Lady in the Lake

I know who killed Cleo Johnson.

Season 1

Episode 5

Editor’s Rating

4 stars

****

Photo: Apple TV+

Let’s get this out of the way up front: I loved this episode. I know its dreamlike logic and even dreamier freeze frames might turn some off. This is a crime thriller, after all. To interrupt the plot of this literary adaptation and stage an episode that takes place mostly in Maddie’s head isn’t just brave. It’s a demand to recognize that we shouldn’t watch episodic storytelling for the plot. There should be room for mood. For dreams. For sequences where a dance troupe of Cleo lookalikes in her signature baby blue coat and impromptu funerals for Maddie can hammer in larger explorations of the themes. Lady in the Lake was a theme from the beginning. “There are very few people who fully and overwhelmingly realize the truth through instantaneous illumination,” Anaïs Nin reminds us (who is quoted again in the program). What better place to find the truth than one’s own mind and chaotic subconscious?

So where were we? Oh yeah. Maddie had been stabbed! By Mrs. Zawadzkie! Yes, Stephan’s mother, who had once confronted Maddie in her own home, had lashed out because she realized she would soon be exposed: she was the one who killed Tessie (after her son tried to rape the young girl). We now find Maddie in the hospital, recovering from her injury and drifting in and out of consciousness. Therein lies the key to this episode: we’re not really on the streets of Baltimore. We’re in the troubled, confused mind of an ambitious wannabe reporter trying to piece together everything that led her to this moment. And while the focus of those around her (including Bob Bauer, who tries to coax a story out of her during a visit) remains firmly on Tessie, Maddie instead insists on following what many others would rather ignore, if not forget altogether: “Cleo is the story,” she insists in vain.

We begin with a sequence that appears to be a flashback: Maddie, newly married to Milton, attends a sea-themed event, where she meets her high school sweetheart, Allan. She is dressed as Esther Williams; he is wearing a sailor suit and, it turns out, is a little drunk. The drunkenness is enough to force Allan to be bluntly honest: he knew about Maddie and his father. That’s why he broke up with her. And as the two move away from the crowd to have a more private conversation (“You weren’t his only friend,” he tells her, both cutting and compassionate), they finally come together – and in the process explain who Seth’s father really is. And why Maddie might have felt so close to Tessie after all.

But the memory soon gives way to more nightmarish scenarios: In the hospital (which Allan and Seth apparently visit), Maddie finds out that she is heavily pregnant and goes into labor immediately, which is probably the most ridiculous moment of the entire episode. With echoes of Rosemary’s Baby (What kind of being could Maddie give birth to?), we see that she is not giving birth to a baby at all, but to a story in baby form. Namely, a baby made of newspaper. (“Her story,” the nurse who gives birth to this being tells her, “needs a good introduction.”)

And then it begins: Maddie gets up from her hospital bed and runs through the now-flooded hallways, where she keeps seeing Reggie (in full boxing gear) limping away while Cleo avoids her. Portman has always been best at playing women who are falling apart. Whether perfectionist ballerinas or grieving first ladies, flirtatious strippers or opportunistic actresses, her filmography is full of women like Maddie, pushed to the edge and whose courage and resilience are nevertheless enchanting to watch. The deeper Maddie delves into her subconscious, the harder it seems for her to piece together all the clues swirling around her.

That’s why this episode appealed to me: Even though it seemed to offer Maddie the opportunity to dig deep into Cleo’s story to find out the truth, it also allowed Alma Har’el to visually underscore the themes of racial conflict that structure the story. Lady in the lake. While Maddie’s constant seeing of Reggie is a clear sign that, on some level, she has solved the Cleo killer case, the episode’s most gripping scenes instead revolve around Maddie’s solipsism and the divide between the close-knit Jewish community she was once a part of and the African-American community she so desperately wants to help.

This is most succinctly depicted in the two main sequences set in Maddie’s dreamy state: her own funeral, which she attends, and the twin swimming pools she visits shortly afterward. When she arrives at her own funeral (held in the department store where she first met Cleo by chance), Maddie is confronted with who she was. “Who was Madeline Schwartz?” the black priest asks those present (including a mannequin of Seth). Maddie’s mother refuses to speak, confiding in Maddie that she doesn’t know exactly who her daughter was, a statement as full of guilt as it is melancholy. As the two approach a moment of honesty (“I don’t want what you didn’t have,” Maddie tells her mother, “I want what I didn’t have”), we arrive at a moment where the mother-wife-turned-journalist gets in her own way: “She fought for justice,” she tells those present, inflating her own self-image while alerting us to her own blind spots.

This brings us to the two swimming pools Maddie visits in her mind: a “Whites Only” pool, whose sign has since had the “No Jews” part removed (“Didn’t you hear that?” her mother, in full summer gear, says to her. “We’re white now!”) This is all a bit obvious, but aren’t dreams supposed to bombard you with images?

And so Maddie instead follows a black trumpet player into the “Colored Only” area, a run-down pool that looks more like a lake than anything else. Amid a crowd happily playing the numbers game, Cleo, high above, does her best Esther Williams impersonation – including one final leap that prompts Maddie to jump right into the murky water to save her from drowning…

“Tell me who killed you,” Maddie begs Cleo, only to be awakened by the sounds of a black woman in her hospital. A black woman in a nurse’s uniform uttering a sentence that is meant to turn everything we’ve just seen on its head: “I was Cleo Johnson,” Cleo tells Maddie, who clearly can’t process this revelation so easily.

• David Corenswet dancing in a sailor suit. That’s it. That’s the tweet, er, the bullet. Let’s not forget the sight of a shirtless Y’lan Noel during the same dance sequence. Milton aside, it’s clear that Maddie has excellent taste in men, right?

• I guess I should do a “Meanwhile…in the real Baltimore”: Ferdie’s continued investigation leads him to Shell and Reggie. Armed with what Maddie knew about Cleo’s numbers win (courtesy of Slappy, now accused of Cleo’s murder!), he confronts the wily if affable Shell. This only earns him a little lecture about infighting within the African-American community…and sadly, before he can push his luck any further, Ferdie learns that he was pressured to resign when the white supremacist group NSRP (National States’ Rights Party) invades Baltimore. The only way not to let it out is that he slept with Maddie, a scandal the department and Ferdie would no doubt like to keep secret from the press. It’s clearly all politics, but it loses him the nickname of the detective he fought so hard for. Strangely, both scenes are characterized by open, uncomfortable conversations about race, with Ferdie rightly calling out his white colleague for his obvious racism.

• Speaking of flashbacks… I was wondering about the rejuvenation process in the show. Is it just me or has the show managed to recreate the look and voice of young Natalie quite well?

• Do we believe that the scene where Seth takes off his glasses (did anyone else think of Clark Kent?) and realizes he is Allan’s son took place in Maddie’s head or is a fragment of memory suggesting that her son has discovered the truth after all?

• Tessie Durst quotes Anaïs Nin to Maddie as the dogged reporter desperately tries to make sense of the many bodies she keeps discovering around her. It’s a moment that’s as strange as it is tantalizing – and it speaks to the particular surreal tenor Lady in the Lake has developed over the course of the season.

• How doggedly ambitious do you have to be to use all the strength at your disposal during your recovery to explain to your colleague that there is no way he is going to write the story about how you survived a stabbing, no matter how much the newspapers are screaming for it at that moment?

• Amazing what great music direction can do with an episode like this: From the introduction with Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is?” to the use of “Que Sera, Sera” and “Go Down Moses” to the climax with Shirley Bassey’s “The Impossible Dream,” you could basically see the point of this penultimate episode as it reminded viewers of the tensions between Maddie’s Jewish identity and her search for the truth in Cleo’s story. (Also, the sight of Ingram and Portman in full Esther Williams style Million Dollar Mermaid Garment was an object of reflective beauty.)