The Other Life

November 29, 2010
Meister (Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA) ineffectively tackles the question of what one would do if it were possible to choose the path not taken. When 36-year-old Quinn Braverman, a happily married mother of a six-year-old boy, learns that her unborn daughter has a potentially fatal brain abnormality, she's overcome with the desire to just let her own life wash away. As a child, Quinn discovered she could float from one life to another through portals. In the laundry room of her Long Island home, Quinn has found such a gateway in a crack in the wall and decides to go back to the glitzy life she could have led if she had not left her neurotic ex-boyfriend for her husband. In this other life, she can also seek the comforts of her mother, who, in Quinn's current state of being, killed herself as a result of depression. Quinn repeatedly chooses to go back to her "what if" life, knowing that leaving her son and husband behind could emotionally scar them forever. Quinn's selfishness overshadows any sympathy to be had for her character.