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The latest episode of Dickinson is ‘Forever – is composed of Nows’, and this particular poem is often interpreted as considering that all of our experiences, even if small and seemingly pointless, all add up to the eventual ‘forever’ of our lives:
Forever – is composed of Nows –
‘Tis not a different time –
Except for Infiniteness –
And Latitude of Home –
From this – experienced Here –
Remove the Dates – to These –
Let Months dissolve in further Months –
And Years – exhale in Years –
Without Debate – or Pause –
Or Celebrated Days –
No different Our Years would be
From Anno Dominies –
The episode starts with Emily suffering from heartbreak or something similar from Sam’s rejection, so her mother takes them all to a spa day, suggested by Emily’s Aunt Lavinia. Here Lavinia is portrayed in a sort of new age parody, which is often played out, but here it was pretty funny. The episode ramps up the humor all the way until the infuriating ending.
There are so many great lines and parodies of new age concepts, like ‘spiritual measles’ or ‘what do doctors really know?’ but perhaps the best was Mr. Dickinson’s angry retort of ‘Don’t you dare try to put this in terms I can understand’. That feels like a personal attack on some people out there, honestly. The spa is mostly a series of ridiculous jokes, like Aunt Lavinia’s idea of the ‘water cure’ which is also a historic word for a kind of torture.
But underlying that is Emily’s loss of confidence and inspiration after Sam’s dilly-dallying on publishing her poem. Her conversation with Sue where she blames her friend for the fallout with Sam because Sue has been too supportive. Of course, Sue doesn’t change her tune and naturally still insists that Emily will obviously be published, but this isn’t what ultimately helps.
The first hit to this problem is the Aunt’s note that ‘forever is right now’ — we know immediately that this will lead to the poem that is the episode’s name. But then we have one of several sweet moments, the first with Lavinia (the sister in this case) being wonderfully supportive. She calls Emily her hero and brave for turning down marriage prospects.
The second hit is when she meets George Gould again and he completely believes in her still, really building back up her confidence. And I laughed out loud at George’s Oregon Trail references, which were all related to the classic game — his girlfriend had dysentery! It was one of the examples of a very funny episode over all.
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The final help is Emily’s mother giving her great advice, telling her that someone worthy of you shouldn’t make you feel sick, it’s not what love is. So Emily feels a lot better for now, but then it all gets upended and Sam shows up again to be very suspicious. What a coincidence that he chooses to publish Emily’s poem right after her father invests in his paper. Now I’m as suspicious of him as ever, and I was furious that Emily gave him all of her poetry. We know of course, that they weren’t lost, but it seems an awful cliffhanger.
On the side-plots side, we see Austin actually at work preparing a will for young hot widow Jane, and the main point is to show that Austin really wants to be a dad. At least we also get a great line from Jane about how ‘adulting is hard’ — which is an accurate statement. Finally we get a bit caught up with the anti-slavery newsletter of Henry’s, which is getting death threats (or ‘polite letters from the South’ as he calls it).
I wonder how important this conflict will end up having with the show, with the spectre of the Civil War looming large over the 19th century. It was an episode that was sweet and funny, and made me incredibly interested in watching the next one so I guess it was well achieved. Two good song choices here, during the montage spa there was ‘Don’t Stop (drip drip drop)’ by MUNNYCAT which felt fun and peppy, and another morose on the dot song, ‘Devil I Know’ by Allie X over the credits right after we see Sam leave with Emily’s poems. Yeah, I get it.
What did you think of this episodes? Start a conversation in the comments section below.
New episodes of Dickinson are available Fridays on Apple TV+.
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