Things get weird this week on The Last Thing He Told Me [Apple TV+ recap] ★★★½ – do phone

The Last Thing He Told Me, the brand new Apple TV+ thriller sequence a few girl and her moody teenage stepdaughter investigating a disappearance, finds the beleaguered pair in Austin, Texas, this week.

Revelations come quick and livid, and Bailey’s reluctant march towards the flawed conclusion retains her on edge, whereas Hannah questions all the things she thought she knew. The episode, entitled “Keep Austin Weird,” represents a significant step up for this restricted sequence. However there’s nonetheless loads of floor to cowl earlier than it might hope to reach at nice.

The Last Thing He Told Me recap: ‘Hold Austin Weird’

Season 1, episode 3: Hannah Corridor (performed by Jennifer Garner) and her stepdaughter Bailey (Angourie Rice) are on the transfer. Ever since Owen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) — Hannah’s husband and Bailey’s dad — went lacking after the police raid of the tech whiz’s workplaces, they’ve each been confused and shaken.

The place did Owen go? What was he doing that was so shady that he wanted to flee? The place did he get the bag of cash he left with them earlier than his vanishing act?

Hannah has just one clue: Owen’s connection to town of Austin. So she and Bailey hop a flight and begin checking issues out. First cease: the soccer stadium Owen took Bailey to when she was a lot, a lot youthful. Bailey doesn’t like Hannah in any respect. And the teenager resents being compelled to behave as a bloodhound sniffing out clues to find her lacking dad, who she loves (though she’s feeling slightly betrayed at current).

Does the previous maintain solutions?

The truth is, Bailey doesn’t need to recollect as a result of she’s anxious what it’ll imply if she uncovers one thing unsavory from her dad’s previous and learns the reality. So she desires to go away straight away, however on their method out she has a flashback. She remembers her dad carrying her into the stadium, however he was sporting a swimsuit and he or she was in a costume. Unusual apparel for a soccer sport.

Hannah surmises that they may have been coming from a marriage. She calls her journalist bestie, Jules (Aisha Tyler), to ask for some analysis assist, attempting to carbon date the sport they’d have been going to in 2011, and seeing if there are church buildings close by the stadium. Jules’ assistant Max (Tyner Rushing) warns Hannah to not come again to the San Francisco Bay Space too quickly, as a result of the investigation into Owen’s firm is ramping up.

Dangerous information and a bombshell

Simply then, Hannah will get a number of dangerous information phone calls. Her ex, a lawyer named Jake (Geoff Stults), calls to say that leaving city goes to make her appear like a hostile witness — and that they’re indicting the CEO of Owen’s firm. Then, Owen’s previous boss Avett Thompson (Todd Stashwick), presently beneath indictment and home arrest, calls and protests his innocence.

Nevertheless, Avett can also’t get Owen on the phone. And he is aware of one thing Hannah doesn’t. Owen’s previous is checkered … by what he gained’t say, however Hannah is beginning to really feel like she is aware of her husband much less and fewer.

She and Bailey lastly observe down the church the place Owen took his daughter earlier than the fateful soccer sport. And although it takes slightly candy speaking, they get entry to the information of weddings that befell there. Sadly, this seems to be a useless finish. The church was presupposed to be closed for renovations in the course of the interval in query. Again to sq. one.

Didn’t see that coming

Again within the Bay Space, barely mysterious U.S. Marshall Grady Bradford (Augusto Aguilera) has been following an much more mysterious bald man who retains lurking close to Hannah and Owen’s home and boat. Grady scares the person, who introduces himself as Eric Cousins (Frederick Lawrence), the top of safety for The Store, Owen’s firm. Grady then lets himself into Hannah’s home and finds the bag of cash Owen left.

The home will get loads of site visitors that evening. Jules comes by as a result of Hannah sends her over to take a look at a clue — a piggy financial institution she remembers Owen clutching after a combat. Hannah’s ex Jake comes over, too, as a result of his non-public investigator dug up one thing very sketchy. Jules and Jake name Hannah to inform her. There is no such thing as a report of Owen and Bailey ever present wherever. No delivery certificates, no diplomas, no marriage license. They’re each ghosts. Shadows.

The thriller begins to get extra mysterious

After an uninspiring one-two whiff of an opener, it’s a aid to see The Last Thing He Told Me lastly gaining slightly momentum. The identical directorial and modifying bother stays, naturally, however the fast clip of developments and the air of intrigue a minimum of helps us transfer with confidence by means of the episode, which felt a lot shorter than it really is.

The present basically continues to be solely too lackadaisical about its procedural parts, and the characters stay one-observe. Bailey’s frustration, regardless of Angourie Rice’s greatest efforts, comes up solely too typically to be all that fascinating as a personality trait. As a counterpoint, she performed an angsty teen additionally coping with tragedy in Mare of Easttown and managed to carry her personal in opposition to peak Kate Winslet. Right here she’s dealt a not-nice hand by writing that depends on her being egregiously depressing always, however she’s doing her greatest with the half. And he or she does appear extra human than Garner, who doesn’t give Rice a lot to work in opposition to.

The Last Thing He Told Me simply form of moseys from plot level to plot level, however there are sufficient of them — they usually’re sufficiently intriguing — that it was simple to hold on this week. I’m curious in regards to the central thriller now, and I wasn’t final week. That ain’t hay.

★★★☆☆

Watch The Last Thing He Told Me on Apple TV+

New episodes of The Last Thing He Told Me arrive Fridays on Apple TV+.

Rated: TV-MA

Watch on: Apple TV+

Scout Tafoya is a movie and TV critic, director and creator of the lengthy-working video essay sequence The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Movie Remark, The Los Angeles Evaluate of Books and Nylon Journal. He is the writer of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Type of Tobe Hooper and However God Made Him A Poet: Watching John Ford within the twenty first Century, the director of 25 function movies, and the director and editor of greater than 300 video essays, which may be discovered at Patreon.com/honorszombie.