Recap: Lucy’s Toxicity Comes Through In ‘Tell Me Lies’ Season 2, Episode 4

Episode 4 of Tell Me Lies Season 2 brings us a little closer to Stephen’s dirty secrets being exposed, but it’s Lucy who exudes the most toxicity in “Just Stable Children”. Of course, you could argue that her behavior is a legacy of Stephen’s influence, which is pretty fair, but I’m not so sure. At this point, it’s easier to imagine that everyone in and around this show is just an accident — or a crime — waiting to happen.

This episode isn’t as dense as usual with ill-advised shenanigans, but it does have an eerie ticking-clock feel to it, as several things that are guaranteed to yield awful results — Stephen’s involvement in Macy’s death, Bree’s relationship with Oliver — lurk in the narrative’s margins like dramatic time bombs. Let’s take account.

Stephen and Diana

I must admit to having taken a slightly perverse pleasure in Stephen’s stress in this episode. With the LSAT — the law school admission test — looming, he becomes increasingly stressed out and frantic, staying up all night to revise and refusing to do anything else. His discomfort is slightly nourishing given how determinedly he makes everyone else’s lives miserable.

But he’s still up to his old tricks in some ways. Wrigley is facing something of an existential crisis — more on this in a minute — and is trying to contemplate his future, but when Evan starts pining after Diana, Stephen quickly manipulates him into taking Evan out to get laid. It’s not a huge deal, but it just highlights how Stephen views people — even his friends — as pieces on his personal game board.

But things backfire for Stephen in a big way. After the LSAT, he has a panic attack due to the stress, and Diana takes him to the hospital. There, he has a bunch of scans that don’t detect anything malicious, but that do reveal a broken rib consistent with the kind of injury he might have sustained in a car accident. Given Lucy told Diana in Episode 3 that Stephen was involved in Macy’s death, this is the last thing he needed.

What will Diana do? Well, it seems like, based on the ending of this episode, she’ll try and cover Stephen’s tracks and make sure he’s never brought to justice for it, which is a shame, but you never quite know.

Bree and Oliver

Bree and Oliver’s deeply uncomfortable relationship continues apace in “Just Stable Children”, thrown for a bit of a loop when Oliver flounces into Bree’s class and she realizes that he’s married to Marianne, of all people.

This is another slight fist-pump moment because the scene in which Bree gets all passive-aggressive and queen bee with Marianne and gets chewed up is pretty sublime. I genuinely can’t tell what Marianne knows about her husband and what she doesn’t, but I can say that Bree is enormously outmatched either way, and she must sense that since she panics and confesses about the affair to Lucy.

Needless to say, I would never trust Lucy with information this sensitive, but I suppose it brings things level now since Bree still doesn’t know that it was Lucy who Evan cheated on her with. If either of those secrets comes out, I would strongly suspect that the other will be soon to follow.

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Pippa and Wrigley

The only moderately upbeat subplot in this episode involves Pippa and Wrigley. Early on we learn that Pippa never told her father about the breakup, and Wrigley does her a solid by playing along and even pretending he’s totally sure about his future, which is the furthest thing from the truth but is what he recognizes Pippa’s father would like to hear.

Later, after handing Evan off to his new lady friend, Wrigley asks Pippa to go and see him. It’s not for a booty call, as she initially suspects, but instead to ask her if she wrote the letter that inadvertently led to his knee injury in Season 1. We know that it was Lucy, but Pippa suggests to Wrigley that he should look more closely at Stephen, which is always a good idea. He isn’t inclined to listen for now, but it’ll sit with him.

In the meantime, Wrigley asks Pippa to stay and she does, so there’s still clearly an element of closeness between the two that is, dare I say it, quite sweet.

Lucy and Leo

I’ll tell you who’s not sweet — Lucy.

So most of Lucy’s time in Season 2, Episode 4 is spent with Leo. She’s enjoying her time with him but has resisted taking things to the next level, so to speak. When she makes the decision — right after seeing Leo briefly interact with his ex, coincidentally — she exhibits some rather worrying behavior.

Just as he and Lucy are about to get into it, Leo does the responsible thing and gets a condom from his drawer. That’s all Lucy needs to see. She accuses him of sleeping with other girls — since she’s on the pill, which he knows, so he shouldn’t need protection despite it being a good idea in general — and then of acting weird around his ex. When Leo gets understandably frustrated about being accused of things apropos of nothing, Lucy tries to initiate some angry sex, deeply weirding Leo out.

Yes, Lucy, who made such a fuss about Leo headbutting someone and struggling to deal with his anger issues, deliberately antagonized him for no reason just to have kinkier sex. It’s not exactly healthy behavior, is it? And Leo is still pretty reasonable about it.

Unfortunately, he does later fall for her apology, and the two end up spending a very passionate night together instead. But consider me very worried about this guy’s future all the same.