Summary
The Lake begins to finally run into some moral complexities as Justin sells out Billie and Riley to gain an advantage in the lake house negotiations. An effective episode featuring a well-rounded turn by Jordan Gavaris.
This recap of the Amazon original series The Lake season 1, episode 4 contains spoilers.
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The Lake season 1, episode 4 recap
Jayne and Victor head up the lifeguard tryouts. It is a big deal at The Lake. Justin and Billie have a heart to heart while Killian leads the trials. She convinces Justin that they will work out a shared arrangement between the families if he wins the cottage back. However, Maisy is a political animal and knows the holes in the bylaws. She introduces “Gill the Thrill” (played by Jerry O’Connell), the man running for mayor, to Justin. It turns out that you can bulldoze a farmhouse, and who to say is the lake house is not, you know, that? It has a barn, after all.
Well, Maisy had Gill approve some of Ulrika’s exotic crops that she failed to have a permit for. So, as you can see, one hand is about to wash the other. (My guess here is that if they bulldoze the house and build a new one, this somehow allows Maisy to bypass the trust). Meanwhile, Billie finds out there may be a herpes outbreak among the lake’s fish. (Yes, you read that correctly). If there is an outbreak, that means a delay in almost anything at the lake, including construction. Still, the only way Justin can make this work is to convince Gill to help, and the only currency he takes is a “Manwich”, which includes Justin and Riley. Yet, Maisy wants to make him a counteroffer by offering her ex-hockey player husband, Victor.
And our favorite main characters go out on some dates. Killian takes out Billie to go fishing. Instead of letting him try the time-honored tradition of showing her how to fish, she watches some YouTube tutorials on the matter. Riley takes Justin to get some real carbs and tells him he works so many jobs to support his passion for photography. What does he take pictures of exactly? Beautiful sunsets? Nature? Happy families making wonderful memories? Not exactly. Riley takes photos of the roadkill and parodies the show CSI with “RKI” – Road Kill Investigations. Riley wants to bring awareness to speeding on the roads that cost so many vermin their lives.
But Justin wants his legacy so badly he propositions Riley to have a threesome with Gill on their first date. Riley counters that the second date needs to be a sex party. So, will Gill take the threesome or Maisy’s giant check? As soon as Justin licks his lips and announces, “To the thrill of Gill!” we know where he will go. This all unfolds while Maisy has to deal with Killian and Billie trying to switch in herpes-infected fish to prevent construction and the teardown of the house. Killian is fired from being the first Canadian-Chinese lifeguard, and Maisy prevents Billie from dating Killian. (Yeah, that stops teenagers from seeing each other).
The ending
The episode ends with Justin’s scheme coming unraveled. During the threesome with Gill and Riley, it comes out that Justin lied about wanting a threesome to have a buffer before sleeping with Riley. They keep Justin out, and later, Riley tells Justin, sincerely, he hopes Justin will find someone to suck the dick of a politician for him someday. When Justin comes back to the cottage to find Billie, he finds her crying in her bedroom and comforted by her birth mother and best friend, Teesa (Sagine Sémajuste).
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