Summary
Tell Me Lies is getting a little complicated in Season 3, and might have set a new record for Lucy and Stephen break-ups. However, chancess are they’ll be back together sooner rather than later.
We know Lucy and Stephen aren’t going to last — despite the fact that, even in the present day, they still can’t quite leave each other alone — but I thought their effort to do things differently in Tell Me Lies Season 3 would last more than a single episode. But alas, they don’t even make it through Episode 2, “We Can’t Help It If We Are A Problem”, an hour that Grace Van Patten is very good in and that also contains some significant developments all over the place, not just focusing on the tempestuous love life of the leading couple.
As a matter of fact, after hogging so much of the premiere, Lucy and Stephen feel like a bit of an afterthought. All the more interesting storylines and evolving relationships are happening elsewhere, and their endless self-destructive spiral is beginning to feel slightly tedious. It’s no less engaging, since the performances are so good and Stephen is just so awful that it’s compelling to see what he’ll be capable of next, but I’m glad that Tell Me Lies is casting a wider net in this season.
Stephen STILL Makes My Skin Crawl
Having said this, there’s still enough Lucy and Stephen to be going on with, especially in the early going. This episode eschews the 2015 timeline completely, so it picks up right where we left things in 2009, with Stephen still making an enormous song and dance about not being able to cope with the knowledge that Lucy had a one-night stand with Evan. The gang hits a karaoke bar, and Stephen acts like a psycho all night, abandoning Lucy to sing by herself — this scene goes on so long it genuinely upset me — and making all kinds of barbed remarks in Evan’s direction.
Eventually, Stephen sulks off, and Lucy rather pathetically chases him, as he knows she will, since he knows she’s scared of him telling Bree and ruining their friendship. This is how Stephen works. He finds some leverage over someone and then uses it to constantly torment them for his own pleasure. Lucy is an easy mark because she’s determined to keep falling for it.
Until later, anyway.
Bree’s New Friend
At the same karaoke bar, Bree continues to stalk the freshman she saw Oliver flirting with in the premiere, eventually befriending her in the bathroom and inviting her to spend the evening with them as she’s been ditched by her friends. Her name is Amanda, and she’s in a long-distance relationship with her high-school sweetheart, who’s now an NYU student. She has a lot of self-image issues and, seeing no signs that she has anything to do with Oliver, Bree is very supportive and friendly to her. They even take a photo together to show her boyfriend that she’s living it up.
Bree, at least, knows that what she’s doing is a bit nuts, since she confesses it to Lucy. However, she’s so earnest about being sick of people she cares about betraying her that it causes Lucy to have a panic attack. Grace Van Patten is great here, evoking some of the flustered confusion she brought to The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox. Since nobody present quite knows how to deal with the situation, they call Alex, the drug dealer who supplied them with the MDMA in the previous episode, who also happens to sell anti-anxiety meds. He’s a handsome guy and helps Lucy regulate with a wrist-tapping technique that Bree has used before, and the two share a lingering look. After Alex leaves, Bree calls him, having gotten his number from Pippa.
Alex and Bree, it turns out, know each other from childhood. They were in the same group home for a while, and while Bree doesn’t recall a great deal from her time there, she knows there were some dark experiences, and that Alex was protective of her. This is the good news. The bad news is that she meets Amanda for another social call and finds her in floods of tears, having broken up with her boyfriend after sleeping with a much older married man. She doesn’t name him, but it’s clearly Oliver, and what’s more, she met him during the same Christmas party that Bree and Lucy attended. Even while carrying on with Bree, Oliver was already selecting his next victim. What a charmer.
The only bright spot in Bree’s life at the moment seems to be Wrigley. After their night together in the bus stop, they also end up partnered in a photography class (Wrigley is taking extra classes to keep his mind off Drew), and they have a nice, easy chemistry with each other. Wrigley is really charming, and there seems to be something brewing here, which is perhaps just as well since…
Diana and Pippa Kiss!
Diana asks Pippa to meet her for a conversation about their previous conversation, when Pippa awkwardly confessed to thinking about her all the time in a way that wasn’t exactly befitting of a casual acquaintance. After reassuring Pippa that she, too, feels guilty about what happened to Drew, Diana also reassures her that she’s not alone in the whole attraction thing. This is a lovely scene, one of the best in Tell Me Lies Season 3, Episode 2. It’s grounded and tender, and both actors do a great job of giddily tracing the seams of their evolving dynamic.
Diana suggests that the only thing for the two of them to do now is try a kiss and see how that goes, and let’s just say it goes well. But poor Wrigley! Let’s just hope he develops a thing for Bree sooner rather than later to soften the blow.
Lucy FINALLY Stands Up For Herself
Stephen, still determined to torment Lucy in any way possible, summons her to his dorm room for a chat. He claims he simply can’t get over the Evan thing and that her lying despite how many opportunities he gave her to tell him the truth is a violation of trust. The only thing that can possibly make him forgive her is if she confesses to Bree about her and Evan, a clear power move to make her detonate her own social life for his sick pleasure.
And Lucy says no.
This is a huge moment, because it’s Lucy seeing right through Stephen’s horseshit and calling him out for what he’s doing (and also reminding him of his past transgressions; Van Patten snarling “coconut bra” is a particularly funny line reading.) She’s choosing Bree over him, and she also calls his bluff when he threatens to tell her himself. She knows he won’t, since he won’t give up his leverage. And thus far, she’s right.
Stephen goes back to Evan’s house and tries to take his frustrations out on him, but even Evan’s having none of it. Stephen’s version of the breakup — that Lucy begged him to forgive her, but he simply couldn’t — is faintly pathetic, as is the fact that he sleeps through all of his classes the next day and wakes up realise, to his horror, that he’s genuinely upset. The fact that Lucy is tossing and turning in her own bed and keeps imagining she’s seeing Stephen all over campus implies that this separation won’t last, but at least she got some licks in.
And Another Thing…
A final note about Tell Me Lies Season 3, Episode 2 that wouldn’t fit in the recap proper:
- Evan notices Bree being weird around Oliver and confronts him about sleeping with her. This seems a touch contrived, but it’s easy to imagine Evan already had his suspicions given their encounter in the previous episode. Either way, Oliver doesn’t admit it, but he does give Evan some supposedly sage wisdom that evolves into what is rather unmistakably a threat. Something tells me these two haven’t seen the last of each other this season.
