Summary
“No Lies” sees a big secret be revealed, and gives an insight into the past that Ally struggles to accept.
This recap of Breeders Season 1, Episode 4, “No Lies”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
Luke (George Wakeman) asks the dreaded question at the start of Breeders Episode 4: Is Santa real? Ally (Daisy Haggard) wants to preserve the illusion, but Paul (Martin Freeman) says he’s uncomfortable lying. Michael (Michael McKean) is still living with them, causing Ally to wear Paul’s pyjamas, run the taps while using the toilet, and refuse to have sex with Paul — there is, as she puts it, a man she barely knows living in their house.
Paul is also attached to the idea of stuff, bits of junk with memories and context, which is a problem since Ally is having a major clear-out. She also wants to go through the mortgage book and do some sums to work out whether or not they can move to a bigger house, which is another idea Paul isn’t exactly on board with.
Meanwhile in Breeders Episode 4, Michael lets Luke and Ava (Jayda Eyles) rummage around the house for hidden Christmas presents, and they end up trashing the place, inadvertently turning up both the mortgage book and Ally’s old wedding album — her wedding to her ex, Liam. Michael goes through it with Luke, who immediately bombards her with questions when she returns home: Is she going to fall out of love with him, or daddy?
Since Michael is causing bother, Paul goes with him to look at a flat, but it’s a sty. In the park, Jackie (Joanna Bacon) and Jim (Alun Armstrong), having been told by Luke that Ally is married to another man, tell Paul that they think she’s still married to Liam, which is why she won’t marry him. By the time he returns home he’s had quite enough, but things only get worse, since Ally has discovered that he remortgaged the house without her knowledge. They argue about this and he reveals they needed the money because he had to take time off work after Ava was born because Ally had post-natal depression — a reality she refuses to accept, and something that I can once again relate to having been in pretty much the exact same situation as Paul. Breeders continues to impress with its frank, unflinching look at the real realities of parenting.
Flashbacks in “No Lies” confirm that Ally did indeed struggle, and when she goes to meet her colleague Darren (Patrick Baladi) for a drink to reassure herself that she couldn’t have possibly returned to work so soon if she was depressed, we see more snippets which prove Paul’s point. Darren very obviously has a thing for Ally, but she continues to ignore it, instead returning home and smoking dope with Michael, whom she’s finally able to bond with a bit, even if he does take Paul’s side.
In the end, Ally decides to throw the wedding album out. But she keeps one photo.
