Let’s get this out of the way: I adored this episode. I know that its dreamlike logic and dreamier still imagery may be a turn-off to some. This is, after all, a whodunnit. To pause the plotting gears of this literary adaptation and stage an episode that mostly takes place in Maddie’s mind is not just bold. It’s a demand to recognize that the plot should not be what we should all watch episodic storytelling for. There should be room for vibes. For dreams. For sequences where a dance troupe made up of Cleo look-alikes in her signature baby-blue coat and makeshift funerals for Maddie can hammer home larger explorations of the themes Lady in the Lake has been preoccupied from the start. “There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination,†as Anaïs Nin (quoted once more by the show) reminds us. What better space to find the truth than in one’s mind and messy unconscious?
So, where were we? Oh right. Maddie had been stabbed! By Ms. Zawadzkie! Yes, Stephan’s mother, once confronted by Maddie in her own home, had lashed out, realizing she’d soon be found out: She was the one who’d killed Tessie (after her son had attempted to rape the young girl). We find Maddie now recovering from her wound and ebbing in and out of consciousness at the hospital. Therein lies the key to this episode: We are not really in the streets of Baltimore. We’re in the troubled, addled mind of an ambitious would-be reporter who’s trying to piece together everything that’s led her to this moment. And while the focus of those around her (including Bob Bauer, who tries to wrestle a story out of her while visiting her) stays firmly on Tessie, Maddie insists, instead, on following the one many others would rather ignore if not outright forget: “Cleo’s the story,†she insists to no avail.
We begin with a sequence that’s ostensibly a flashback: Maddie, newly married to Milton, is attending a sea-themed event where she runs into her high-school sweetheart, Allan. She’s dressed as Esther Williams; he’s donning a sailor suit and is, as it turns out, a tad drunk. The drunkenness is enough to push Allan into blunt honesty: He knew about Maddie and his father. That’s why he’d broken up with her. And, as the two move away from the crowd to have a more private conversation (“You weren’t his only girl,†he tells her, both cutting and compassionate in equal measure), they end up hooking up — explaining, in the process, who Seth’s father actually is. And why, perhaps, Maddie felt so close to Tessie after all.
Soon, though, the memory gives way to more nightmarish scenarios: While at the hospital (seemingly visited by Allan and Seth), Maddie finds out she’s very, very pregnant and immediately goes into labor in what has to be the most laughably on-the-nose moment of the entire episode. With echoes of Rosemary’s Baby (what kind of creature could Maddie be giving birth to?), we see she bears not a baby at all but a baby-shaped story. Namely, a baby made of newspaper. (“Your story,†the nurse who delivers this creature tells her, “it needs a good lede.â€)
And that’s when we’re off, with Maddie getting up from her hospital bed and running around in what is now a flooded series of hallways where she keeps seeing Reggie (in full boxing gear) limping away as Cleo herself keeps avoiding her. Portman has always been best at playing women unraveling. Be they perfectionist ballerinas or grieving First Ladies, flirty strippers, or opportunist actresses, her filmography is littered with women like Maddie who are driven to the edge and yet whose grit and resilience are bewitching to watch. The deeper Maddie goes into her unconscious, the harder it seems she’ll be able to piece all the clues swirling around her.
This is why this episode spoke to me: Even as it ostensibly offered a chance for Maddie to dig deep into Cleo’s story to figure out the truth, it also allowed Alma Har’el to visually punctuate the themes of racial discord that structure Lady in the Lake. And so, while Maddie constantly seeing Reggie is a clear sign that at some level she’s cracked the case of who killed Cleo, the episode’s most thrilling sequences concern themselves, instead both with Maddie’s solipsism and with the chasm between the tight-knit Jewish community she once belonged to and the African American one she so desperately wants to help.
This is most succinctly presented in the two main sequences in Maddie’s dreamy state: the funeral for herself she attends, and the twinned pools she visits soon after. As she arrives at her own funeral (set at the department store where she first inadvertently met Cleo), Maddie gets to confront who she was. “Who was Madeline Schwartz?†the Black priest asks those gathered (which include a mannequin of Seth). Maddie’s mother refuses to speak, confiding in Maddie she doesn’t quite know who her daughter was, a line as full of guilt as melancholy. As the two fumble toward an honest moment (“I don’t want what you didn’t have,†Maddie tells her mother, “I want what I didn’t haveâ€), we segue into a moment where the mother and wife turned journalist cannot help but get in her own way: “She fought for justice,†she tells those gathered, aggrandizing her own idea of herself while cluing us into her own blind spots.
This leads us to the two pools Maddie visits in her mind: a “Whites Only†pool that has now removed the “No Jews†portion of its sign. (“Didn’t you hear?†her mother, in full summer attire tells her. “We’re white now!â€) It’s all a bit obvious, but aren’t dreams supposed to hit you in the head with their imagery?
And so Maddie follows instead a Black trumpet player into the “For Coloreds Only†area, which is a dilapidated pool that’s more like a lake than anything else. Amid a crowd who’s happily playing the numbers game, with Cleo high above doing her best Esther Williams impression — including a final dive that prompts Maddie to dive right into those murky waters to save her from drowning …
“Tell me who killed you,†Maddie implores Cleo only to be woken up by the sounds of a Black woman in her hospital. A Black woman in a nurse’s uniform who utters a line designed to upend everything we’ve just watched: “I was Cleo Johnson,†Cleo tells Maddie, who clearly has no easy way of processing that revelation.
Clues & Things
• David Corenswet dancing in a sailor outfit. That’s it. That’s the tweet, er, bullet. Let’s not forget the sight of a shirtless Y’lan Noel during that same dancing sequence. Milton aside, it’s clear Maddie has excellent taste in men, no?
• I guess I should do a “Meanwhile … in IRL Baltimoreâ€: Ferdie’s continued investigation leads him to Shell and Reggie. Armed with what Maddie knew about Cleo’s numbers win (courtesy of Slappy, who’s now been charged with Cleo’s murder!), he confronts the wily if affable Shell. All it gets him is a bit of a lecture on African American community in-fighting … and sadly, even before Ferdie can keep pushing his luck, he learns that, as the white supremacist group NSRP (National States’ Rights Party) descends on Baltimore, he’s been pressured to resign. The only way not to let it out is that he’s been sleeping with Maddie, a scandal the department and Ferdie, no doubt, would like to keep away from the press. It’s clearly all politics, but it leaves him stripped of the detective moniker he’d so fought for. Curious that both of those scenes are punctuated by frank, uncomfortable conversations around race, with Ferdie rightly calling out his fellow white colleague for his blatant racism.
• Speaking of those flashbacks … I’ve been wondering about the de-aging process in the show. Because, is it me or has it been quite successful in re-creating what young Natalie looked and sounded like?
• Do we think that scene with Seth taking off his glasses (did anyone else think of Clark Kent?) and realizing he’s Allan’s son was in Maddie’s head or a fragment of a memory that suggests her son figured out the truth after all?
• Tessie Durst quoting Anaïs Nin to Maddie as the dogged reporter desperately tries to make sense of the many bodies she keeps uncovering around her is a moment as strange as it is alluring — and it speaks to the particular surreal tenor Lady in the Lake has nurtured over its season.
• How doggedly ambitious do you have to be to use whatever strength you have while you’re recovering to tell your colleague there’s no way he’s writing the story of how you survived a stabbing no matter how much the paper is clamoring for it right this second?
• Amazing what stellar music direction can do to an episode like this: Everything from that Peggy Lee “Is That All There Is?†opening through to the use of “Que Sera, Sera†and “Go Down Moses†and climaxing with Shirley Bassey’s “The Impossible Dream,†you could basically track down what this penultimate episode was tracing as it reminded viewers of the tensions between Maddie’s Jewish identity and her search for the truth in Cleo’s tale. (Also, the sight of both Ingram and Portman in full Esther Williams Million Dollar Mermaid garb was a thing of mirrored beauty.)