Pippa’s crime-scene board began with a couple of photos and a timeline and has now grown to fill her entire bedroom wall. Instead of boy-band posters or Polaroids of friends, Pip has opted to plaster her room with relics from the Sal Singh–Andie Bell case, a not so subtle visualization of how much she has become consumed with it. A bedroom is such a personal space, and Pip’s says a lot about what’s going on beneath that bob and inside her mind. Everything is copy — the copy here being Andie and Sal.
Pip’s expanding research has led her to two young women who still live in Little Kilton: Emma Hutton (Georgia Aaron) and Nat da Silva (Jessica Webber), Andie’s two best friends. Pip strikes out with Emma, who speaks kindly of both Sal and Andie but shuts down as soon as Pip suggests there might have been more to Andie that Emma didn’t know. Pippa has a whole lot of moxie and determination, but she could use a more compassionate partner, a good cop to her bad cop.
Enter: the adorkable Ravi Singh, Pip’s knight in Carhartt armor. Ravi and Pip’s friendship has progressed to the point where Pippa giggles every time she receives a text message from him. They meet up to scheme — blah blah blah, Nat da Silva, blah blah blah, Emma Hutton, blah blah blah, scheming. It’s impossible to hear a thing because Ravi aims his big heart eyes at Pip while she rattles on and on about the case. He is a man in love! And to really sweeten the moment, Pip asks Ravi to tell her about Sal, a question everyone in his life has been afraid to ask. Ravi softens to talk about how much he misses his brother and why it feels as if he’s unable to grieve.
Ravi’s quiet nature fits perfectly with Pip’s forwardness. It’s not that Ravi doesn’t want to talk about Sal or that he’s quiet because he’s antisocial; it’s that, after years of hiding from the cruel townsfolk who hate his family, he has learned to keep his mouth shut. Now, with curious Pippa pinging him with endless questions about his life, it’s like Ravi can finally breathe. He becomes himself around Pip. And Pippa, in turn, could learn from Ravi’s ability to hold his tongue before he speaks. So: partners. They should be partners. Both as detectives and, if I had my way, in life.
Over at the Ward household, Pip makes amends with Cara. “I think sometimes I get fixated on something and I can’t do anything else,†she says. Who among us hasn’t had to apologize to our closest friends and family after going a little too hard on a micro-obsession? Cara accepts her apology as long as Pippa promises to leave Naomi out of it. Pip agrees. Cara invites Pip to watch her kill it on the tennis court later in the week — ironically, against Nat. Everything Pippa does is related to this damn case!
Here’s where A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder makes the first major deviation from the original novel, in which Nat is not Andie’s best friend. In fact, quite the opposite — in the book, the pair are mortal enemies. This adaptation makes things a bit spicier with Nat and Andie being secretly frenemies. Nat agrees to talk to Pippa in the locker room naked (okay, Patrick Zweig) because everyone has already seen her topless thanks to Andie leaking one of her nudes in high school.
Later, Ravi hatches a brilliant plan: They’ll use his phone to text Emma acting as Nat with a new phone, hoping to squeeze out more intel. “Did a super-weird girl contact you about Andie?†Ravi-as-Nat types. He smirks at Pip. Okay, now I’m blushing. One text leads to another, and Emma asks if Nat told Pip about “Secret Older Guy.†This show was doing so well at realistic teen texting and social-media usage, but now it’s blown it all in one message: “Secret Older Guy†with caps. Really? But it’s forgivable, just this once.
Finally, Pip has an opportunity to get her mind off Andie. For Cara’s birthday, Pippa and Lauren plan a camping trip to a nearby lake, inviting the lads, Zach (Raiko Gohara) and Connor (Jude Morgan-Collie). This gives Pippa — and us, too — some much-needed respite after weeks of investigation. As gripping as it is to solve a murder, these carefree moments with Pippa’s friend group bring some much-needed youthful energy to the series. They scream while crashing into the lake, reveal secret crushes (yes, Ravi is mentioned), take swigs from bottles of tequila, and play the Charlie Charlie challenge in the dark. The only time Andie Bell is mentioned is when the boys offer to tell ghost stories.
But that respite can’t last forever. When the kids start to settle in for bed, a rogue flashlight off in the distance scares them into hysterics. Moments later, a folded note appears in Pip’s sleeping bag: “STOP DIGGING PIPPA,†it reads.
Lack of commas aside, whoever wrote this note clearly doesn’t know how bad an idea it is. What have we learned about Pippa? Any time she’s told to stop, she goes even further. If anything, this note drags Pip out of her camping slumber and back into the thick of Andie Bell and Sal Singh. The carefree flirting and the day at the lake were nice while they lasted — now, it’s back to sleuthing. This episode maintains a perfect 50-50 balance between mindless friend-group drama and actual murder drama.
Using the same texting technique as earlier, Ravi and Pip pretend to be Emma texting Nat now. They ask to meet at the train station — a solid idea, until Nat sees Dumb and Dumber waiting for her and does a 180 right back to her car. Before she can leave, Ravi steps in with an attempt to actually connect with Nat; again, he’s the ideal foil for Pip’s confrontational style. For a minute, Ravi’s emotional approach actually works. Nat reveals the Secret Older Guy was Max Hastings.
But Pippa always has to mess things up, doesn’t she? Pip ditches Ravi (ugh) and returns to Max Hastings’s house (double ugh). Did she not learn last time that Max is to be avoided at all costs? The problem here is that Ravi is quite fond of Max, Sal’s best friend. He’s too biased to be involved. It’s actually rather nice that Max isn’t a one-dimensional d-bag. He’s a bit more fleshed out: Max is so suave that he convinced people like Ravi, Sal, and Naomi that he’s worth befriending.
Pippa snoops through Max’s room while he showers, and she finds a lewd pic of Andie Bell stashed in one of his books. Before Pip can make a run for it, Max emerges from the bathroom. Oh, Pippa. You wouldn’t be in this situation if you had simply agreed with Ravi and gone home. Let this be a lesson: Always listen to Ravi.
But the tension between evil Max and goody-goody Pippa makes my heart do backflips. This is tense. Pip accuses Max of sleeping with Andie, but he only cackles at that assumption. He wasn’t sleeping with Andie. He was buying drugs from Andie; she worked for a dealer. Pippa’s mind is blown, and Max tells her there’s only one way to figure out who the dealer is. She’ll need to find him at some event called a “calamity party.†Pip’s mind flashes to techno music, flashing lights, and drinks sloshing around on a dance floor, which can mean only one thing: Our next episode is about to go full Euphoria.
Ring a Bell?
• Pippa’s backstory is a little confusing, but hints are scattered throughout the first two episodes. Although she calls the man living in her house “Dad,†Victor Amobi (Gary Beadle) is not Pippa’s biological father. Pip’s dad died when she was really little, and her mom remarried soon after. She had another kid, Pip’s half-brother, Josh (Kamari Loyd), with Victor.
• Lauren reveals that Cara has a crush on a girl named Ruby. Pip is upset because Cara didn’t tell her. Well, Pip, maybe you shouldn’t have made a nearly friendship-ending mistake right off the bat in this EPQ!
• We find out Nat is the younger sister of police officer Dan da Silva. Dan is the super-handsome guy who stole Pippa’s nose at the Hastings party. He worked on the Andie case and really gives Pip the heebie-jeebies.