“The Way Home” Episode ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’ Recap: Where One Heart Mends, Another is Broken
The Landry women continue to navigate the choppy waters of family history in Season 2 of Hallmark’s The Way Home. In this week’s episode, “Wake Me Up When September Ends”, Kat (Chyler Leigh) finds an unlikely ally, Alice (Sadie Laflamme-Snow) reevaluates her impact on the past, and Del (Andie MacDowell) faces a decision of making friends or foe with new local.
A Heart, Broken | The Landry family home basks in golden sunshine, welcoming Alice to its front door. Alice looks inside of the house to find her mother when she was a teenager, a younger Del, Colton (Jefferson Brown), and little Jacob (Remy Smith) gathering around the dining table for Del’s beloved roast chicken dinner. Kat (Alice Hook) signals to Alice to come inside and join them. To her delight, everyone is thrilled to see her and they usher her to a seat. This is the happiest Alice has seen her family in a long time since Jacob disappeared… Yet, Jacob is sitting across from her at the table. Has Alice gone back to 1999?
Jacob takes a photo of Alice and Kat with his Polaroid camera and it prints off an image of what looks to be water. When asked what he’s been up to, he loses the color in his face and tells Alice that he’s drowning. Dizzy with confusion, Alice begins to look around the table as Colton, Del and Kat question her desire to be with them. Suddenly, Jacob is unable to see Alice even though she hasn’t left his line of site. “What are you waiting for Alice?” Jacob asks her menacingly. She shudders awake to find herself in bed in present day.
Alice’s nightmare has left her shaken with fear. She decides to skip out on seeing a film at the cinema with her father, Brady (Al Mukadam), to take a trip to the past. When Alice arrives, she finds teenage Eliot (David Webster) working on homework in the barn clubhouse. It’s October of 2001, closely following the 9-11 attack in New York City, and an entire year has passed since her last visit. Unable to catch Kat before she leaves with Brady for town, Alice heads home to the present with a plan to visit again soon. After all, there must be a reason why the pond has taken her to this exact time period in her family’s life.
Sure enough, the pond had a plan! Alice learns that her mother and father were engaged in the fall of 2001. First chance she gets, Alice rushes back to catch the momentous occasion for her parents amidst their youthful love. It’s late in the evening when the eager daughter arrives at the front porch of the Landry home. “Did I miss it? Is my mom still here” she asks young Eliot barely catching her breath from her dash across the field. Eliot informs Alice that Kat is still there with Brady (Siddharth Sharma), giving no indication that a proposal has occurred.
From the doorway, Alice watches Kat and Del as they navigate the tension sat between them on the couch. Kat had no intention to visit her mother anytime soon after leaving the previous year, but Brady insisted. Unwilling to face the conflict, Kat keeps her eyes towards the television to watch the 9-11 benefit concert for New York City. Del reaches out and rests a hand briefly on her daughter’s shoulder before Brady pulls her into the kitchen. While out of earshot from Kat, Brady informs Del that his reason for bringing Kat home to her is to ask for Kat’s hand in marriage.
Eliot’s heart breaks when he overhears the exchange between Brady and Del and rushes out the door. Alice chases after him, feeling terrible about how it’s impacting her friend. She finds him crumbled on the ground near the fence that lines the front yard. “Being surprised is so much worse than knowing what’s going to happen… Am I always going to feel this way?! Can I have any future at all?” Eliot asks Alice through tears. Alice does her best to console him, but he isn’t satisfied with her answer that he’ll be okay. Alice begins to consider whether or not she should continue to honor her pact to keep details of the future from Eliot.
A New Confidant | Kat tries to make sense of photographs taken of the pond that she found taped underneath a desk at home. She shares them with Eliot (Evan Williams), but he is just as perplexed as she is. Did Jacob capture the polaroids? If so, why? More importantly, could this be a clue as to why her brother was erased from Landry family records and Port Haven history?
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Even though Eliot and Kat made a pact to steer clear of any talk about the past, Eliot finds himself encouraging his best friend to keep seeking answers. He offers to look through his father’s collection of nautical records to find anything that might relate to Jacob and his travels to England to deliver a ship for the war back in 1814.
Feeling recharged from the conversation with Eliot, Kat heads back to 1814 in search for more information on Jacob’s life in the past. As she is walking through the woods, she hears gunshots. In a small clearing in the forest, Kat happens upon a group of men conversing around a fire. She quickly recognizes Thomas Coyle (Kris Holden-Ried), the man who shot her weeks before, and Cyrus Goodwin (Tim Post). Syrus accuses Thomas of stealing goods he was meant to oversee as they were shipped to the British. Thomas arrogantly denies Syrus’s accusations.
Suddenly, Kat finds a hand across her mouth to keep her silent. It is Susanna Augustine (Watson Rose), who quietly takes her away from the group and to her shop in town. In a candle lit room far from the dangers that Susanna consistently alludes to, she tells Kat that she is a healer with a special, possibly magical, connection to nature.
Her gift is what helped her to mend Kat’s injury. The nearly fatal gunshot left no trace of a scar due to an herb balm Susanna applied to it. Susanna goes on to tell her that Jacob is the only person in the world who hasn’t shunned her for her peculiarity.
Susanna’s vulnerability with Kat leads her to disclose the magic of the pond and her ability to travel back and forth between timelines. She shares that Jacob went missing twenty-four years ago because he had entered the pond from their timeline and ended up in Port Haven centuries before. It is clear in this moment that the wall between Kat and her brother’s fiancé has fallen and behind it she has found a sister and confidant.
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The Farmland Lease | Brady volunteers to help Del with her new neighbor’s break of the lease of Landry farmland. Reluctant at first, Del accepts her son-in-law’s offer. Brady rolls up his lawyer sleeves and gets to work scouring the contract for any bind to the original lease. To Del’s benefit, Brady discovers that Sam Bishop (Rob Stewart) is contractually obligated to honor the lease with her. During a meeting with Sam, he all but threatens to report Brady for practicing outside of his jurisdiction. Sam, being a lawyer as well, fully understood that he was bound to the lease that had just been extended before he moved to Port Haven.
It seems he had just hoped that Del wouldn’t enforce it. Brady doesn’t back down under Sam’s threat. He instead reminds both Sam and Del that any agreement they might make now or over the next five years is null and void due to details of the lease. With that, Sam complies without further protest. However, it doesn’t take long before Del meets with Sam on her own and tells him that she won’t be enforcing the rules of the lease. Of course, Sam takes her up on her offer, and in exchange, he asks her to board his horse for him for payment.
Come What May | Back in 2001, Kat peers through a window of Port Haven’s café, The Point, and watches as her father performs “Come What May” from Moulin Rouge to propose to Kat with the help of her closest friends, Eliot, Nick (Samuel Braun) and Monica (Monique Jasmine Paul). The song comes to a close and Brady takes a knee to pop the question. He doesn’t get the response from Kat that he was expecting, however. Kat is embarrassed and overwhelmed by the spectacle. “I’m sorry everyone… This is too much,” says Kat. She walks away, leaving Brady kneeling on the checkered floor of the coffee shop.
Brady takes off after Kat, finding her at the boat dock. Being in Port Haven after the loss of her little brother and death of her dad has made the town she once loved a source of pain. When Kat explains to Brady that the town is no longer her home but he is, Brady ensures her that they will build a life together and “face the tough stuff side by side.” “It’s you and me against the world, Katherine Landry,” he tells her. A smile breaks through Kat’s tears. Brady kneels once more and she accepts the ring.
Catch Hallmark’s original series The Way Home on Sundays at 9/8c, and join us for PopWire’s WitchSlapped Aftershow immediately after on the PopWire YouTube channel for a deep dive into each episode as Season 2 unfolds.