‘Tell Me Lies’ Season 3 Episode 6 Recap: Paranoia, The Destroyer

It’s Valentine’s Day 2009 on Season 3 of Tell Me Lies, which can only mean trouble — wrapped in a pink bow. 

“I Don’t Cry When I’m Sad Anymore” (Season 3 Episode 6) takes place over the course of just that day — mostly the night — in a rare move for Tell Me Lies. It’s also the second consecutive episode this season to not spend any time at Bree (Cat Missal) and Evan’s (Branden Cook) wedding in 2015, fueling a growing irrational fear of mine that bad things are happening in that timeline without our knowledge.

Bad things are also happening in 2009, where there turn out to be no pink bows in sight; the gang are attending an anti-Valentines Day party, dressed in all black with goth makeup and prison-coded teardrops.

For Valentine’s Day is a celebration of romantic love, and while there’s quite a bit of that present on Tell Me Lies, it’s rarely sweet, simple, or in a position to be celebrated. The happiest couple on screen is Diana (Alicia Crowder) and Pippa (Sonia Mena), one of whom just became a victim of cybercrime by her unhinged ex, and the other actively cheating on a man who has been through too much in recent months.

To be fair, Pippa is staying with Wrigley (Spencer House) for exactly that reason; he’s already suffered so profoundly during his senior year that she can’t bear to bring him more heartbreak or abandon him while he continues to grieve and piece his life back together. Neither character has consciously recognized the burgeoning change in their relationship, or the fact that what they want and need from each other is very much platonic and emotional. They’ve started acting more like 2015 Pippa and Wrigley, who remain close friends and nothing else. Given how rare it is for people to stay friends with their exes, there’s something beautiful about the kind of love that can survive those seismic shifts.

Now on to the party, where love is decidedly not in the air. There’s tension between Bree and Evan because she wants to tell him about reconnecting with her mom, and it only increases when she does tell him and he gets pissed about ever being uninformed. Evan felt out of character this episode while the writers sow the weeds of Bree and Wrigley’s connection; he’s patronizing and controlling (she never agreed to spend summer with you!) where one would expect him to understand and take a step back from Bree’s past. “If you don’t need my opinion then why are we even together?” he asks during their argument. Hey man: What the hell?

Love is also not in the air for Lucy (Grace Van Patten), when Bree invites Alex (Costa D’Angelo) so that Lucy can rub it in Stephen’s face (Jackson White). Hello?? The last time Lucy was at a party with a different guy, he had anger problems that Stephen deliberately used to provoke the guy, and it was Stephen’s face that ended up wrecked in the aftermath. Lucy also ends up fighting with Pippa because Chris (Jacob Rodriguez) confronted her earlier in the night. It’s a terrible interaction; Pippa is visibly uncomfortable, Chris steers the conversation, and then ultimately asks her to convince Lucy that he’s not a predator. All wild decisions considering that he had the option to simply leave her alone.

Between that and Stephen forcing Lucy to fake pleasantries and act like they’re friends in front of Tegan (Bianca Nugara), the vibes are distinctly bad when she convinces them to play a round of Paranoia. Everyone writes down questions on paper — Who is most likely to do x — and when someone chooses paper, they answer only with a name. If you’re the person they named, you can find out what the question was, but only if you take a drink.

It’s an intriguing set up and plays pretty well on screen, except for the absurd fundamental buy in that everyone has to play. Despite Pippa’s early reminder that this group doesn’t do well with drinking games, participate in Paranoia like Tegan is a judge who sentenced them to it and not a LITERAL RANDOM FRESHMAN GIRL. She’s also not nearly concerned enough that Stephen was named as “Most likely to cheat,” so I am worried about how she’s going to escape all this.  

One salve from the party might be that Alex has the emotional intelligence to instantly register how scared Lucy is of Stephen — a word others have used before but she denies. Alex tries to talk to her about it, but she uses the entire night and her own tortured emotions like foreplay (including taking him to her ex’s bar to try and make him jealous). “I’m a sad and a fucking worthless mess and you love it,” she says, barely fighting tears that also appear in his eyes. “This is how you want me.” 

They kiss and they cry and they question their moral integrity — and somehow it doesn’t end there because afterward, Lucy’s feet carry her directly to Stephen’s dorm room, where fear once again ignites in her eyes. Afterward, she finds comfort in Diana again, who tells Lucy about the nudes. “He will always find a way to go lower,” she says of Stephen, urging Lucy to ignore him in service of making it all go away.

Let’s rewind a bit for our final characters, for whom love may actually be in the air (air polluted by complication, confusion, and trauma, but who’s to say it can’t be purified?). Wrigley tries to keep distance from Bree — as much distance as is possible with all these characters hanging out every damn day — and calls her out on confiding in him instead of Evan (twice!). 

At the party, Bree learns that Amanda (Iris Apatow) is 17 years old, which derails her evening into a late-night visit to Marianne (Gabriella Pession). The professor tries to calm her down and explain the situation, but there’s no way to justify this development or ignore Bree’s declaration that her husband is hurting people. Marianne relents, admitting that she never wanted the open relationship — another out-of-character development that dulls the previous nuance of her marriage, but shapes its forward momentum nonetheless. 

Bree calls Wrigley to pick her up, and amid all the mess of this episode, they have something resembling a healthy conversation. She admits that she likes talking to him, that he makes things better, and that she’s confused about her feelings. Turns out that even that much honesty was enough for Wrigley to rescind his earlier statement that the two of them aren’t “a thing,” because he hugs her and then they kiss. Inevitable! 

Tell Me Lies Truths from Season 3 Episode 6 (“I Don’t Cry When I’m Sad Anymore”)

Most jarring memory of the 2000s: Bree’s Motorola Razr. God I miss a small phone that could clip onto my jeans and make me feel cool.

Moment that made me yell out loud: Wrigley elicited a few rare laughs from me this episode, starting with his response to Lucy saying “You’re all being a bunch of smug assholes.” “Speaking of which, Stephen’s coming later.” HAH.

Proma Khosla is a New York-based writer with over 15 years of editorial experience. Her work has appeared in Teen Vogue, Vanity Fair, Glamour, Mashable, and most recently at IndieWire, where she was a Senior TV reporter for almost four years. She is the co-director of Lion Party Films and creator of Drunk Bollywood Live, where she highlights South Asian art and performers. She is one half of the podcast PromRad with fellow Decider contributor Radhika Menon.