This episode should have come with a trigger warning.
Before anyone says anything to me, I do know that most of these episodes should come with a trigger warning. You know that with this show you are getting a hot mess of chaos and narcissistic emotional abuse. I know when I watch it, I am in for that. I know that I do love the show, despite that.
I just wasn’t prepared for sexual assault. Or the inference of it. I wasn’t prepared for that at all.
It’s kinda crazy, because I know that Tell Me Lies is going to have a lot of things that are extremely toxic. But the whole inference of Pippa possibly being roofied and not remembering if anything happened to her made me vomit. It made me vomit because (1) I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone and (2) as a survivor of sexual assault it is very triggering. So yes, it becomes hard for me to watch.
And I had to take a break. I wish that I had been warned and could have mentally prepared myself for it.
LUCY
Lucy seems to be moving on, but there are a few things that I am not getting about her. Maybe it’s the fact that Bree and Pippa are giving her a pass for being weird after everything with Stephen. Maybe it’s something else. But, I really want someone to hold Lucy accountable for the things that she does too.
But Evan isn’t the only one being weird. Lucy is too. When she walks in and finds Bree upset, and Pippa says Evan cheated, her first instinct is to ask with who. I don’t know, it’s just another moment of a lot of weirdness.
The three of them are supposed to be the best of friends, but again – secrets.
I think that Lucy is scared by a lot of things that have happened to her, but if that is the case, she needs to get more help. Any help? She can’t think that just returning to Baird and partying is going to make her get over Stephen.
Don’t get me wrong, I think that we all love Lucy and Leo together. The way that they’re always flirting and the will they/won’t they of it all. They’re both painfully charming and cute. There is that. It’s seeing that Lucy isn’t ready for a relationship that really changes things.
When the two are grabbing coffee and Lucy accidentally runs into someone, a fight ensues. The way that Leo becomes aggressive is triggering to her and she runs. It reminds her of Stephen. You can see it all over her face.
I actually feel for her and wanna run after her. I think it was a missed opportunity to not see her have a panic attack outside or Leo notice that she was gone. While we’re at it, can we please discuss all the aggressiveness of the men at this school? It’s obscene.
Lucy may not be great at relationships or taking care of herself, but she is good at taking care of others. She’s there for Pippa when she needs her and even when she pushes Pippa too hard, she’s still going to be there and honor her friend.
But here I am thinking about how hypocritical Lucy is. She doesn’t get it. I don’t even think that her friends realize it about her or they are making excuses for it.
Lucy needs to get help. She needs to talk about what happened to her. If she doesn’t she’s going to boil over.
And she isn’t far from that. We all see that when we learn that Stephen is now her TA. She’s not far from breaking and he’s definitely okay being the one to break her.
BREE
Birthdays are awkward. And Bree just has one of the worst birthdays of her life. Well, in the past decade that is. But what a birthday party leads to is a lot of drama and some pretty ugly earrings.
Life is a bunch of mistakes that you can make and lessons that you can learn. That’s my view on it anyway. I feel like a lot of the time we’re overlooking that when you are in college, it’s the time that you are learning to be on your own for the first time.
And with learning comes mistakes. Making some positive choices also comes.
Bree though, she’s at this point where she’s just making choice after choice that may not be the smartest. But I also feel like for Bree this is the first time in her life where she’s felt like a sense of family and also of freedom.
It doesn’t make it any better though that Evan has taken Stephen’s advice and told Bree that he cheated. He tells her that it was with a random girl, when we all know it was with Lucy. I don’t think that who he cheated with matters, it’s that he cheated. Would you need to know who someone cheated with if you were the person that was cheated on? I don’t think I would.
But, I also think that Bree needs to find better ways to deal with her pain. She’s lived a life full of nothing but pain – one thing after another to tear her down. She’s going to find a destructive way to deal with it and that includes searching out Oliver.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I know that I said that I knew that she and Oliver would get together. That’s painfully obvious. I just think that making impulsive decisions is based on attraction and hormones. This is a show about college though and back then (or if you’re currently there) it’s the time where you’re going to be impulsive.
There is no shock that Bree runs to Oliver because she wants to be around the person who makes her feel seen. The person that makes her feel beautiful. Their conversation is moments of sexual tension after sexual tension. I loved the way that Oliver (Tom Ellis) is like you know you came here for something, so let’s not beat around the bush.
It goes back to the way that Oppenheimer makes sure that this show is written. She wants authenticity in the experience and she manages to do that. I am not saying that everyone goes out and tries to hit on a teacher, but what I am saying is that she captures the way that any female wants to feel loved and beautiful. She captures that in a way that is so relatable.
The decisions that are made with Tell Me Lies can’t be easy to make. I think that when you are making a show that is controversial, you have to weigh in on how things can be taken.
And when you see the next part, where Bree is so turned on by Oliver and she heads back to Evan, right into his arms to have sex, you know that it’s not an easy situation to navigate.
Talk first. Sex later. That’s the way it should go, but it isn’t the way that it does. Evan and Bree breaking up was something I think that we could all see happening and I do think it’s something that Stephen was hoping for. He gets off on seeing his friends suffering.
I just didn’t see her next reaction be running straight to Oliver’s office and saying that she’s ready for him to kiss her now. Talk about a makeout sesh.
PIPPA
When it comes to friendship – Pippa, Bree, and Lucy have a very complicated friendship. That complication is fueled by the lies that they tell and the secrets that they keep. That’s definitely something that is typical in friendships — even if you want to deny that it is.
When Bree tells Lucy that she has to take Pippa to the party, I am honestly not shocked. Pippa and Lucy at the party? Well, that was a little more than I expected. We got to meet Quinn (who I think is the person that Pippa was with at the end of the last season, but I am not sure), who asked Pippa for her phone number. But before she can give it, Quinn is summoned by her friends.
When Lucy calls Chris over to talk to Pippa, I am not shocked. I think that for Lucy, that’s a person that she feels like she can trust with her friend. Chris is a person Lucy has known forever. That is definitely a sense of comfort because she can see her friend being taken care of and not screwed over.
The Wrigley situation did hit Pippa hard. I think we all know that.
The thing is though, who you think you know and who they actually are can be two different things. College, being on your own, peer pressure… it can all change a person. And maybe it has changed Chris. There’s just something that is off and feels dirty about the situation that follows.
Diana finds Pippa half-naked in a room and when she goes to check on her, Chris walks out of the bathroom. He’s shocked and scared. He looks guilty, especially as Diana screams for him to get out. Pippa is vomiting and incoherent. There is a part of me that thinks that she’s drunk, but you can tell that it is something more.
Over last season, Pippa got drunk a few times. She was able to hold her liquor. She was fine with her liquor. Maybe this was the punch she was drinking at the beginning of the party. I don’t know. But it does seem like she was roofied.
And it’s definitely scary as we see Diana and Lucy bring her back to the dorms. Diana looks terrified that Pippa was assaulted. She doesn’t say that she thinks it – just says that it looked wrong. I may not trust a lot of things about Diana and normally her judgement would be one of the first things that I pass judgment on.
But this tracks.
Especially the next morning when Pippa wakes up. She’s embarrassed over what happened, but she doesn’t want to talk about it. Even when Lucy presses her, she doesn’t want to talk and instead becomes extremely defensive. She doesn’t want anyone to know and tells Lucy that she can’t even tell Bree.
TBH, the whole situation really, truly made me sick. I am scared that something did happen to Pippa and she blames herself. What if something did happen and she just doesn’t remember?
OTHER THOUGHTS
- Wrigley is so lost and trying to find himself without football and it’s definitely kinda sad to see.
- I feel bad for Wrigley.
- Stephen and Wrigley spending time together… someone tell me why any of these people are friends.
- How has Stephen never confronted Wrigley about Diana?
- Stephen becoming the TA just to spend time around Lucy… that’s psycho behavior.
- Stephen and Lucy are going to keep trying to find ways to push each other’s buttons – but I feel like one of them is going to go too far.
- Who is Quinn? What does she have to do with all this?
- The earrings that Evan gives Bree are atrocious.
Episode 3 of Tell Me Lies premieres September 11th on Hulu.
