Summary
More twists and turns in Episode 4 are interspersed with some of the season’s stronger character beats and standout performances from Michelle Keegan and Joanna Lumley.
Let’s not waste any time picking up from where Episode 3 left off here since Episode 4 of Fool Me Once doesn’t bother to either. Luckily, it’s a false alarm. Maya, in her black gloves and with her Glock 17, discovers that the home intruder is just Shane. Lily’s fine. But we have questions! Why does Maya have a secret Glock 17? Why did she think to put gloves on before she used it? Why does Shane have such a close relationship with Lily? Color me suspicious of everything and everyone, folks.
Shane had come to visit Maya to tell her what he had dug up about Tommy Dark, who it turns out was the captain of the yacht that Andrew died on. He swore the death was accidental, but that doesn’t mean much. He also reveals to Maya that, when he spoke to Kierce, the cop let on about Maya seeing Joe on the nanny cam footage. Shane, being a good friend, is willing to entertain the possibility that Joe’s death was faked, which is why it now can’t be verified.
Alexander didn’t know about Claire being pregnant
Abby has some pointed questions for Alexander Dosman, chief among them how he knew her mother. They met in France and had a whirlwind romance, but when they had to return home she broke up with him. He didn’t want to just be friends, so he kept his distance to try and get over her. When he saw the news about her death, he felt compelled to pay his respects.
When Abby asks about the baby, though, Alexander isn’t quite as forthcoming since he knew nothing about it and doesn’t recall Claire ever being pregnant. Abby panics and leaves.
Like Father Like Son?
Kierce and McGregor interrogate Phil Dawson, who claims his bike was stolen weeks ago. He’s lying, though. He’s the legal owner of the bike but it’s clearly the preferred transport of his son, PJ, and Phil didn’t report it stolen so as not to draw any attention to it since, you know, it was used on the night of Joe Burkett’s murder. PJ sounds just as pleasant as his dad, and Kierce wants him surveilled ASAP. But he also notices something more alarming when he’s leaving — Phil’s van is emblazoned with Burkett Global branding. Kierce immediately jumps into his car to follow him, even though McGregor, who is still looking into the circumstances of his accident, cautions him against it.
Meanwhile, Maya meets up with Eddie, who seems to be getting himself together, and she tells him about Claire’s arrangement with Corey the Whistle. This sets his mind at ease since it’s better than an affair, and Maya reassures him that despite how hard he has taken Claire’s death he is still the only person she would trust to look after Lily if anything happened to her. On that note, she leaves Lily with him for a while — something she’s making a habit of, I think it’s fair to point out — while she tries to make sense of everything she’s learned. Eddie is pleased by the compliments and agrees.
But can we trust Eddie? McGregor calls Kierce with the news that his alibi for the night of Joe’s murder doesn’t check out, so perhaps not. Kierce is a little preoccupied, though, since he has followed Phil to a local sports club that seems to be funded by the Burketts (all the trophies in the cabinet name them.) However, just as he’s snooping around, he has another blackout, though to be fair this one looks more like a full-on stroke, leaving him face-down in the grass.
When Kierce finally wakes up, he calls McGregor for help and has to reveal the extent of his health issues — though he isn’t telling him anything he hadn’t already figured out for himself. It’s a nice moment between the two of them, though, and McGregor finally opens up a bit about his personal life, revealing that he’s gay.
Why is Judith bribing Tommy Dark?
When Maya gets home, she’s greeted by Doctor Wu, an Army psychologist to whom Maya owes four sessions. His interest has been renewed by Shane’s concerns following Maya’s behavior the other night, and she describes how she found herself unable to wake up, trapped in a hallucinatory flashback where the familiar screams were suddenly her own. She’s dealing with PTSD, but Doctor Wu confirms that what she sees are flashbacks, not imaginings. Seeing her dead husband isn’t linked to her wartime experiences, so there doesn’t seem to be much chance that she imagined Joe in his tell-tale green shirt.
They’re interrupted, though, by a call from Oona, Tommy Dark’s wife. She has something urgent to share, so Maya heads out there in a hurry. After Maya’s previous visit, Oona dug through Tommy’s files and found proof that he was taking payments from the Burketts. Maya explains they’re bribes, and that she’s trying to find out why they were bribing him. Oona is panicking since she hasn’t heard from Tommy in six weeks.
Maya immediately heads to Farnwood and confronts Judith about why she has been paying Dark off for so long. This is, by far, the best acting the series has produced thus far. Judith doesn’t give much away even under pressure, but the implication is that, yes, she has been covering up Andrew’s suicide by keeping Dark quiet. One suspects there’s more to it than that, though. She also implies that Caroline is wrong about the family paying off Kierce and that Caroline is mentally troubled, which may or may not be true, though she certainly hasn’t been committed to an institution since she watches Maya leave from a window upstairs.
Maya goes to tell Corey about Dark being missing. He’s feeling sorry for himself about Claire’s death being his fault, and he’s worried that he and Maya might be next, but Maya is quick to correct him that if she hadn’t killed those civilians from her helicopter — and more is made of the audio, which I’m sure we’ll hear eventually — then none of this would have happened. In the Blame Olympics, she’s a gold medallist. Now they need to find Dark before something else terrible happens.
A Family Affair
Abby and Daniel, meanwhile, continue looking into Claire’s mysterious past with Alexander Dosman. For whatever reason, Daniel had a DNA test done through school as some kind of ancestry experiment, but Claire never let him see the results. Now we know why. When the kids are able to log into the account, it reveals that they do have a half-sibling, but Eddie arrives to interrupt them before they can reveal more. They don’t reveal what they were up to, but when they leave, Eddie finds the picture of Claire pregnant in 2003.
Abby and Daniel go to Maya with what they’ve learned, and she reveals that they have a half-brother who would be about 19. The kids think he could be a suspect in Claire’s death, and while that seems unlikely at this point, there’s clearly more to this subplot that is yet to be revealed.
How does Fool Me Once Season 1 Episode 4 end?
Fool Me Once Episode 4 ends with another cliffhanger montage.
After seeing the photo of Claire, Eddie stormed off. We see him knock on Alexander’s door and punch him in the face. At the same time, McGregor shows Kierce why Eddie’s alibi doesn’t hold up — he was with another, as-yet-unidentified woman. Someone — presumably Abby and Daniel’s half-brother — gets a notification that their DNA profile has been viewed.
Finally, as Maya is settling down for the night, someone outside plants something on her car which triggers the alarm. She heads out to investigate and sees nothing suspicious, so goes back inside. But the camera pans out to reveal Shane is the perpetrator. Why is he messing with his supposed friend? We’ll have to wait and see.
What did you think of Fool Me Once Season 1 Episode 4? Let us know in the comments.
