Recap of Episode 3 of ‘The Better Sister’: Nothing to Laugh About

If “The Better Sister” prefers a lighter tone, that’s totally fine. Many murder mysteries sprinkle in some humor to prevent things from becoming too dark. But it’s crucial that the humor is not outdated. In the latest episode of “TBS,” there are jokes about phone accessories, podcasts, Siri misdialing, using outdated catchphrases, and the popularity of the Kennedys. While a trip down memory lane to 2015 would be nice, we need jokes that are more current and engaging.

Regrettably, this lackadaisical attitude extends to character development as well. Nicky could potentially emerge as the central figure at some point, but presently she comes across as a sloppy stereotype of someone from a lower socioeconomic background. She resents being told to dress appropriately for her son’s hearing, casually rests her feet on Chloe’s dashboard, and argues when asked to remove them. Laughing at the word “dongle” seems more suited to a child than an adult facing financial struggles.

Nevertheless, Nicky fiercely defends her son, Ethan. Perhaps too fiercely – she erases texts between Ethan and his friend Kevin, who is also his drug dealer and alibi, from a disposable phone that Chloe eventually discovers. She also cleans a knife found in Chloe’s glove compartment, a knife that suspiciously matches the description of the murder weapon provided by Detectives Guidry and Bowen. None of these actions are likely to seem innocent when scrutinized.

To be fair, Chloe is no longer sleepwalking through the situation: She spends the episode riding herd on Ethan’s lawyer Michelle for updates on Ethan’s status. But though Michelle does her best as a favor to her fellow lawyer Jake — the late Adam Macintosh’s frenemy at work — she can’t stop the smirking Evil Prosecutor from prevailing. The oddball judge has Ethan held without bail as a potential flight risk, since he has a history of wriggling out of trouble (weed, bringing a gun to school) that kids who are less wealthy, well-connected, and white would have their lives ruined over.

But Ethan offers Michelle a good reason for the gun: He was trying to get it out of the house. A flashback to a night out with Adam, Ethan, and Jake, in which Adam constantly bullies the boy right in front of his coworker, indicates why Ethan might have been afraid for his father to have access to a firearm. 

Adam was pulling a fast one at work, too. Though his boss, walking sexual harassment lawsuit Bill Braddock, covers it up, Adam’s last meeting with his big client the Gentry Group was an unauthorized one. Bill suspects Adam was trying to leave the firm and poach his biggest client on the way out. He tasks Jake with getting to Adam’s house and hoovering up any files they wouldn’t want falling into police hands. The Gentry Group strikes me as unlikely to be gentle about having its secrets divulged.

But there are secrets everywhere you look in this episode. On a dark note, Nicky and Chloe alike are both leaving their abusive father (Frederick Weller) out of their conversations, though he looms as an almost physical presence in the life of Nicky in particular. In one memorable scene, smoke suddenly starts wafting through the car in which she’s sitting alone, revealed by a camera cut to have been blown by her phantom dad in the back seat. Flashbacks to a hunting expedition reveal that Nicky was too afraid to slit a wounded rabbit’s throat, so it fell to her kid sister to do the deed. 

That night, Nicky listens to her father run her down as a stupid, incompetent narcissist to her mom (Janel Moloney), who doesn’t protest. There’s something truly upsetting about his jovial bluntness during this conversation, as he calls his daughter useless the way you or I might talk about a point guard having a disappointing season. That kind of casual cruelty leaves a lasting mark.

And Chloe has one last secret: her affair with Jake. When she gets back to the summer house with Nicky after Ethan’s disastrous day in court, she “goes for a run”…right over to Jake’s nearby house. Though she chews him out for sharing information with Michelle about his relationship with her and Ethan, they soon get into a passionate clinch — one of those 1980s Jeremy Irons kind of embraces where you’re just kind of pawing at each other erotically for a while. As candidates for an affair go, “husband’s handsome coworker” is a fairly pedestrian one, but the makeout sesh is good stuff at least. 

So far, The Better Sister is one of those take-what-you-can-get kind of shows. Biel is an obvious selling point. Corey Stoll playing his umpteenth type-A shitheel — I mean, there’s a reason he gets these kinds of roles, because he’s really good at them. Nicky’s survival instincts, like insisting on a bigger tip-slash-bribe for Arty the doorman, cut right through the character’s clownishness. There are one or two ostentatiously arty shots that don’t really communicate anything but are fun enough to look at. Guidry and Bowen as a sort of arranged work marriage, where she’s older and gay and doesn’t like his personal grooming but they constantly flirt by making fun of one another anyway, is a fun choice for roles we’d otherwise have seen a thousand times. Cut the ancient punchlines, take Nicky out of her Billy Joel baseball tees (which doesn’t make sense anyway, she’s not even from Long Island) and make her a real person instead of a rough sketch, and those individual components may cohere into something memorable.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.