Summary
Cleo and Maddie find themselves in similar but still distinct predicaments as their individual stories threaten to intertwine sooner rather than later.
The central tension of Lady in the Lake comes from the anticipation of something we already know happens – the intersection of Maddie and Cleo’s lives. Episode 3, “I was the first to see her dead. You were the last to see her alive”, has the same feel as the two-part premiere, with both women veering closer and closer but remaining on parallel tracks, united by mutual acquaintances and common themes but, for now, kept separate.
Another way of describing it is almost as an origin story (Maddie, free from her husband and societal expectations of well-off Jewish women) twinned with a downfall (Cleo, clawing madly at a cultural quicksand that threatens to swallow her despite her good intentions.) The beginning of the road is meeting the end like a snake eating its tail.
A Victim of Circumstance
At the end of Episode 2, Cleo became an unwitting accomplice in the attempted assassination of her political idol, Myrtle Summers. Here, she’s forced to reckon with that, and things aren’t going well.
She has nightmares, for one thing; dreams of her past as a young girl patching up her gambling addict father, more ethereal visions of white sheets and young lambs. And she also has no help. She realizes pretty quickly that Shell Gordon has no idea that Reggie sent her to drop off the envelope full of money. He’s trying to protect himself, and in the process dooming Cleo further.
And she has plenty to deal with in the meantime. Her son, who has sickle cell, is being preyed upon by religious grifters who claim tithing will save him where medicine has failed. Her other son is running numbers, echoing her own father’s peccadilloes. There’s no wonder she gets blind drunk at the Pharoah and makes a show of herself, and equally, no wonder that, when Slappy asks what’s going on with her, she doesn’t know where to start explaining.
Maddie Keeps Herself Busy
In comparison to Cleo’s predicament, Maddie’s seems a bit silly. I mean, one of her acts of minor rebellion and personal emancipation in this episode is to get her ears pierced like a teenager.
But she also has a more meaningful plan, which is to become a reporter. And the way she goes about doing it, rather hilariously, is to march into the offices of the Baltimore Star and demand a job from Bob Bauer, who she tipped off in the previous episode about Tessie’s possible killer.
Bauer is adamant that Maddie isn’t getting her byline, so she goes out of her way to find a story on her own. She writes to Stephan Zawadzkie – he’s the creepy gas mask fish guy – and encloses a picture of herself, so it’s unclear whether she’s hoping to entice him with her mysterious note or the fact she’s Natalie Portman.
Milton Isn’t Seth’s Father
Lady in the Lake | Image via Apple TV+
Maddie also continues her “relationship” with Officer Platt, which is a weird subplot because it’s always framed in juxtaposition with something Cleo’s doing and has a more overtly sexual tone – including Portman purring porn-quality dialogue, for some reason – that isn’t reflected anywhere else in what is otherwise a very serious and arty show.
But maybe it speaks to something else about Maddie. We’ve already had the teases about her potential past with Allan Durst’s father, and here, we learn through Seth that Milton isn’t his real father. Maddie had slept with someone else – seemingly a one-night stand? – and written about it in her journal, which Seth read before his bar mitzvah. This goes some way towards explaining why Seth is as wildly antagonistic towards her as he is, but it’s also interesting to make note of.
Cleo Has An Idea
With her back against the wall and suspicions around her mounting thanks to the description of the baby-blue coat she was wearing on the night of the assassination attempt doing the rounds, Cleo comes up with a solution for her problems.
In an ironic development given her past and her son’s pastimes, Cleo strongarms Reggie into helping her rig the numbers game. The idea is to accumulate enough of a windfall that they can both escape from the predicaments they find themselves in.
For now, it’s unclear how this will dovetail with Maddie’s sleuthing. She turns up evidence that Tessie might have been sexually assaulted before she died, possibly by the same man whose skin was found under her fingernails. And it doesn’t seem like that man is Stephan, whom she sits down with at the end of the episode. So, what gives?
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