Lady in the Lake Season 1 Episode 4 Review: Innocence leaves when you discover cruelty. First in others, then in yourself.

Lady in the Lake has all the ingredients to become a prestigious television series. It has a stellar cast, hauntingly beautiful musical moments, and all the potential in the world. However, Lady in the Lake Season 1 Episode 4 “Innocent leaves when you discover cruelty. First In others, then yourself” finally makes the show’s issues clearer.

It relies too much on fascinating characters while overstuffing the plot.

It’s telling that the series often has way too long episode titles that are quotes. It almost feels like an unintentional representation of its major flaw: Too much.

Let’s talk about Lady in the Lake’s biggest strength and flaw.

“Innocent leaves when you discover cruelty…” is a Maddie-heavy episode. Her journalist career finally gets a break and she comes directly face-to-face with Stephen. Now, Maddie has a lot of interesting moments in this episode, but let’s examine two in particular that highlight her complexity.

The first is her confrontation with Allan. Throughout Lady in the Lake, we’re getting fragments of their teenage romance. A piece of it from this episode shows Allan sexually assaulting her.

His actions make her allow him to do a sexual act on her that she only consents to so he doesn’t do worse. This adds another complicated layer to their current interactions.

Plus, there may be more to their story that complicates it even more. We’ll probably see this in future episodes. Implications that may explain why Allan already has some hatred towards her.

As a grieving father, you sympathize with him and can understand his anger toward Maddie for the Stephen story. However, Knowing that Allan once tried to pressure her into sex explains a little bit of her seeming resentment towards him.

Both are victims and victimizers in this situation. Maddie doesn’t seem sincere in her approach to the story of his daughter’s death. His words to her ring true.

This is less about helping solve the crime and more about regaining a dream.

Maddie ignores the family’s pain for a good story. Even if you believe Allan deserves her detached approach to this situation, his wife does not.

But then Allan was once a predator who was willing to hurt Maddie for his desires, so you can’t completely be on his side knowing their past.

It’s a complex interaction that highlights how these characters drive Lady in the Lake to excellence.

Then the interaction between Maddie and Ferdie is also telling. They have this intimate relationship but he already knows he can’t trust her.

He sees her ambition and how she would easily step on him to further her life and dreams. Cleo’s narration also adds a layer of intrigue to their romance.

She implies that Ferdie is falling for Maddie but the feelings aren’t mutual. We don’t see enough of their romance to see this truth, but based on what we know about Maddie, it makes sense.

If Lady in the Lake eased up a bit on the plot and focused more on further developing the characters, it would be a better show.

This Apple TV+ series changes a lot of book details but that’s not the issue. In fact, it seemed like the show would dig deeper into the characters by not trying to perfectly adapt the book.

It would have been a smart choice. However, instead of fully committing to that idea, it’s trying to add extra layers that don’t feel necessary.

Dylan Arnold is doing an interesting job with Stephen. He’s created this insane character who is haunting but may not be a complete monster. However, he is not a character that needs this much focus and another plot about experiments being done on him.

Focusing on Stephen is taking focus away from other characters, like Cleo, the second main character.

Additionally, Cleo’s storyline starts off interesting but now feels too convoluted with a betting scheme, assassination attempt, and now her being the target of prison or death.

Cleo is enough of an interesting character that her storyline from the first three episodes didn’t need to add more to it. Now it’s kind of losing the focus of her complex situation and character.

Lady in the Lake presumably is a limited series. However, it’s behaving like a show that has 22 episodes to flush out everything. Less could have been more and a sense of urgency with its few hours could have made it one of the year’s best.

Hopefully, the remaining episodes tighten up the stories a bit to allow the acting to shine more and the characters to remain complex, flawed, and 3-dimensional.

What did you think of this episode of  Lady in the Lake? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Lady in the Lake streams on Thursday nights on Apple TV+. 

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