One of Us is Lying – Season 2 Episode 3 Recap & Review

Simon Says Let’s Get Personal

Episode 3 of One of Us is Lying Season 2 starts with Bronwyn and Janae waiting for Nate to finish his shift working at a restaurant. Bronwyn states that they should get rid of Jake’s body from the freezer in her family yacht since Cole’s $100k reward. Janae claims that this was all the more reason for them to not mess with the body and leave it be.

Cole is at the restaurant and gets to talk to the two. He says that his family has been through a lot and warns them stating there will be consequences if they did not help him find Jake. Keely and Cooper are in a school where they discuss him wearing Jake’s watch. Cooper tells her that despite his wrongful deeds, he really misses his friend Jake. Janae and Maeve are together in public and Vanessa spots them kissing.

Vanessa reminds Janae that Simon actually liked Maeve. She adds that Janae was betraying her dead “friend” by befriending the people that he hated and by dating his crush. Two of the five get different messages from Simon where he dares Bronwyn to skip her math test and Nate to kiss his tutor – Fiona at lunch. They wonder how Simon’s dares are random but still personally attacking the five.

Bronwyn agrees to skip her midterm test and to check if Evan (her ex) is behind this. Since he has the most motive for watching Bronwyn suffer, the five are sure that he wants to ruin her GPA as well as strain her romance with Nate. Bronwyn skips her test with Evan watching her from inside the class while Nate asks her if kissing Fiona was okay.

Bronwyn claims that she does not care because she is not dating him. Addy is at Janae’s house where they get to talk about how Maeve and Janae really fit together. She calls Janae pretty which triggers her. Janae claims that she wants to be gender fluid and Addy praises her for that. The two then watch Vanessa going live again with one of Jake’s ex-lovers – Giselle.

She claims that Jake is not the person that Addy is making him be and that something bad has happened to him. Giselle claims that Jake was trying to break up with Addy but she would not let him but adds that she is here to help look for him and unearth the truth about his disappearance. Addy is at home mulling over the fact that Jake cheated on her because she was incomparable to Giselle.

Her mother tells her to stop listening to Jake’s negative voice in her head and claims that if Jake cheated on her first, she wasn’t a cheater. Simon dares Addy to wear an outfit that he sent to her at school that day. Addy shows up to school in an all-black funeral outfit with a veil on her head leaving all the students shocked.

Janae follows Addy to the bathroom where she claims that if Jake did cheat on her first, what she did with TJ was not wrong. Janae claims that since Jake was not alive, to tell the truth, Giselle could be someone Simon set up. She confronts Vanessa asking to be introduced to Giselle who says that since Addy gives her great content, she will do that for her. Maeve, Janae, Cooper, Addy and Bronwyn are at the cafeteria waiting for Nate to kiss Fiona as part of his dare when they look out for Evans.

Evans is chatting with Vanessa which alarms the group. Nate kisses Fiona and gets met with a loud cheer from the students soon after which Evans and Vanessa leave. The group is sure that the two are Simon. Bronwyn follows them only to see that Evans and Vanessa are hooking up inside a car so she takes pictures of them as proof.

Maeve and Bronwyn are discussing the two recent kisses when Cooper claims that he got his dare. Cooper has to post on social media that he got a text from Jake claiming that he was in Mexico and did not want to be found. He is worried about his future and Bronwyn claims that the midterms were just as important to her as sports are to Cooper. Maeve has a plan where she could send Cooper a text using a VPN to show that it was from Mexico, one that he could use as proof.

Bronwyn runs into Nate and mocks him for going through with the kiss despite her past nonchalance about it. Nate is confused by her behaviour but she leaves him to think about it. Bronwyn confronts Evans for kissing Vanessa and asks where he was on Halloween night during Jake’s party. He claims that he was at the movies waiting for her when they were still dating.

Evans calls Bronwyn out for cheating on him. Vanessa introduces Giselle and Addy and they talk about Jake’s disappearance. Bronwyn concludes that Evans could not be Simon as his alibi checks out. She talks to Janae about Nate’s kiss with Fiona. Janae is shocked because Bronwyn thinks Nate is too good for her.

Addy and Giselle talk about when the latter’s affair with Jake started and she is relieved to know that Jake cheated on her first. Giselle asks her if Jake was really dead but she lies. Bronwyn, Janae and Addy talk about the latter’s convention with Giselle as she mentions how being with Jake really messed her up. The girls cheer Addy on when they get a notification from Cooper.

Cooper is completing his dare letting his fans know that Jake had texted him and that he was safe. The three girls are worried about what Janae’s dare will be and she mentions that she already had gotten hers. Janae claims that she will not do it because Simon asked her to graffiti someone’s grave. Bronwyn tells her that she needs to do it if she did not want all of them to suffer but Janae does not want to.

Bronwyn sneaks out later that night while Jake talks to Fiona when he does not get a response from Bronwyn. Janae is at Simon Kelleher’s grave singing a melody to him as Bronwyn spots her. She claims that she does not even feel like she was Simon’s friend because of how he turned out to be. Janae plans on ruining Simon’s grave because that would make his family mad and Simon happy.

They do so and paint a penis on his tombstone. Nate apologises to Fiona for kissing her in public but she is upset because he ruined the rest of her college year. They share a moment when Nate confesses to liking her and they start making out. Cooper’s father is angry that he hastily made the video without consulting him first when Officer Wheeler arrives at his door to interrogate him.

The cop takes Cooper’s phone to track the true origin of the text. Janae and Bronwyn are caught and the latter of the two manages to run away before the guard gets to Janae. She informs the rest that since she was caught in vandalism, her parents will be returning to town sooner than expected. They all plan on getting rid of the body and alert Cooper by sending a text to his phone.

Maeve and Cooper show up at the boat just seconds before it departs and he informs them that his phone was taken by the cops. He is worried that the cops know their location. Inside the boat, Addy finally lets her inhibitions with Jake go by reclaiming her power by looking at his body.

Bronwyn and Nate reconcile when she claims that she hated watching him kiss Fiona and would never like him to kiss anyone else. Nate skips telling her that he had kissed Fiona again and tells her that they have really bad timing. Bronwyn, Maeve and Addy look back at photos Jake sent to her from Greece in the past.

She wants to delete them but Maeve and Bronwyn point out they are fake. Addy concludes that Giselle could be obsessed with Jake and could be “Simon” who was in town to avenge his death. They are sure that the cops would be waiting for them on the shore and decide but dump Jake’s body using a body bag.

The Episode Review

This episode was extremely chaotic and everyone seems suspicious. I wonder how much more Janae is hiding from them because she conveniently chooses to hide things from the group. Bronwyn is an excellent student but can be as naïve as a 12-year-old. She is actually mulling over Nate kissing someone else that is not her while she skips her midterm exams which could very well affect her GPA.

Kudos to Nate for giving Simon another reason to ruin his possible future with Bronwyn because when she confessed her feelings for him, he could have told her that he kissed Fiona again and apologized. It would not have made things worse but I guess we are letting things brew. I hate Addy’s narrative that because Jake cheated on her first, her affair with TJ was automatically invalidated. She should know that they were both in the wrong but Addy more so because Jake was dead.

I am wondering what the writers of One of Us is Lying were thinking when they introduced that Janae’s character was gender fluid. Was it really essential for the show or are we handing out token representations for the sake of it?

Addy’s motivation for talking to Giselle is so random. She should not be concerned about who did it first when it is implied that they both cheated on each other. The end of the episode was so abrupt because the Murder Club just dumped Jake’s body in the ocean but did not do anything about his DNA probably laying around the yacht.