After last week’s events, it appears that Ryan is finally ready to start addressing the deep-seeded issues he has with his father and his childhood. But what transpires in ‘Perspective’ really isn’t about Ryan at all: it’s ultimately about his father, a man who felt he had to put his own wife in a mental institution, something he may have never really recovered from. While ‘Perspective’ spends too much time running the audience in circles about the presence of a spotted not-Wilfred in Ryan’s subconscious, it finds its footing for a brief moment as it begins to develop Ryan’s father as a character.
As part of his therapy with Dr. Blum (Lance Reddick popping in for a guest spot), Ryan goes through EMDR, which basically makes him listen to vibrations to revisit memories of the past. The doctor suggests he needs to do this to be able to let go of the past; but distracted by the still-unanswered question of the drawing he made and why Wilfred was in it, Ryan leads himself down a path of memories, only briskly visiting the one that haunts him the most: the hours after his mother was institutionalized, when his father went back to work like nothing ever happened.
Wilfred’s activity has often proved frivolous this season; it does so again in ‘Perspective’, using a facsimile Wilfred in Ryan’s brain to walk us through the necessary steps to reach the conclusion: Ryan realizes that it broke his father’s heart to send his mother away. Smartly, the moment is brief, not lingering on the emotional climax – although by doing it so quickly (and late in the episode), it almost robs the effectiveness of the moment. This is a memory that Ryan used to define his father throughout his entire life; and in that one moment, that memory was irrecoverably altered.
How? It’s in the title of the episode; part of Ryan being able to heal from the damage his father has done is realize that his father hasn’t done all the damage. Sometimes the things we view as cruel or evil, may really just be guarding something a lot more vulnerable and painful – and part of Ryan’s healing is realizing that, and accepting that just as his father never understood him, he never understood his father.
‘Perspective’ ends quite abruptly after that, a weird moment of Ryan realizing that he wasn’t talking to Wilfred, but a tape. It’s a little unclear whether this is a throwaway joke or something that’s supposed to put everything before it in context; it uses dramatic camera angles to signify some kind of importance – but then again, it could just be part of the joke. I suppose we’ll have to wait until the next episode to find out, but it’s brief presence at the end encapsulates the episode: there are some interesting things I think we’re supposed to pay attention to in ‘Perspective’, but none of it’s given enough importance or time for it to be as effective as it could be.
Grade: B
Other thoughts/observations:
– just as Wilfred buries everything in the yard, Ryan buries everything in his mind. Something to keep in mind moving forward; often, Wilfred’s habits reflect something significant in Ryan’s behavior.
– is it Always Trust Wilfred, or Never Trust Wilfred? The answer’s somewhere in that huge gray, foggy area in between.
– Kristen’s having a first Christmas party for her son… setting for a future episode? Felt like it.
– If I really had to guess (which I hate to do, because I’m often wrong), Wilfred playing a tape of his voice might suggest he did the same with Ryan, hence Dr. Blum noting he said something about a demon of four Matt Damon heads fellating him?
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