Every review of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart praises how beautiful it looks, and we are beginning to think that it is all there is to it. Too much time is being spent establishing the atmosphere and very little time on the actual flow of the story. We desperately want to like this series, but it is making that very hard. For now, let us go through the recap of this episode.
Spoiler Alert
What Is Alice Doing At Agnes Bluff?
When episode 4 of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart starts, our primary protagonist is nowhere to be found on Thornfield. She has gone without saying anything and has left only a flower for her grandmother. The flower signifies betrayal, and June is worried about what Alice might have found out. She has just returned from critical surgery, and her health is in a delicate condition. She takes a breath of relief when Alice calls and tells her why she left. Alice and Oggy had grown to be a couple, and they had certain plans for their future, some of which involved getting married and then traveling the world. But when Oggy and his mother were deported from the country, those dreams were shattered. Let us note that episode 4 starts 14 years after the events of episode 3. This means that Alice is currently 23 years old. Oggy left six years ago, so Alice must have been 17 years old when she planned on marrying him.
The reason Alice has left Thornfield right now is because she discovered that it was her grandmother who made the call to the concerned authorities that had Oggy deported. Not only that, she blocked his email and wrote him a fake message on Alice’s behalf that she was breaking up with him. Additionally, June had withheld all the letters that Oggy had written to Alice for the past few years. After all this time, Alice finally got one of his letters, and this must have come to her because June was in the hospital and could not intercept it. In the letter, Oggy discusses their “breakup” and the fact that he is getting married now. A heartbroken Alice finds all the evidence of her grandmother’s deceit and is furious at the control she has exercised over her life. There are better ways to tell a 17-year-old not to get married than to get her boyfriend deported and pull “The Notebook” on her.
Alice takes her truck and drives to Agnes Bluff. The reason she chose that place was because it had her mother’s name. Alice rescues a stray dog on the way, and when she reaches Agnes, she takes him to the local vet, who goes by Moss. There is a bit of rudeness in their initial interaction when Alice rejects his help to drive her, but when they meet again, she apologizes, and the two get along well. Alice likes Moss and considers being with him, though she is initially hesitant since he is probably going to be the first person for her after six years since Oggy left. But she gets over her apprehension, and they spend the night.
The two of them start hanging out with each other, and Moss seems like a generally sweet guy who Alice is having a good time with. But she also meets someone else, Dylan, who is a ranger at the national park close by. She runs into him when she goes sightseeing, and the next time she sees him is at a party. He definitely likes her already, and Alice can feel the pull, but she is making up her mind about it. One of the other rangers invites her and Moss to go on a sunset tour with them to the park, and Alice is excited about it. Moss is unable to make it at the last minute, and Alice goes alone. While episode 4 doesn’t show Alice and Dylan interacting with each other, they are aware of their presence. When Alice reaches the top of the crater on the tour, we believe she feels a sense of belonging to the place, and it seems to remind her of her mother. So far, she may have thought of Agnes Bluff as a stop along the way or a place to hide from her grandmother. But after this tour, we suppose she will look to make a more permanent home in the town.
Why Does Twig Leave June?
As we suspected at the end of episode 3, June has indeed asked John and Sally Morgan to take care of Alice’s brother, Charlie. She has kept up with his health updates through the years, and we suspect that she helped the Morgans financially as well. Fourteen years later, Charlie has been declared perfectly healthy by the doctor, meaning that he can lead a normal life from here on. This is a huge milestone, and when June calls the Morgans to talk about Alice’s whereabouts, Charlie is excited to tell her this. We get the sense that he knows about her but has never spoken to her before. Looking at his excitement, he must be thinking about her in some positive capacity instead of just as the woman who abandoned him. But June does not want to speak to Charlie at all. When she curtly asks for John, Charlie is heartbroken at her lack of interest.
Later, when June collapses and is in the hospital, Twig takes her phone when Sally calls her and gives them the update about Charlie, in addition to telling her off for behaving so heartlessly. This is the first time Twig has heard of Charlie being alive, meaning that June has kept this secret to herself all this time. Twig rushes back home, and upon looking through some things, she finds that Charlie had written countless letters to Alice throughout his growing years. In fact, he and the Morgans kept sending pictures of Charlie in an effort to maintain a relationship with Alice and June. But all of that had been stored away in a cardboard box and kept out of sight.
Twig is furious, and she starts chopping off the tree that she had planted for Charlie since he is alive and does not need a signifier of his death. June tries to explain herself, saying that she did not want Alice to be around the men of the Hart family, not knowing whether Charlie would also turn out like Clen or not. But Twig is not ready to accept this excuse. Her own children were taken away from her due to the racist systems of the state, and she had only been able to find peace in the fact that they were together. Twig believes that June had no right to separate Alice from her family. Right here is another proof of June’s trauma. Her husband was definitely not some heroic robber, and the fact that she thinks violence is inherent to the men of the family means that her experience with Clen’s father was similar to Agnes’ experience with Clen.
At the end of episode 4 of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, June makes a flower arrangement for Twig, saying that she is sorry and needs her in her life. But Twig is not having it and destroys the arrangement, signifying that she doesn’t want to be with June anymore. We don’t think June feels guilty for separating Alice and Charlie. She only feels bad that Twig is hurt. Even if she did feel bad, her crime was too big to be forgiven by flowers.
Final Thoughts
We wonder if the fourth episode was really required. It told us nothing new except for the two facts that could have been adjusted into the narrative somewhere else. Additionally, while the series continues to be visually stunning, it is dreadfully paced. Also, after the time jump, which we feel is too abrupt and must have missed out on things, we feel that Alicia Debnam-Carey, who plays the grown-up Alice, lacks the haunting quality of her younger counterpart. Either way, let’s see what the future episodes of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart bring.
