thoughts on Hindsight, Season One (SPOILERS!!!)

So.  Those of you who know me in real life and/or keep up with me on The Facebook know that I've been going nuts over this show Hindsight on VH1.  To recap: as the series begins, Becca (Laura Ramsey) is about to marry longtime friend Andy (Nick Clifford).  She already has one failed marriage under her belt, but her biggest regret is the loss of her friendship to Lolly (Sarah Goldberg), who hasn't spoken to her in ten years.  Becca has the opportunity to travel back in time to 1995 and set things right; her first order of business is to never marry her first husband, Sean (Craig Horner).  As the first season progresses, the details of Becca's life the first time around are revealed little by little.  Eventually, we learn the following:

Becca and Sean initially got along great and had a lot of fun together.  However, he was an artist who Becca had to work to support.  Because she was responsible for supporting him, she stayed far too long in the wrong job. Meanwhile, Lolly fell in love with her longtime friend Kevin (Steve Talley) but could never bring herself to tell him how she felt.  As Becca's marriage to Sean went downhill, she wound up forming a friendship with Kevin that eventually developed into an affair.  The eventual revelation of the affair was the reason that Lolly stopped speaking to Becca.

In her "redo," Becca leaves Sean at the altar, quits her dead-end job, and gets a job writing for a cutting-edge new magazine.  Becca reveals to Lolly that she is from the future and that the two of them had a falling-out the first time around, but doesn't tell Lolly why.  Becca is initially happy to have the opportunity to "undo" her big mistakes, as well as rectify some smaller disappointments for both herself and others; for example, in one episode, she remembers that her (now former) coworker Lois (Lauren Boyd) was crushed when no one attended her birthday party, so she rallies Lolly, her cousin Phoebe (Liz Holtan), and Andy's then-girlfriend Melanie (Jessy Hodges) to join her at it.  They all have a great time...but Becca is horrified to learn that Phoebe ditched a blind date with the man who Becca knows became her husband the first time around in order to be there.  Not only does she sometimes mess things up without meaning to, but she also is frustrated to learn that just because she knows how things play out doesn't mean that she will always be able to change them; for instance, the first time around, Lolly broke Becca's brother Jamie's (John Patrick Amedori) heart, sending him on a downward spiral.  Even though Becca tells Lolly that things ended badly the first time around, and even though Lolly believes her, Lolly still pursues things with Jamie. 

Sometimes it seems that nothing Becca does matters; Phoebe meets her husband anyway, and it seems that one way or another, things weren't going to turn out well for Jamie.  Sometimes, however, her actions lead to HUGE changes: as a result of a series of events set in motion by Becca, Andy, Becca's future second husband, marries Melanie, the girl who the first time around broke up with him because of his failure to commit.  Sean never succeeded as an artist before; now, not being married to Becca frees him up to meet a woman whose connections in the art world help his career.  Becca encourages Lolly to tell Kevin how she feels about him; she does, he tells her that he loves her like a sister, and Lolly actually eventually gives Kevin and Becca her blessing to date each other.  It seems that things really are going to turn out for the better, for almost everyone, this time.

Except then Lolly figures out that something must have happened between Kevin and Becca before, and Becca tells her the truth.  And Lolly tells her that their friendship is over, and Becca is confused: she fixed it!  She did things right this time!  Lolly tells her it doesn't matter: it still happened.  Becca still has it inside her to do something like that.  She's a bad person.  She can't fix that.  And Becca runs back to the elevator that allowed her to time travel in the first place, screaming that she wants to go back. 

Stop for a minute and wrap your head around that.  Imagine that you have gone back in time and made things better for almost everyone, including yourself.  You avoided the failed marriage.  You left the dead end job.  It maybe wasn't even so bad that you had an affair the first time around, because the guy you cheated with was the guy meant for you.  Your second husband-to-be was better off with his old girlfriend all along, and you gave him the push he needed to commit to her before it was too late.  Some things you did didn't matter, and you couldn't save everyone, but for the most part, the world is a better place because you time traveled.

Except you couldn't fix the one thing you most wanted to fix.  And the person you love most in the world has pointed out that you'll never fix YOU.  So...do you stay in this new, better world and try to move forward, knowing that there are things you will never, ever change no matter how hard you try?  Or do you do what Becca does and run back to the time machine, begging to go back to the future that is worse in some ways, but where at least you don't have the burden of knowing everything and, in some cases, hurting people all over again no matter how hard you try not to?

The episode ends on a cliffhanger, so we don't know yet whether Becca gets to travel back to the original 2015, whether she's stuck in this new 1995, or something else entirely.  But the image of Becca in that elevator screaming and crying that she wants to go back is POWERFUL.  Apparently, knowing the future is painful.  And maybe even if we did get do-overs in real life, and maybe even if we did get to change some things for the better, we still wouldn't be happy.

We'd still just be us.