Summary
Lies start to catch up with the Bayview Four in “One Of Us Is Not Like The Others”.
This recap of One Of Us Is Lying season 1, episode 3, “One Of Us Is Not Like The Others”, contains spoilers.
You’ll recall that, in the previous episode, the latest About That post made Addy cheating on Jake public. And it’s already doing the rounds at school. Vanessa is “worried” about her — “She’s like one of those barnacle things that dies without its host” — and Jake doesn’t pick her up to take her to school. Of course, Addy blames Bronwyn after she had confessed privately to the rest of the Bayview Four, and then TJ himself, who doesn’t seem to have said anything either. In fact, he seems to be genuinely into Addy, perhaps in a way that even Jake isn’t. But Jake isn’t interested. He catches TJ in the corridors and attacks him, though it’s a bit embarrassing since TJ gives him a right hand of death and nearly floors him. Addy is forced to admit the truth of the affair to Jake and Vanessa, who also isn’t thrilled since TJ is currently her boyfriend, and everything is going wrong!
One Of Us Is Lying season 1, episode 3 recap
Nate is next on the chopping block — the latest About That post reveals he sold drugs to a junior who subsequently OD’d. Luckily, Nate is less reliant on his social standing than Addy, so he takes it a bit better, though both he and Addy are the first to arrive at the secret meeting spot of the Bayview Four, and get high together. Once Bronwyn and Cooper arrive, the judgment begins, since they’re the more squeaky-clean of the two. The group’s starting to cannibalize itself. They’re all looking at each other when they should, of course, be looking at Maeve. The problem is, Bronwyn’s discovery of Simon’s laptop in her possession occurs right when she’s looking for her hospital go-bag after an impromptu nosebleed at the dinner table. Maeve, you see, is a survivor of leukemia, and a nosebleed might signal its return, so the family’s on high alert. Now isn’t the right time to confront her. But it might be the right time to swipe the laptop.
Bronwyn and Nate team up to carry out this task but they discover the laptop missing, which makes sense since the latest About That message was just posted. The post reveals that Cooper is on steroids, which isn’t his real secret but is nonetheless extremely damaging to his potential baseball career, but since Bronwyn and Maeve’s dad had recovered the laptop so she could “do her homework” while awaiting her test results, she’s still a potential suspect (Nate also finds pictures of Maeve and Simon in her room). So, too, is Janae, who is always smugly playing on her phone whenever things get posted.
The focus really shifts to Cooper in “One Of Us Is Not Like The Others”. Flashbacks detail his first few meetings with Simon, and his agreement with Keely to keep up the ruse of their relationship. We also see present-day sequences with his father, who makes implications about his move from Minnesota and asks him indirectly if he is guilty of doping, as the About That post claims. Remember, the financial future of Cooper’s entire family rests on his baseball success, which is a problem since breaking up the fight between Jake and TJ injured his shoulder, and angrily throwing baseballs in the yard made it worse, and he has a crucial game coming up in which he has to perform well. Even a massage from Kris doesn’t seem to help. (There’s a funny scene in which Nate arrives to deliver Kris’s weed, and Cooper literally hides in the closet.)
Bronwyn also confronts Maeve about Simon’s laptop, but she has been using it to try and figure out what’s what, not to post any messages — she does inform Bronwyn, though, that the latest message is about her. Nate gives her a burner phone so they can communicate privately, and Addy informs her that she took a sneaky peek at Janae’s phone. Not only was she not using it to post messages, but her last messages to Simon also suggest that she thought he was going too far with About That and wanted him to shut the whole thing down.
When Jake accuses Addy outright of killing Simon, she retreats to the bathroom, where she encounters Janae crying. It’s an eye-opening conversation for Addy, who seems to genuinely not have realized the impression she gave off at school. There are plenty of other things that people didn’t realize in this episode, such as Bronwyn not realizing Maeve had a fling with Simon and was in love with him, and stole his laptop to see if he had anything on her and to try and understand why he ghosted her. Her frank conversation with Bronwyn about her feigning perfection at all times compels Bronwyn to confess to her family that the accusation is true, that she stole the chemistry exam questions so as not to jeopardize her college chances. She has to maintain the lie, though, to maintain her reputation. She can’t have a motive for murder.
But the focus returns, again, to Cooper, who performs well in his game thanks to painkillers sold to him by Nate. We get some backstory for Nate, who doesn’t usually sell painkillers because they ruined his dad’s life, and he and Cooper share a nice moment. But Cooper and Kris, on the other hand, share a not-so-nice one. Kris came to support him — his line about “straight cosplay” because he’s wearing plaid cracked me all the way up — but had to watch Cooper smooch Keely after the game. Cooper isn’t just in the closet for baseball, as he claimed, but totally in the closet, and Kris, who has only ever been himself, doesn’t know how to deal with that. Neither does Detective Wheeler, who watches the exchange from afar with an inquisitive smirk on her face.
“One Of Us Is Not Like The Others” ends with Bronwyn calling Nate on her new burner. He tells his pet lizard, Stan, that he knows picking up will only cause more trouble. But she rings back, and this time he answers. Maybe she wants a little more trouble after all.
