‘Tell Me Lies’ Season 2 Episode 3 Recap: Next Level Crazy

The engagement party ended, but we’ve moved on to the bachelor/bachelorette party as the 2015 framing device for this episode of Tell Me Lies. Season 2 Episode 3 opens with Lucy (Grace Van Patten) reluctantly bringing her boyfriend Max (Edmund Donovan) into the toxic world of her college friends. I don’t honestly know how Pippa (Sonia Mena) and Lucy can truly stand to be part of this friend group that includes two of the world’s worst exes, Stephen (Jackson White) and Wrigley (Spencer House), but they do it for Bree (Cat Missal), who is blitzed out of her mind on some drug her fiance’s cousin shoved down her throat.

Lucy can’t hide how much she hates that Max is palling around with Stephen, and when Lucy tells Max she wants to basically eliminate Stephen from her life, Max is not as supportive as one would hope, telling her that maybe people can change.

No one said Wrong Answers Only, Max. Pippa also seems unhappy at the party, but that’s really just because her girlfriend Diana (Alicia Crowder) wouldn’t come. Their bombshell of a relationship is still a secret to everyone, but even more than that, Diana is just smarter than everyone else and explains, “I have no interest in being around those people again.” Same, girl.

Heading back to 2008…

Stephen has maneuvered his way into being a teaching assistant in one of Lucy’s classes (and Lucy is able to see through his lie that he didn’t even know she was in that class), and I swear to God the way Jackson White acts with his shifty eyes is some masterful sociopath work. Pippa, who is still doing the same laundry she was doing last week, is also still in denial about being raped by Chris.

When Diana comes to her dorm to check on her, seemingly out of real concern, Pippa tells her to scram. She doesn’t believe her future girlfriend to be capable of helping other women. Diana seems genuinely hurt, but the thing is, she just got off the phone with her own mother and told her that she should stay in an abusive relationship with her father, so like, shades of gray, you know? At best, we could say Diana is selective in the women she supports.

Is it possible that Lucy only surrounds herself with awful people? Stephen is obviously the worst. Number one worst. Diana, friend to some – but not all – women is also terrible because in an effort to conceal from Stephen how she and Lucy helped Pippa get home after her assault, and that’s why she has Lucy’s school ID in her bag, she makes up a lie about how Lucy “came at her” during an interaction on campus.

This leads to a chain reaction of dramatic events and lies which lead me to believe this show might as well be called Gaslighting Lucy. First, Stephen outdoes Diana when he also lies to her, saying that she should watch out for Lucy because she’s been harassing him too by switching into a class he’s student teaching. We all know it was the other way around, but Diana, who somehow hasn’t figured out that Stephen is pathological, tells him, “that’s genuinely creepy.”

Then Stephen goes to Lucy’s dorm room to return her missing ID, and she actively tries to shake him off and make him go away at first, repeating to him how much she hates him. But as he draws in closer to her telling her he doesn’t believe she hates him, and he unbuttons her pants, she lets him. And then he pulls away, telling her, “This is really fucking embarrassing for you,” and walking out on her. She is obviously ashamed and enraged that he would bait her like this.

Enraged, Lucy rushes to Diana’s room to finally set things straight. She tells Diana that she’s been hiding Stephen’s dark secret, that he was in the car with Macie the night she died and had been sleeping with Macie that summer. And Diana doesn’t believe her. “I knew you were fucking crazy but this is next level,” Diana says.

While I thought that Lucy’s new fling Leo, the one who head-butted a random guy in a coffee shop, was also going to be trouble, it turns out there’s hope for him yet. He admits to Lucy he’s working on his rage issues, and while Lucy brushes him off in an effort to not get involved with yet another toxic man, Pippa helps her realize that at least he admits he has a problem, as opposed to Stephen, who relishes his ability to puppeteer those around him. So Lucy gives Leo another chance to explain himself and the poor guy really is Bruce Banner, unable to control his anger, so he pops off against his own will. His honestly allows Lucy to come clean, too, about Stephen and how much he hurt her. Lucy and Leo both choose the Love Connection and decide to go on another date, but I can only imagine that Leo will probably Hulk out on Stephen at some point this season, at the very least so fans will get to see him get what’s coming to him, not that I advocate violence or anything.

Over in Hot Professor Oliver’s office… and also in the bar… and also at a house he’s conveniently house-sitting at… Bree is living out her romantic fantasies.

The sexual tension between her and the older husband of her poetry professor has been palpable, and they finally gave in to desire during episode two, making out in his office.

This week, Oliver has tried to do the mature thing by telling Bree that he’ll only advance things with her physically if she won’t get too attached. He’s married and has no intentions of leaving his wife, but when he asks her if she can keep it casual, Bree unsteadily tells him, “I think so?” This is terrifying to Oliver, because Bree is a girl with a crush and of course she’s not going to keep things casual, her 20-year-old brain is not capable of that. He realizes that and walks out, but Bree realizes that if she wants to sleep with this married man, she’ll have to fake keeping it casual. So she shows up to his car, he unlocks the door, and drives her to the place where he’s cat-sitting and they have sex on his friend’s bed. But tenderly.

Bree deserves happiness and a man who treats her well, but honey, he ain’t the one. But at this point, Bree doesn’t really have anyone else who’s giving her this kind of attention. She’s broken things off with Evan, Pippa and Lucy haven’t told her about Pippa’s assault and are acting weird around her, and she’s right to feel isolated and alone. But she is enrolled in Bad Decisions 101 right now.

But she’s not the only one having sex to distract herself. Diana, armed with the knowledge that Stephen knows way more than he let on about Macie’s death, shows up at his room. She asks him, “I know you better than anybody, right?” and he confirms that yes, of course she does. But instead of bring up what Lucy told her, she initiates sex. I can’t blame her. She is bearing an imaginable mental load at the moment; sometimes the best way to take your mind off of the fact that your boyfriend fled the scene a of a fatal accident that he’s been withholding information about and only confided to the other girl he was sleeping with is to have sex with that very boyfriend.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.