You know, Cruel Summer, this whole episode really could have been an email. I’m having a hard time even deciding how to begin here because, five minutes after finishing it, everything that happened in “Springing a Leak†has already begun evaporating from my brain. It doesn’t help that it’s getting more and more difficult to tell the difference between the moody color palette of December 1999 and the slightly moodier color palette of July 2000.
In these 40-odd minutes of television, we have learned only the following things:
1. Megan has an interest in becoming a “white hat hacker†as a potentially lucrative second job to help her mom pay for things like burst pipes.Â
2. Megan finds Isabella’s bathing suit in Luke’s bathroom, hinting that Izzie could be sleeping with Luke for real — or perhaps she’s actually been sleeping with Luke’s brother Brent, the underage revenge-porn auteur.
3. Luke had been planning to run away from home before his mysterious death, which Megan knew but didn’t tell Luke’s dad about.
4. Izzie sees Megan clandestinely throw away what looks like a bunch of blood-stained fabric.
5. Debbie is way more likely to Believe Women when it’s her own daughter who’s been revenge-porned and not the foreign exchange student who is also under her care.
Other than that, there simply isn’t much to see here that hasn’t already been fairly well-developed. In July of 1999, we get the launch of Megan’s Izzie-inspired Bad Girl Era as well as her much shorter-lived Jeff Era, both plot points we’ve been hearing about for three episodes now. Meg and Jeff get flirty while making fake IDs on PhotoShop, which Megan and Izzie later use to get into a nearby dive bar (the boys are turned away at the door). Megan’s first drink is a rum and Coke (same!), which she sips giddily until she and Izzie spot Sheriff Myers in the corner and hightail it out of there. Later, Meg and Jeff smooch, Luke gets jealous, and that’s about it.
In July of 2000, Sheriff Myers accuses Megan of killing Luke. Megan’s high-powered lawyer objects. Megan slicks back her hair and sulks. Rinse, repeat.
The few plot developments that my mind did manage to retain mostly occur in the December timeline, where the fallout from the revenge-porn screening also includes Steve Chambers’ business. (My god, this is a puritanical town.) On the other side of the parenting spectrum there is Debbie, who has reverted to being the cool mom again now that she knows it was actually Megan on the tape and not Isabella. The family healing process gets a setback, however, when a pipe bursts and floods through the kitchen ceiling. Debbie doesn’t have the $6,000 it will cost to fix it, so Megan offers the $900 in her savings account and Isabella offers her $5,000 in birthday money from her parents, both of which Debbie declines. Her big idea is to ask Steve, until Megan is like, “Mom you really have to stop asking your boss-slash-boyfriend for bailout money.†This is hard to argue with.
As a compromise, Debbie asks Steve if the three of them (Megan’s little sister is at a sleepover) can crash at the Chambers’ house (a.k.a. Revenge Porn Ground Zero) for the night, which does not go well. Things are tense between Izzie and Megan again, for starters. They may have squashed last episode’s beef, but now Meg is feeling a mixture of resentment and suspicion for her ride-or-die. She’s resentful that all of the $900 she made busting her ass for a year waiting tables has disappeared in the blink of a busted pipe, while Isabella walks around with a casual $5k of free money. “I get it,†says Luke, who absolutely does not get it. “How!†says Megan, who is exhausted by this. This is really the wrong moment for Luke to be defending his fellow rich-kid and ex-girlfriend, because Megan just found Izzie’s blue bikini stashed in his bathroom, so her jealousy antennas are already way, way up. Meanwhile, Isabella has taken this opportunity to resume her frantic search for Brent’s homemade revenge-porn tapes — leading me to believe that at least one of those videos may be of Izzie herself, which would answer a lot of my questions about her motivations right now. Anyway, when Megan confronts her about the possibility that she and Luke are more than just friends behind her back, Izzie pulls out her trusty trump card: “How far do I have to go to prove my loyalty to you! Do you need me to kill for you?†Um.
Luckily Brent is on hand to bring the two besties back together by being super-duper gross. “Get off your high horse you slut,†is the literal line. Jeez, Brent, you’re making it hard to hate anyone else on this show, and we have a mystery to solve.
The real fireworks come at dinner, courtesy of Debbie, of all people. I wouldn’t usually condone parenting someone else’s kid, but I’m making an exception for Debbie in this scene. “I think Brent owes Isabella an apology,†she declares, “And Luke, too.†Brent mumbles something insincere, which does not impress Debbie or her kids, even though Luke just wants to “try to have a nice dinner.†Not on Megan and Debbie’s watch! Megan asks Brent about filming multiple girls without their consent, which is news to Debbie. Steve tries explaining how he’s already swept all of that under the rug but Debbie is like, “That kid shouldn’t be grounded, he should be in jail!†I’d like to know where this energy was when Debbie didn’t know it was actually Megan in the tape but otherwise go off, Deb.
So then Steve’s like, you can’t be the morality police because you had a child out of wedlock! And Isabella’s like, you can’t talk to my maternal figure like that! And Luke’s like, guys, what about our nice dinner? So then Megan snaps at Luke, Isabella tries to butt in, and Megan tells her to butt out. So then Debbie’s like, let’s go girls, and tells Steve, “Hope it was worth it.†Cloth napkin-drop.
At the end of the episode, the plumber is fixing Debbie and Megan’s house because Steve sent his girlfriend-slash-employee an apology check for $6,000. What happened to that backbone, Deb?
Clues to watch:
• Steve Chambers. Just in general. I don’t like that guy one bit.
• Isabella claims her Pat Highsmith driver’s license, which we caught in an earlier episode, is her usual fake ID. A likely story…
• If Isabella and Megan are co-conspirators in whatever this murder/coverup thing is, why was Megan trying to hide the bloody garbage from her?
• Is Megan now a “black hat hacker?†If so, for whom? And, more importantly, do we care? If so, why?