TV Review: "Tell Me Lies" Season 3 is a Delightful Dip into the Pool of Self-Absorption
Bawdy, with a sense of self-importance that only college students would believe about themselves, Tell Me Lies returns for a third season to televisions. Adding a hint of spice and depravity to the lives of viewers, Tell Me Lies, is going further to push its cast of characters along in their unnatural lives.
Lucy, Pippa, Bree, and all the other Baird College students have returned for a new semester, and for Lucy, she hopes for a fresh start and a new perspective on life. But this is television, and not a magical Disney fairy tale.
In the Baird College world of 2009, and the future world of 2015 and beyond, Lucy Allbright is having a bad day. Her on again/off again relationship with Stephen De Marco is one of the main roots of her college problems. De Marco, played with a malevolent zeal by Jackson White is not boyfriend material.
Grace Van Patten gives Lucy an innocence that anyone can empathize with, but her character’s desire for conflict and trauma has led her to make a boatload of bad decisions. From getting Wrigley’s brother Drew into trouble with an anonymous tip to the dean, claiming to be sexually assaulted by Lydia’s brother, to sleeping with her best friend Bree’s boyfriend Evan, Lucy has blazed a path of destruction that she is hoping to contain without hurting others. Thanks to a handy bit of dialogue from Bree at her future wedding, we know this season is when Stephen tried to ruin Lucy’s life. More likely, Stephen uses Lucy’s poor decisions against her.
In today’s television world, Tell Me Lies is not a show we see often. More akin to the nighttime soap dramas of the 1990’s like Melrose Place, with the more graphic language and scenes that could only exist on a streaming platform and not a network television show, Tell Me Lies is a combination of the brutality of young people on their own at college, and inherent self destruction of said young people when they are left to make their own decisions for the first times in their lives.
The cast is phenomenal, and while I am excited to see how Sonia Mena and Alicia Crowder develop the Pippa and Diana relationship, as well as Spencer House’s continued growth in confidence and layering he brings to the character of Wrigley, Tell Me Lies exists because of the dynamite performances of raw, emotional misery that Grace Van Patten and Jackson White bring to the screen as Lucy and Stephen.
Van Patten continues to evolve Lucy from a naïve young girl to a damaged being that always chooses the wrong path in her growth from youth to adulthood. Van Patten consciously and brilliantly makes Lucy an emotionally distant friend, who doesn’t know how to be a good friend, but wants to try to learn.
Lucy is trying not to hurt anyone but manages to bring a swirl of destruction equivalent to what a tornado can do in a small town. This is a tough path to follow with a main character, but Van Patten allows the viewers to empathize with her plight, while also hoping that she will learn from her mistakes and make better choices. Lucy’s insistence on self-destruction is sad to watch, and thanks to the vulnerability that Van Patten layered into the building blocks of Lucy the audience doesn’t regret rooting for her success.
Jackson White plays the diametrically equal and polar opposite in a far more vicious Stephen De Marco. From the first episode to the beginning of season three, Stephen is a character who always seeks power over others and will yield that power for his own perverse pleasure. White makes us hate Stephen, because we all knew that one person in college or high school who was always popular and yet so awful to so many friends.
In prior seasons there was some semblance of Stephen trying to restrain himself, which enabled Jackson White the time to wear many masks for his different friends. Season 3 Stephen is close to graduation and all bets are off for Jackson White and the level of ferocity that he has brought to the role of Stephen. When someone who struggles to have any feelings, doesn’t care anymore, look out. That is where Stephen is at this point in the journey, and Jackson White is reveling in the power of his character and setting the story on fire with his hostile destructive path through the last semester of school.
It amazes me the level of incestuous nature that exists between the characters of Baird College, and for fans of Tell Me Lies, it’s time to take a seat, grab some popcorn, and watch the world of their favorite characters implode and rebuild.
I have no idea how this story is going to end, but I want front row seats for the coming storm that is Lucy and Stephen’s battle to do the most damage to each other.
Tell Me Lies is a four-star portrayal of the best of bad decision making laced with tequila shots that taste good at first but leave a trail of destruction.