‘Tell Me Lies’ Season 2 Episode 1 Recap: Does That Make Me Crazy?

A few very important things happened during the first episode of Tell Me Lies Season 2. The first, and most important, is that 2015 Stephen DeMarco (Jackson White) got a haircut. This grown-out, post-grad bro who wears a a micro-puff vest over his dress shirt style wasn’t working for me and thankfully we don’t have to suffer long this season before Wrigley and Evan take the clippers to it. Is this the most plot-important thing that happens in this episode? Obviously, no. But also maybe yes? Still, for my peace of mind it feels necessary to acknowledge.

The 2015 portion of the show picks up once again at the engagement party of Bree (Catherine Missal) and Evan (Branden Cook), attended by all of Baird College’s most illustrious alums: Lucy Albright (Grace Van Patten), her pal Pippa (Sonia Mena), a still-coked-up Wrigley (Spencer House), and of course, Stephen and his new fiancée Lydia (Natalee Linez), who is (no… was) Lucy’s best friend from home. This is one of the other major developments of this episode, because these two are definitely no longer friends.

The tension between Lydia and Lucy is… you know. Tense. Lucy is non-verbal for most of the party, existing solely to glare at Lydia and Stephen. When she retreats to a bedroom to have a moment to herself, Lydia happens to be in a nearby bathroom and when she walks out, it seems like the two might actually have a non-awkward heart-to-heart, until Lydia says, “I just need you to know, I will never forgive you for any of it.” A seed has been planted! What does that mean and how long is it going to take to find out?!

And with that, off we go to 2008, a flashback of Lucy working out on the treadmill to Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl.” Look, I don’t wanna nitpick but if you’re doing a “period drama” with music from the era, I feel like we could have picked a 2008-specific gym mix song and not a 2004 banger. Britney Spears’ “Womanizer”? “Pocketful of Sunshine”? I don’t know, this isn’t the hill I’m going to die on, but I like my music cues to reflect the year, perhaps even the month, we’re in. Lucy hops off the treadmill, silencing Gwen’s Harajuku-inspired appropriation. She then walks out to Lydia’s backyard where the two sun themselves while Lydia wears a Parvati headband from The Traitors which definitely didn’t become popular until the 2020’s and I’m wondering why I don’t consult as an early-aughts historical supervisor on TV shows. (Frye boots and boho headbands are too few and far between on this show.)

At this point, things are perfectly fine between the two friends; Lucy spent the summer living with Lydia, and Lydia seems fully aware of the grief and stress that Lucy suffered last year at Stephen’s hands, referring to him as a gremlin. Also Lydia’s brother Chris is going to attend Baird this year, which means he’s likely going to get sucked into some toxic shit, right?

Over at some fictional version of Eleven Madison Park, Diana (Alicia Crowder), Stephen, and Diana’s dad are having lunch because Diana got Stephen a summer job at her dad’s law firm to help his career. As Mr. Diana drones on about the importance of LSATs and Stephen effusively thanks him for getting him an iPhone (finally something that actually is relevant to 2008) Diana excuses herself to go to the bathroom, and Mr. Diana takes off the front and says, “Listen, Stephen… you’re only honest when it serves you.” (True.) “And you’re a very skilled manipulator.” (More true.) He warns Stephen not to drag Diana into any of his shenanigans, and Stephen stutters in acknowledgement, knowing he’s been called out. The problem with the main characters on this show is that there are so few authority figures engaged in the lives of these unsupervised almost-adults, so I appreciate that there’s at least one (two, if you count Marianne the professor) who can cut through the bullshit.

Everyone arrives on campus to the tune of Vampire Weekend’s “The Kids Don’t Stand A Chance” (2008!) and everyone’s got their new “thing”: Pippa is now blonde. Bree grew her hair out. Stephen won’t stop talking about his iPhone. Evan acts uncomfortable and is oddly possessive of his new girlfriend, Bree. (That discomfort is from the secret fact that he and Lucy slept together, which they’re hiding from Bree but it’s manifesting as being controlling and con-dependent.)

Drew and Wrigley aren’t speaking to one another. Wrigley and Pippa aren’t speaking to one another. And Lucy has these… episodes… of weirdness. When she’s getting ready for a night out with the girls, she zones out while doing her makeup and only lines one eye. She repeats herself. In a poetry class, she starts uncontrollably laughing at another student’s work. Something is definitely off with her.

The one bright spot for her is Leo (Thomas Doherty), a senior who was abroad in France last year and has just returned to campus. He’s cute and nice and forgiving when she spills her drink all over him at a party. Lucy flirts with him when they meet, but Stephen doesn’t like that Lucy might actually be moving on.

Lucy and Stephen’s first interaction after their summer is at that same party. Stephen stares at her creepily and tells her after some small talk, “You’re doing a really good job pretending not to hate me,” to which she responds, “I’m not pretending.” Stephen tells her he doesn’t believe her and that sh thinks she’s been thinking about him all summer long. Man, he really has that intense, creepy stare down and even I feel manipulated. Who could actually like this guy? Lucy tells him, “That doesn’t work anymore, Stephen,” and it actually seems like she believes what she’s saying, even though she definitely doesn’t.

Meanwhile, in matters that involve actual school, Lucy is taking a class with her hard-nosed professor Marianne again (Gabriella Pession) and to support her, Bree offers to take the class with Lucy. But Bree has trouble registering for it, so she cries fake tears at the registrar’s office, and her waterworks performance is observed by a professor named Oliver (Tom Ellis).

Later, Bree and Lucy attend a poetry reading at Marianne’s house where we learn that Oliver is Marianne’s husband, and he calls out Bree for her little performance. “Is that a normal tactic for you then?” he asks her, to which she keenly states that she cries to get what she wants because “some men respond better to little girls.” Gross but true? Out of everyone, Bree may not seem like the conniving type, but her classmates’ manipulative ways are rubbing off on her. Oliver respects Bree’s take on this even though he also finds it a little creepy and the two share a laugh and a smoke. Something is definitely simmering between them.

Lucy runs into Diana at the reading, and when Lucy coldly walks away from her, Diana scoffs, “Wow, that’s nice,” sarcastically. “Nice?” Lucy asks. “I’m sorry, why do you think that I owe you niceness?” Yes, Lucy, set your boundaries! Diana explains that she’s sorry for the way things played out with Stephen last year, but “Deep down, you have to know you two weren’t right for each other,” and Lucy tells her “I do know that. I know a lot. Trust me.” Yeah, lady, don’t mess with the woman keeping your man’s secrets.

Even though Lucy appears to be setting boundaries and standing her ground, her buried emotions and all of the lies and secrets are all still eating away at her. After her outburst in class when she laughs and then cries in response to a classmate’s poem about a parakeet, she goes to Marianne to apologize. Marianne recognizes that Lucy is tamping down some angry feelings and encourages her to let them out instead of bottling them, and she also offers Lucy a job transcribing the book she’s writing.

Lucy finally gets her chance to release some of those bottled-up feelings toward Stephen later that day. While she and Bree and Pippa sit with Leo at lunch, Stephen approaches them with the complete intent of disparaging and embarrassing Lucy in front of her new crush. “I’m really sorry for hurting you so badly last year,” Stephen tells her, as everyone else looks on (fully aware that he’s trying to make her look like a fool, and they all seem deeply uncomfortable). “I embarrassed you over and over and over again and then you kept forgiving me no matter what. I’m sure that made you feel terrible about yourself. I probably eroded any sense of dignity you had.”

This is the trigger that transforms Lucy Banner into Hulk Lucy. Lucy mad. Lucy make Stephen pay. Later that day, after a brisk run on the aforementioned treadmill, she bolts over to Stephen’s dorm to confront him. She grabs his new, beloved iPhone and smashes it to the floor before telling him, “You’re right. I am still mad. And I know you probably love that but I swear to God, Stephen, if you keep fucking with me, I will destroy your life. And you can go tell everyone I wrote the letter, I don’t give a fuck. I will tell everyone what you did in the car that night starting with Diana, and I will do it so happily. Fuck off.”

For the last four minutes, a maudlin version of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” sung by Catherine Missal plays as we switch back over to 2015. Lucy leaves the engagement party and returns home to her boyfriend whose name I barely remember (Max), Stephen’s head gets shaved so that he looks exactly like his old self, and Pippa returns home to her well-appointed apartment and her new fling who is waiting for her in bed. And that fling, the one Pippa told everyone at the party was just a casual sex partner, is Diana.

“So was he there?” Diana asks Pippa, as if they’re two spies and this party was a recon mission.

“Yeah, they were both there,” Pippa responds and the two kiss, something that was not on my Tell Me Lies bingo card in any timeline.

Diana and Pippa are both rocking big, beautiful curls this season and, to reference Mean Girls for a moment (as I tend to do on a daily basis), it’s clear that all of that big hair is full of secrets.

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.