‘The Last Thing He Told Me’ Season 2, Episode 5 Recap – These People Are So Dull

I’ve long since given up trying to figure out what The Last Thing He Told Me is doing with this story in Season 2, so that makes an episode like “First-Date Material” especially tedious. At 54 minutes, Episode 5 is one of the longer ones, and a lot of it comprises dull conversations between characters we’re already struggling to care about. Hannah and Owen go on a little mission together and treat it like a first date! Bailey and Nicholas play cards! Pardon me for checking out.

Picking from the non-cliffhanger we left things on, Owen bursting in with a gun doesn’t amount to anything beyond an argument with Nicholas. And thus, we achieve our new, albeit uneasy status quo. With everyone now on the same page, more or less, the primary objective becomes taking down the Campanos as a team, since it’s becoming increasingly clear that someone in the organisation, even if it isn’t Frank, has gone rogue and violated the terms of their agreement.

Teddy is the likeliest suspect, of course, even for Frank, who deliberately keeps him in the dark about Nicholas still being alive. But I’m still pulling for Quinn, who is roped back into the plot through Bailey’s curiosity and is repeatedly referred to as a “good egg”, or things thereabouts, which is always a red flag in a show like this.

A semi-compelling idea introduced here – not at all related to anything that happens in the novel, once again – is that of Bailey having fragmented flashbacks to a hostile encounter between her parents, one which Quinn was present for. It’s a half-decent justification for keeping Bailey focused on Quinn, excusing her being pulled back into the plot without any evidence – yet – suggesting her involvement. Hannah and Owen are trying to prove that Teddy has been acting without Frank’s authority, and he almost certainly has, but he also almost certainly isn’t the only one.

I don’t like the dynamic between Owen and Hannah. It doesn’t feel fractious enough, given everything that has happened, and the same problems that blighted the novels are issues here, too. The biggest is that there’s too much moral flexibility at play for us to really care a great deal about these characters. Bailey and Nicholas even have a pretty in-depth conversation about how he can justify having worked for the Campanos for so many years to enrich himself, and his justifications are so laughably flimsy that it undermines the character dynamics. In the first book, Nicholas was explicitly a dangerous, largely immoral figure; in the second, he’s a kindly grandfather whose criminal misdeeds are pretty much totally forgotten about because he’s nice to Bailey. The same is true here. It’s just a shame that this is the only way this season is like the source material.

The Last Thing He Told Me Season 2, Episode 5 takes a two-pronged approach, largely focusing on Hannah and Owen as they attempt to retrieve evidence about the drug trafficking operation, and on Bailey trying to poke holes in her past through Nicholas and then, later, through Quinn. But there’s also a third narrative strand that finds Kate unmasking Teddy’s mole in the U.S. Marshal’s office. There’d be a bit of tension here, but the Marshals have been so thinly sketched that it’s difficult to have any real investment. Plus, Teddy’s attempts to pull the wool over his father’s eyes don’t mean much, since Frank has already figured out what he’s up to, and the audience has been privy to it for ages.

Perhaps the best stretch of “First-Date Material” sees Hannah pose as a journalist to hustle some dork into figuring out where the damning container they’re looking for might be. Jennifer Garner’s good when she’s in motion; keeping her static all the time to ruminate on the failings of her marriage and the difficulties of being a step-mother feels wasteful, and doesn’t play into what she’s best at. The container turns out to be heading to Marseilles, so that’s presumably where we’re heading next, way off the course charted by the source material. But at this point, we’re watching a completely different story play out. I can’t say I’m particularly excited to see where else it goes.