Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Tell Me Lies’ Season 2 on Hulu, Where Every Student At Baird College Is Majoring In Manipulation And Human Sexuality

Now in Season 2, Hulu‘s Tell Me Lies picks up right where Season 1 left off, with college sophomore Lucy trying to move on with her life after her manipulative ex Stephen has chosen his girlfriend Diana over her. But Stephen also can’t bear to see Lucy move on with her life, so he does his best to mess with her. Given the fact that Lucy knows a lot of Stephen’s secrets, however, that’s not the best idea. Will the lies and secrets of season one spill out even more in season two?

TELL ME LIES (SEASON 2): STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: It’s 2015 and we’re (still) at Bree (Catherine Missal) and Evan’s engagement party. As Bree gives a toast that sums up how she pursued Evan in college, Lucy (Grace van Patten) stares/glares across the room at Stephen (Jackson White) and Lydia (Natalee Linez) who happens to be Lucy’s hometown BFF. Stephen (still) has the world’s worst haircut, btw.

The Gist: To start things off, I just have to say that I’m not the only person violently opposed to Stephen’s long, scraggly hair – while everyone is winding down at the engagement party after-party, Wrigley and Evan get the clippers out to cut it all off, thank God.

Lucy is still trying to be there for newly-engaged Bree, who she’s happy for, but being in the same room as Stephen and Lydia is rough and Lucy is not shy about showing the “I can’t get excited for anything” face she’s famous for. As she takes a moment to herself in a spare bedroom at Evan’s parents’ house, who walks out of the en suite bathroom but Lydia, who acknowledges that things are definitely weird between them. Then Lydia adds, “I just need you to know I will never forgive you for any of it.” And with that, we flash back to September, 2008, sophomore year. (Stephen got an iPhone and everyone else still has a BlackBerry or flip phone. 2008 was such an innocent time!)

During the last couple days of summer before everyone returns to the campus at Baird, we see Lucy and Lydia – still best friends – tanning at Lydia’s house, and Lydia confirming that Lucy is planning to stay away from “rancid” Stephen during the school year. Stephen, who is still with Diana (Alicia Crowder), has had an internship at Diana’s father’s law firm in the city. (Diana’s father perceptively calls out Stephen for basically being a manipulative sociopath while Diana is in the ladies room during a lunch date, and how is it that this man is the only person who sees Stephen clearly?)

When everyone finally does return to school, the dynamic is definitely different than it was last year. Pippa (now a blonde) and Wrigley are no longer together; he and the whole football team hate her for breaking his heart. Bree (now with a long wig) and Evan are in the early stages of their relationship but Bree doesn’t know Lucy hooked up with Evan and Lucy plans to keep it that way. (But Bree also has a weird, maybe flirtatious moment with a professor named Oliver who happens to be married to Lucy’s professor, Maryanne.) And Lucy hates Stephen and keeps repeating to anyone who asks that Diana really “did her a favor” with that one.

At the first party of the year, Lucy meets Leo, a senior who spent last year abroad and probably has no idea Macie was even a person who died. While there’s an attraction there, she’s still so preoccupied with Stephen (and Diana) that it’s manifesting into strange behavior she can’t control. After an embarrassing outburst in one of Maryanne’s classes, where Lucy started laughing – and then crying – when a student read a poem about a parakeet, Lucy speaks to Maryanne who is empathetic rather than mad, telling her that these bottled up feelings are going to eat her up if she doesn’t let them all out. It turns out that Lucy, despite her best efforts, hasn’t been able to process everything that Stephen did last season in a healthy, productive way, and all of that anger is about to spill out this season.

Parting Shot: Man, this show loves it’s down-tempo covers of pop songs! As Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy,” sung in the style of Lana del Rey on Valium, starts to play, Lucy leaves the engagement party (where Stephen has gotten his head shaved and he looks like his old self), she drives home. Pippa also heads home to her new girlfriend who is… DIANA.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? There’s a bit of the lying, secretive scheming of Pretty Little Liars mixed with the long-term, dysfunctionally toxic relationship of the After movies.

Our Take: Last season, Stephen seemed like the most toxic and secretive person on the show. This season, there’s quite a bit more going on, and it turns out he’s got some competition. While Stephen puppeteered the women in his life, playing them against one another and still managing to keep both Diana and Lucy infatuated (to varying unhealthy degrees) with him, this season it seems like some of his skills have rubbed off on both of them (in both the 2008 and 2015 timeline).

Maybe even more interesting than Lucy’s desire to f— with Stephen is the secret relationship between Diana and Pippa and what that means for pretty much everyone else. In season one, Pippa’s worst trait seemed like her penchant for doing dumb stuff while drunk, but now, 2015 Pippa is going rogue. Whether she’s going to become a major antagonist or not remains to be seen, but I’m not mad that the show is willing to take big risks to keep the soapy drama flowing.

Sex and Skin: Young, lusty college lovers are fornicating all over the place.

Performance Worth Watching: Stephen DeMarco (Jackson White) is even more of a manipulative piece of shit than he was last season. White somehow manages to be narcissistic and callous, while also being vulnerable and acutely aware of himself (and occasionally charming in spite of how obvious it is that he’s a snake charmer). I feel like it’s a testament to his acting that I hate his character as much as I do.

Memorable Dialogue: After Stephen embarrasses Lucy in front of Leo, she goes to Stephen’s dorm to confront him, an Instant Pot full of rage with a valve turned to Quick Release. When he answers the door, she tells him, “I swear to God, Stephen, if you keep f—ing with me, I will destroy your life. And you can go tell everyone I wrote the letter, I don’t give a f—. I will tell everyone what you did in the car that night, starting with Diana, and I will do it so happily.” Vengeful Lucy is the best Lucy!

Our Call: STREAM IT! Just because freshman year is over, that doesn’t mean that Lucy, Stephen and Co. can’t still make a lot of bad choices and act out of pure emotion and manipulation for yet another school year. Between the old lies and secrets that everyone is keeping and the new ones that have just been revealed, the show redefines “guilty pleasure” as a show where the guilty get pleasured… and pretty much everyone is guilty of something.

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.