One of the most fascinating aspects of how Lady in the Lake is structured — and in this, the show borrows quite heavily from Laura Lippman’s novel — is how it narratively centers Maddie while making her “main character energy” deserving of constant scrutiny. It all began with how she first got involved in the Tessie Durst case, which led her to separate from Milton, and now she’ll soon find herself embroiled in Cleo Johnson’s disappearance, which again seems to fuel only her own selfish journalistic ambitions.
On any other show, Maddie’s privilege and unearned confidence would go unremarked. But time and time again, be it by other characters or here by Cleo’s own voice over narration, Lady in the Lake never wants us to forget that everyone is the main character in their own life; Maddie just happens to be the one who keeps finding herself at the center of all those other storylines.
And it’s clear that Tessie’s murder (namely connected to Allan, Maddie’s high school boyfriend) dredged up issues Maddie had been trying to suppress for more than a decade. As we see at the start of the episode, she was obviously involved with Allan’s father (!) enough that he promised to leave his family behind and start up a life together. Which, of course, fell apart the moment young Maddie told him she was pregnant (“We may have company,” she breathily tells him). Of course, that did not come to pass … instead, now Maddie finds herself sitting across from Milton, the man she did marry and raised a child.
At the Silver Dollar diner, the two have come together to settle their divorce finally. This comes as news to Maddie since Milton had been so reticent to even draft up papers: she soon realizes it’s because Milton has found himself a new girl (a twenty-five-year-old, at that!). He now needs Maddie to sign the divorce papers, which is all right with her as long as she can get alimony and maybe finally move on from the tedious life she had before.
Not that her current life is all that great. At the Star, she’s found herself becoming both mother and plaything to her male colleagues, who love greeting her with slaps on the ass when she greets them with bagels. It’s enough to get her one female colleague to roll her eyes at Maddie’s mere presence in the newsroom as “Mrs. Helpline.” Indeed, the episode is punctuated by Maddie’s grunt work as that nameless columnist, which involves responding to letters from all over the city about complaints — some of which get written up in the paper. And others, like the one that led Maddie to inform the city that the fountain by the lake wasn’t working properly. Which, surprise! It’s how the city of Baltimore finds that there’s been a dead body there for months now. It’s the dead body of a Black woman who’s later identified by her mother despite being unrecognizable, per the coroner, as Cleo Johnson.
It’s that kerfuffle that eventually brings the authorities to the newspaper, where Maddie cannily realizes the letter she’d been sent is now evidence. She tells Bob she likely trashed it as it didn’t even merit being addressed in the paper; instead, she tries following leads about it. And her first hunch is that Stephan was the one who sent it her way: “Why did you kill that colored woman?” she asks him during a call with him. Only she knows he couldn’t have done it. He was with her when Cleo’s body was dumped. It’s an alibi he can’t use, but it may be enough to clear him in her eyes.
Should Maddie be following this story? Obviously not. Bob tells her to leave it to the Afro paper; they’re the ones who’d run the Cleo story. No one at the Star would want to work, let alone read, about it. And yet, ever the dutiful reporter, Maddie takes it upon herself to follow it through. Does that involve waltzing into The Baltimore Afro-American newspaper offices hoping to get one of its reporters to hand her everything on Cleo? Yes. And she gets the talking down she deserves for such hubris. She may soon be divorced and living downtown, but she still doesn’t belong to the same world Cleo did. However, as she walks away with endless copies of the Afro and begins reading up on the missing young woman, she may see she’s more connected to her than she’d initially thought.
As she pieces together Cleo’s story, cutting out clippings and seeing familiar faces in their wake, it is quite unsettling how their stories keep intersecting. It’s enough to push her to attend her funeral, where all the big players are in attendance: Cleo’s family, Ferdie, Myrtle Summers, Reggie, and Shell Gordon. But it’s Slappy who makes the most noise, calling out everyone in the room about the tawdry end his wife met. He calls out Myrtle and Shell by name and easily gets thrown out of the church, only to be followed by Maddie, who sees the benefit in getting him to talk to her.
That’s when she gets her big scoop: she learns of the bet Cleo had made on Christmas day and how it involved Lucille and likely gaming Gordon’s numbers game. Maddie is bold enough to try and pursue this story alone (with Judith in tow); she even gets Shell Gordon to meet with her. He’s icy but answers her questions even as he makes it clear she’s better off not making false accusations (all while staging a rather terse discussion around the kind of privilege a Jewish woman like Maddie can wield even as she remains a member of a discriminated minority). But it’s in that meeting that Maddie pieces together how Reggie was likely the Black man with a black eye that day at the pet shop.
And it’s Maddie’s Jewish identity that comes into play at her next meeting: Maddie heads to meet with Stephan’s mother. There, the conversation gets off to a wrong start, what with Ms. Zawadzkie disclosing she’s from Treblinka … and soon after adding how she hadn’t really known Jews until the Germans had built the camps nearby. Soon, the two women keep talking obliquely about Stephan and what may have happened with Tessie. This is a mother who seems quite content to keep her son in jail. To keep him safe. Or maybe keep others safe? The more Maddie pushes her, the clearer it becomes that Ms. Zawadzkie is hiding something. And she’ll do everything in her power to avoid disclosing it, including stabbing Maddie.
It’s all a bit Final Girl-esque, with Maddie fending off the attack with aplomb: she finds the strength to fight off Ms. Zawadzkie and lock herself in the bathroom, eventually crawling on the floor to get to the phone to call for help. The episode ends with Maddie bleeding all over the floor (in that gorgeous yellow dress of hers) while staring at Ms. Zawadzkie’s lifeless body in front of her (having killed herself) and unable to tell the operator on the phone how and why she desperately needed someone to get there as soon as possible. Talk about a cliffhanger.
Clues & Things
• It took five episodes but we finally got to do our very best Leo/Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood meme and point at our screen when the coroner referred to the body found in the fountain as the “Lady in the Lake.”
• Did you catch the three icons Maddie has featured in her wall by her desk? Anne Frank, Barbra Streisand, and Gloria Steinem.
• There are three journalistic lessons Maddie is taught by Edna (all learned by failing them immediately in their brief bathroom meeting): don’t ask for permission, don’t apologize, and always read the room.
• I’ve talked before about how Jean Marc Vallée’s ethereal editing prowess, his ability to blend dream-like memories with powerful character-driven revelations is clearly running through Lady in the Lake; that was most clear in the scenes where Maddie was piecing together her clues while wearing the dress she’s learned was once worn by Cleo and which she’s owned since Thanksgiving.
• Oh, and it’s during that same sequence that we see flashes of what looks like an abortion appointment. So wait … Maddie had an abortion? But then Milton isn’t Seth’s father? Did she get pregnant once more and then kept it a secret from Allan’s father?
• In case you were wondering, the song playing over those final moments: “Cha, cha senorita” by Polish singer Maria Koterbska.
