By After the double cliffhanger of the premiere, this week's episode is a scramble for the truth, and in a show which is already priding itself on a whiplash-inducing number of twists, it's hard not to be feel we could be being lead down a dead-end. Off we go!
This week we're straight back in with Grace's desperate attempts to try and track down Jonathan after realising she has no idea where he is. As this draws on throughout the episode, the idea of this all being an innocent misunderstand now feels as unlikely as Jeffrey Toobin being invited to host a Zoom masterclass.
"How did he seem this morning?" she presses her son Henry, asking him to repeat the exact details of when Jonathan left. "He seemed like dad?" he says, a minor improvement on his earlier statement of, "Mom, you're acting strange". So much for Gen Z coming to the rescue.
The Reardon mothers congregate in the school playground, a place which, as we know from Big Little Lies, is where the claws really come out. The group are confident that Elena's husband is the killer because he once gave one of the group a "bad feeling". Seems incriminating. Meanwhile Grace's closest confidante Sylvia's reasoning that, "It's always the fucking husband", feels like it has another meaning given our raised suspicions about Jonathan.
While I'm admittedly not au fait with homicide case procedures, it does feel a something of a stretch that the detective duo would be conducting their investigation by hanging out in the playground, muttering furtively and staring Grace down, but here they are again.
In an interlude in Grace's office, we hear from a couple she is giving therapy to. "I think the secrecy was a part of it, maybe even a big part," one of them says, which reminds us that these moments – story-wise, at least – are less about exposing her clients issues as they are holding up a mirror to her own.
This week's episode feels like it exists mostly inside Grace's head and the fears she is circling, which gives us an interesting window into her unravelling and plays with the cliché of the mad woman. This ramps up when she accosts a fellow doctor and coworker of Jonathan's at his office, and discovers the medical conference her husband is meant to be at does not exist. The doctor is talking about being constrained and that there are "strict terms", and we can almost see the cogs are whirring in Grace's head.
Grace decamps to her father Franklin's enormous apartment, but the detective duo again come knocking. Their eagerness to keep questioning her feels almost comical, though it's definitely meant to be raising our suspicions about what it is they've got on her.
In the interrogation room, we hear from Mendoza that Jonathan was in fact fired three months ago following three disciplinary strikes at the hospital he worked at, and also discover that the patient of the respective case was Elena's son Miguel. Finally, some answers!
"Maybe he hugged someone because he cares," Grace says while shaking, still wanting to be blind to the truth even when it's being spelled out for her. Kidman plays shellshocked very well here – wide-eyed and babbling, repeating the same words and imploring the detectives: "I want this to stop." Detective Mendoza, however, feels less fully formed as a character, too smug to seem to have any sympathy for her but not enough of an arrogant cop to inspire our ire. After Mendoza shouts and swears at her, Grace calls his bluff and proves she's free to go.
Later, while manically turning over their apartment, she discovers the smoking gun of a bottle of perfume hidden in a cupboard. She then demonstrates some truly impressive recall after spraying it and being immediately transported to a memory of Elena in front of her in the gym.
The story heats up as we learn that Elena's husband has an alibi and Jonathan is suspect number one. On the advice of Sylvia, and the police who are now turning over her house, she escapes with Henry to a another grand house out of town – truly the house porn in these shows is off the charts. It's here – of course! – that Jonathan appears, professing his innocence and telling her not to scream, only to have her call the police as soon as he turns his back. Now things are truly getting spicy, and we're starting to see we're going to have to choose whether we believe the words of very guilty seeming man, or the evidence linked to a slightly unhinged dead woman. What a choice!
Some thoughts...
- Who did it? A weekly ranking: Jonathan seems odds-on on to be Elena's killer, but if that's true this early then we're in for a pretty dull whodunnit.
- Henry, who seems like a normal albeit slightly swotty child, for some reason has a framed photograph of his father at his bedside. That's a detail that raises some real questions.
- Reardon's decision to keep the school open the day after a parent is murdered, and with full press line-up at the gates and detectives circling the playground, is a real commitment to education. No maths-by-Zoom here.
- Even if he isn't the killer, the revelations about Jonathan's inappropriate behaviour feel like a brave and interesting comment on doctors playing God and feeling invincible.
- Wild theory of the week: did Elena plant the perfume and then make sure Grace got a good whiff of it? Hmmm...
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