated, it manages to get away with its share of disturbing images. The first season was already adept at mood and atmosphere, but the filmmakers have grown even stronger at balancing their tones and emotions now. This is none more evident than in “The Fifty Year Night,” written by Kenny Byerly and directed by Andy Coyle.
It’s not just the sad, lonely man who spends his free time traveling to the past to relive one magical night.
It’s not just the self-hatred and disappointment a mom at the end of her rope experiences after issuing punishments she never wanted to make, but not knowing what else she could have done in that situation.
It’s not just the old woman who has lived a good existence and is proud of what she’s accomplished, who suddenly finds an alternate version of herself in her living room, blissfully married, looking like they live out the Up couple’s happiest moments, only to watch it end in a snap.
It’s not just the monstrous worm that pursues present Hilda, with its empty socket eyes and mouth, tearing through Trolberg in an attempt to devour the stuff that’s upsetting the timeline, all the stuff that shouldn’t exist anymore in an effort to stabilize reality.
Continued belowIt’s all of that. All that pain. All those mounds of missed opportunities and wrong decisions. I’m not sure if “The Fifty Year Night” fully reflects all its themes and ideas, but the episode provides enough complex emotions and situations that what the characters experience feel authentic while the plot turns nail biting.
1.) Unstuck in Time
If time travel stories are about exploiting loopholes, then Hilda might be its preëminent ambassador. Enough so that even Alfur’s impressed.
She’s confined to her house for “The Fifty Year Night,” written by Kenny Byerly and directed by Andy Coyle, after having been grounded at the end of the previous episode. Her friends are fully prepared to rat her out if she violates the rules, but that doesn’t stop her from looking to get out of it.
For as fun as this episode ends up, I’m not sure if the story’s events fully reflect on the morals Hilda learns. The actual time travel in the story doesn’t have much to do with her, until she sticks her nose into it. At its core, time travel is about atonement and retribution, both of which Hilda does need to come figure out, though Byerly has to sort of force a contrivance into the narrative to make the ending work.
You could argue her actions and decisions led to a rift in the space-time continuum, unleashing this monstrous and horrifying time worm on Trolberg. But events like this happen to her all the time. At the same time, I did like how the time travel plot focused on someone else.
Yes, Hilda sees her shortcomings through this device. She reaches an epiphany. But to get there feels so jumbled and messy, so all over the place. The creators threw everything they could at the screen, but I’m not entirely convinced they put it back together completely.
Guess I’ll have to go watch it again.
