implications about Wrigley and Bree<\/a> are enough to sustain us for now, especially since a good chunk of this episode is about properly contextualising that new development. But this is also one of those hours that thrives more on implication, suggesting a few things that are even worse than what we thought we knew, without really committing to much in the way of overt drama. That\u2019s coming later, though, I feel sure.<\/p>\nDiana Is Stephen\u2019s Kryptonite<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s start with Stephen, who doesn\u2019t get a great deal of overt villainy this week, but several things happen to him that are pretty humiliating, and his being embarrassed is rather enjoyable to me.<\/p>\n
Firstly, he gets into Yale, which is good news, but nobody\u2019s interested in celebrating with him. He tells Wrigley about it and tries to strongarm him into a night out, but when he later recruits Evan for the same, he claims that Wrigley practically begged him to celebrate. He\u2019s such a loser. The celebratory drinks go off the rails pretty quickly since Stephen tries to force everyone back to his dorm, where Drew died. Wrigley calling Stephen\u2019s living situation out for being deeply weird is legitimately the first time the thought has ever occurred to him. You\u2019re supposed\u00a0to hate Stephen, obviously, but don\u2019t let that distract you from how brilliant Jackson White is in this role.<\/p>\n
But Stephen is no match for Diana. She also got accepted to Yale Law, so when he later, smugly tries to gloat about his own acceptance to her, she happily drops the bombshell that she lied about failing the LSAT just to get rid of him. She isn\u2019t even going to bother going to Yale, since she can get into any Ivy League school in the country. Stephen, aghast, asks if she\u2019d really be willing to change the trajectory of her entire life just to avoid him, and she happily admits that she would. Just like she happily aborted his baby, as promised.<\/p>\n
Stephen\u2019s only recourse is going below the belt. Towards the end of the episode, we see him attach a bunch of nudes to an email. Now, you\u2019ll have to forgive me here, since Disney screeners are annoyingly low-quality and heavily watermarked, so I genuinely couldn\u2019t tell if these were the nudes that Molly mentioned having sent to Evan earlier \u2014 that he claimed to have deleted \u2014 or whether they\u2019re nudes of Diana. They certainly look\u00a0like Diana, but I can\u2019t be sure. Let me know in the comments.<\/p>\n
Chris Might Be Innocent?<\/p>\n
For a long time, we\u2019ve been operating on the assumption \u2014 understandably, since it was\u00a0heavily\u00a0implied \u2014 that Chris sexually assaulted Pippa and Katie. We know that Lucy has been lying about being one of his victims, and that Stephen has proof of this deception, but we also know that Lucy only made that claim to protect Pippa, which means that on the list of dodgy things Lucy has done, it\u2019s basically right at the bottom. We also know that Pippa has been consistently reluctant to address the issue at all and has repeatedly talked people out of talking to Lucy about it; we assumed to avoid having to dredge up any trauma.<\/p>\n
However, at a pool party in the middle of Tell Me Lies\u00a0Season 3, Episode 5, Chris swims up to Lucy to ask her why she\u2019s lying about him. He also claims to have \u201chooked up with\u201d Pippa, so she\u2019ll be able to vouch for him. I know abusers tend to be delusional, but would anyone\u00a0be\u00a0this\u00a0stupid if he were guilty? We\u2019re clearly supposed to be entertaining the idea that he\u2019s not.<\/p>\n
This is implied more strongly later, when Pippa is hanging out with Diana and gets a call \u2014 from Chris. She rejects it and blocks his number, making up some excuse to Diana. Again, why would Chris be calling Pippa if he was guilty? Why wasn\u2019t his number blocked in the first place? Something isn\u2019t adding up. It\u2019s almost as if Lucy\u2019s implication that he assaulted Pippa was the first he was hearing of it\u2026<\/p>\n
Lucy Has Issues<\/p>\n
Lucy\u2019s general underlying sense of psychopathy has never really been a secret, but it\u2019s increasingly coming to the fore in the\u00a0absence\u00a0of Stephen. Now, you could make the case that any deeply weird behaviours she exhibits are nonetheless a consequence of Stephen\u2019s abuse, but she wasn\u2019t exactly even keel to begin with, and the show has pretty consistently implied that they\u2019re basically as bad as each other.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately for Lucy, her allegations against Chris are getting around. When Alex hears about them, it upsets their entire dynamic, since Lucy was just using him for rough, demeaning sex, and now he doesn\u2019t feel comfortable doing that because he thinks it\u2019s an outgrowth of some deeply held trauma over an assault that never even happened.<\/p>\n
Lucy visits Alex later and tries to reassure him that she\u2019s into the rough stuff in a totally healthy and non-creepy way, but he\u2019s still awkward about it, so he tries to show her the value of genuine, garden-variety intimacy, which she finds visibly boring. After, she returns to her dorm and\u00a0masturbates to the voicemail of Stephen verbally abusing her, the one she forwarded to Sadie. Like I said at the top \u2014 Yikes!<\/p>\n
Swimming Lessons<\/p>\n
Purely by coincidence \u2014 neither of them is going to the pool party \u2014 Wrigley and Bree end up on a road trip. He initially thinks he\u2019s dropping her off at the station, but she\u2019s really travelling to New Jersey for a rendezvous with her mother. Wrigley, being a nice guy, agrees to take her, even though it\u2019s a three-hour trip, and he offers her support throughout the entire experience.<\/p>\n
Bree\u2019s interactions with her mother \u2014 who was in custody of her for much less than the scant year Bree thought she was \u2014 seem to go quite well, but I\u2019m not so sure. Bree seems to want the connection\u00a0much\u00a0more than her mom does, and any future promises of reunions and overnight stays are almost certain to blow up in her face. But we\u2019ll cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Bree\u2019s pretty satisfied. When she and Wrigley return to campus, he decides to teach her how to swim, since it\u2019s one of the things her troubled childhood meant she never learned how to do, and naturally, this experience involves some intimacy and, inevitably, a very awkward almost-kiss before the two of them scurry back to their respective dorms in shame. Later, when Wrigley arrives to pick Pippa up, Bree wildly overcompensates by announcing that she and Evan are back together, which they had earlier decided to keep a secret. Sure, that would have been impossible anyway, since Stephen found out, but either way, it\u2019s clearly an overreaction. Based on what we\u2019ve seen in the 2015 timeline, though, Wrigley being with Pippa and Bree being with Evan doesn\u2019t put either of them off each other.<\/p>\n
And we\u2019re barely halfway through!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Summary Tell Me Lies continues to shock in Season 3, with \u201cI\u2019d Like to Hold Her Head Under…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[5136,156,56160,111,139,69,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-253768","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-drama","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-mystery-thriller","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}