The episodes of the new Apple TV+ show, “Lady in the Lake,” starring Natalie Portman as Maddie Schwartz, a 1960s housewife turned aspiring journalist, and Moses Ingram as Cleo Johnson, the woman whose murder Maddie’s hoping to solve, are so incredibly dense and eventful. Even if you’ve read the book “Lady in the Lake” is based on, you may be surprised at the twists and turns that the show, directed by Alma Har’el, takes. The director of “Honey Boy” and the writers of the show have made quite a few changes to the source material and it makes for such a captivating, detailed watch, but — especially if you’re prone to multi-tasking while watching — it’s sometimes hard to follow.
Here is a breakdown of what happens in each episode of “Lady in the Lake.” This piece will be updated weekly with new synopses.
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Episode 1: “Did you know Seahorses are fish?”
This episode’s title comes from a question that Tessie Durst asks the salesperson at the fish store.
We start at Lake Michigan, where a man is carrying a body and dropping it into the lake. Cleo Johnson, played by Moses Ingram, is talking to Maddie Schwartz, Natalie Portman’s character, in a voiceover. She says: “You came into the end of my story and turned it into your beginning.” (Ingram honestly deserves an Emmy for the narration because it is TRANSPORTING).
After the opening credits (love them!) we see a man dressed like an elf with a mailbox costume peeing in a corner — honestly, what a fun way to start the episode! We then realize he’s just part of Baltimore’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and this isn’t a weird trip that we’re having. Young Tessie Durst (Bianca Belle) is there with her family. Tessie asks how Santa knows they’re Jewish (there’s a mezuzah on their house), then asks if she can sleep over at her friend so she can get what’s on her wishlist. Her mother replies that she’s tired of lying to her like “a goy” (a derogatory term for non-Jew) and that Santa isn’t real. Her father then tells her not to tell her friend. Tessie’s mother says she’ll get what she wants for Hanukkah. Tessie wants a seahorse. Tessie wanders on into a fish store, where she sees a Black man with a black eye looking at the fish. When the salesman comes back to the store, the man walks away, and the salesman, a young white man who we will later find out is named Stefan (Dylan Arnold) tells her to come back with her parents. She talks to him about seahorses and asks him if they have one.
We meet Maddie. She looks incredible in a yellow dress and pillbox hat — living for the iconic style. She’s at the kosher butcher, where she gets brisket. There’s a lot of Yiddish in this scene: the butcher calls her husband a “mensch,” to which Maddie retorts that he’s a “macher” (salesman) and then the butcher calls Maddie a woman of valor in Yiddish.
The blood from the lamb gets on her dress (SYMBOLIC! ALSO AKEIDAH VIBES!) and so she goes to a department store, where Cleo is at the window wearing the last yellow dress in Maddie’s size, working as a mannequin. It’s the first time they see each other. The salespeople seem to think that Maddie would be bothered by wearing a dress worn by a Black woman all day, which she isn’t. When they tell her about a girl from Pikesville who is missing, she tells them she’s also from there to which they respond: “You don’t look Jewish.” Very yikes and very 1960s.
Cleo is having a shitty Thanksgiving. When the saleswomen take the dress off her they abandon her, and when she says she got pre-approved to leave early they still say they’ll dock her pay if she does.
In a terrible and trippy scene, a man dressed as Santa looks at a seahorse in a fishbowl. Tessie is on the floor, her forehead bleeding.
Cleo takes the bus and Maddie drives off as “Que Cera, Cera” is playing. They’re both on their way to events. Cleo is at a fundraiser for Baltimore Senator Myrtle Summer (Angela Robinson) — the first Black woman state senator. Maddie is on her way to a synagogue benefit. At the benefit, a speaker talks about antisemitic rhetoric and the Nation of Islam. Mr. Weinstein, a fellow congregant, asks Milton, Maddie’s husband (Brett Gelman), if he can help him find a tenant for his apartment (you gotta go to the macher, after all!).
Summer speaks on the stage juxtaposed with Maddie. Maddie is the one speaking at the event to bestow honors on fellow women in the synagogue; she thanks Milton for “allowing” her to be there (yikes) and makes a poignant speech about the “she lo ashani” prayer in which Jewish men thank God every morning for not making them a gentile, a slave or a woman (the crowd chuckle at that last one). Summer talks about the fact that she knows about what their community needs, but people interrupt the event, saying that the integration she pushed for ruined schools. Summer points out that Shel Gordon, a Black businessman whom most of the characters simply call Mr. Gordon (Wood Harris), has sent his cronies to his event. When one of the hecklers says that Summers doesn’t speak for Black people, Cleo stands up to say that she speaks for her, as a mother, trying to fight for her kids to “get a quarter of what white folks get. It’s like you say, our dignity can never be taken from us, only surrendered.”
As Maddie gives out the award to three women in the synagogue, she is interrupted by men saying that the perimeter for the search for Tessie has been extended and that a search party will go out. They ask people to pray for Tessie Durst and her family. It’s the first time Maddie hears the name of the missing girl, and she seems shaken by it.
Maddie is in the car with her son, Seth (Noah Jupe.) She puts on the radio to listen to news about Tessie. Seth reminds her that it’s Alan Durst’s daughter, only for her to say she knows who she is. When he sees the bloody dress in the back seat, he asks her if she killed her. “It’s the lamb,” she says. Seth tells her that he invited Wallace White (Charlie Hofheimer), a guy she went to school with, to their Thanksgiving meal. We met Wallace earlier; he was the TV presenter broadcasting from the Thanksgiving Day Parade. Maddie frets about the lamb, and it’s clear that she’d rather be out there, looking for Tessie.
Cleo walks home and sees her son Teddy (Tyrik Johnson) in the car with an older man named Charlie. He tells her that Teddy has a gift for the “numbers” game, but Cleo says she doesn’t want Teddy involved with Mr. Gordon, who runs the numbers game, because he’s running dope. As she walks home her children are making up jokes with her husband Slappy (Byron Bowers), music is playing. Cleo chastises Slappy for not getting the kids ready for Thanksgiving at her mother’s. She tells him she’ll be at her mother’s until he gets a gig.
The boys at the Schwartz house are talking in the living room, Seth is playing golf in the living room on a fake grass, and Wallace talks about two men who oppened a book store and started a branch of the national states rights party. They want to play at “being Nazis,” Milton says. “It’s not a game if they start a movement in the middle of Baltimore,” Wallace says. “I pity any Jew who thinks they’re safe.” Maddie brings out deviled eggs, Wallace reminisces about how popular Maddie, then Maddie Morgenstern, used to be in high school, running the school paper. The men are all mocking and belittling her, Seth included, as she leaves the living room. Wallace says he took her to prom when “Tessie Durst’s father stood her up.” He adds: “Imagine if you’d ended up with Durst, he’s way too Jewish.” Milton is surprised he never heard about her “big high school love with Durst,” and as she leaves the room, Seth mocks her with a “is that the star of the school newspaper finally going to check on the lamb?”
Cleo goes to drop off the kids at her parents, who are mad at her for not spending Thanksgiving with them instead of behind the bar. She hopes that Summer will hire her fulltime so she doesn’t have to hustle so much. Her son’s eyes are yellow again — he has sickle cell and there’s no cure for it. Her mother and stepfather want “the prophet,” a preacher, to see him.
Milton goes to Maddie when she’s slicing the lamb. He pries about her affair with Alan Durst, but all she can think about is Tessie missing. He wants to have a nice Thanksgiving and not talk about Tessie, but Maddie turns the radio up instead. When Maddie says they should join the search party looking for her, Milton says, you used the dairy dishes for the lamb — and he throws it away. Maddie slams a plate and starts bleeding. She leaves the room and cries in the bathroom, her bloody coat in the sink and her bloody hand wrapped in a towel.
The blood reminds her of a scene when she was young of a man wiping blood off a yellow sheet. Maddie is naked on the bed. We then see young Maddie crying in a prom dress. Milton tries to reconcile with her and they have this intense argument that’s really an award-worthy moment (this whole scene is jaw-droppingly intense) in which she talks about her dreams beyond being a housewife, dreams that Milton just didn’t think she had. “You never wanted to do anything else,” he tells her, to which she responds: “I never tried to do anything else, did you ever wonder why?” Maddie packs a suitcase and leaves to look for a different future, maybe, and for Tessie. She’s still thinking about that moment from prom.
Cleo’s at the bar where Mr. Gordon runs his numbers game. She does the books there and works behind the bar. She also checks with Dora (Jennifer Mogbock), who we saw at the Summer fundraising looking drunk. We find out that Dora is sleeping with the man with a black eye who we saw earlier at the fish shop. He is the one who dumped the body in the lake at the opening of the episode. His name is Reggie (Josiah Cross).
Maddie goes to Mr. Weinstein’s pawn shop. She wants the apartment he’s renting out, and to pawn her wedding ring. Men come in with flyers about the search for Tessie. Judith, Mr. Weinstein’s daughter, offers to show her the apartment, but Weinstein won’t give Maddie much for the ring. She refuses to put it back on her hand, and instead puts it in her pocket.
Back at the bar, we meet Officer Ferdie Platt (Y’lan Noel). He asks Reggie to keep on the straight and narrow. Reggie goes to dump out the fish he bought from the store in the toilet, and realizes that Dora is passed out.
Cleo and Ferdie flirt, but he then tells her that he doesn’t go after women who are taken, and she makes fun of him for only dating white women. She also can’t seem to figure out if he is or isn’t on Mr. Gordon’s dime. Cleo helps Reggie to get a passed-out Dora ready to perform on stage. Cleo talks to Mr. Gordon who tells his associates that she’s been keeping his books since she was in bible study. He tells her to introduce Dora on stage.
Maddie and Judith go to the apartment, which isn’t in great shape, but Judith badly wants to move in there with Maddie, to leave her home. Maddie says she doesn’t want a roommate, and Judith asks, “How about a friend?” When Maddie tells her she wants to go search for Tessie, Judith offers to join. They go to a spot by the lake; Judith jokes it’s a “make out spot.” It’s there that they find Tessie’s body, by the lake. Maddie breaks down and Judith hugs her.
“You wanted Tessie’s death to bring you that freedom, but it only showed you that freedom,” Cleo says in a final voiceover. “It took mine to open it.”
Episode 2: It has to do with the search of the marvelous
This episode comes from a line that young Maddie Schwartz uses to describe surrealist art.
We meet Maddie as a teen in 1947, played by Natalie Portman, who is believably youthful. She wants to interview Alan Durst’s mother about her art; she’s a surrealist painter. The interview doesn’t go too well; she wants to talk about her relationship instead at first. Then she talks to Alan’s dad; he flatters her about her talent and he gives her advice about what to ask his wife.
Back in the 1960s, Maddie wants to take time to live apart from Milton. They’re going to Tessie’s funeral. When Seth asks why she’s getting buried so soon, Maddie says, “so the soul can move on.” In the voiceover, Cleo calls Maddy out for, like the majority of the city, caring more about the dead than the living. At the Jewish cemetery, there’s antisemitic graffiti. Milton talks about a group of young Nazis in town while Maddie’s mother says she’s glad her mother isn’t there to see it, to which Seth retorts with a brutal: “I thought your mother died in the Holocaust.” Seth is cold, man. Tessie’s mother hugs Maddie for staying with her daughter’s body until the police came. She cries. Seth is upset by the scene and leaves. Is it because he feels Maddie cares more for Tessie than him, or is it something else?
The mother of the fish store clerk, Stefan, is at the funeral. She returns home, and she sees him in the bath filled with fish wearing a gas mask. She yells at him and beats him with a towel. (Writing about the scenes with Stefan honestly make me feel like I’m writing high!)
At Senator Summer’s office, a reporter wants to talk to Cleo, but Cleo wants to talk to the senator first. She wants to get a job, but the senator tells her that while she is the face of young Baltimore, her white donors don’t like that she works for Mr. Gordon, and that if she hires her, it will look like she’s “bought” her. Cleo wants to leave her work at Mr. Gordon to work for Summer, but that door is closed for her, it seems.
Cleo still shoots a video talking about how Summer was her teacher, about herself, how she is called Cleopatra because she looked like an Egyptian queen, but now all people see in her is a barmaid, a mannequin, a bookkeeper. As she shoots the video she is filled with rage about Summer, who won’t let her regain her sense of dignity by giving her a legitimate job. She has a rageful breakdown in front of the camera.
Maddie is trying to get money for rent by selling her car, but nobody will let her sell it without her husband’s signature (Alma Har’el told Kveller how when she discovered this was the case for women in the 60s, she had to include it in the show). She decides on a desperate move, hiding her wedding ring in a pot, throwing stuff around an apartment and pretending it was stollen for the insurance money.
She calls the police from the Silver Dollar BBQ under her apartment, and officer Platt, who we saw in episode 1, is the one that comes with a colleague.
Just like Maddie has decided to resort to illegal activity, Cleo has been broken down by Summer’s refusal to hire her. She offers Mr. Gordon to do his “red” books, to help with his illegal dealings.
At Maddie’s apartment, Officer Platt says she doesn’t look like the type of person to live where she does. When she asks if it’s because she’s Jewish, he responds with a “not exactly.” They go to the Silver Dollar to call the burglary detectives, and Platt realizes that Maddie is the person who found Tessie. He tells her she and Judith were suspects of a “lesbian sex crime” until aquarium gravel was found under Tessie’s nails. Now they’re going to arrest the man at the fish store. He also tells her that it will take the insurance a long time to pay for her ring.
A reporter from the Baltimore Star, Bob Bauer, knocks on Maddie’s door to ask her about Tessie. She offers him water, but doesn’t want to talk. When he brings up her and her “lover” being a suspect, she tells him about Stefan being a suspect, and that he is about to be arrested.
At Mr. Gordon’s club, Cleo is working hard and earning his trust by working his books. At the fish store, Stefan’s mother is tied to a chair while he dances with a broom, with a gas mask on. The police surround them, shoot at the aquariums. Stefan hallucinates Tessie holding up a goldfish. The police finally arrest him instead of shooting him, thanks to his mother, who says that she’s safe and that he is willing to surrender.
Judith is smoking a joint in Maddie’s apartment and cajoles Maddie to join her by saying she’ll make her dad give her a break on the rent.
At the club, Reggie is told by Platt’s officer associate that Stefan’s mother is talking about a Black guy with a black eye being the real murderer and to lay low. Slappy is on stage, thanks to Cleo asking Mr. Gordon to let him on, and he’s doing great. Reggie, in an attempt to lay low, asks Cleo to do a drop for him. She goes to the apartment of a man called Duke. It is full of pigeons, and she gives him an envelope full of money. She wants to leave but Duke won’t let her.
At Maddie’s apartment, Judith sees Maddie’s diaries and tells her about her love for Anais Nin’s diaries about Paris affairs. “Paris affairs must be like getting bagels in Pikesville,” Maddie jokes. High, she thinks of being a housewife, of sex with Milton, of lambs. Judith quotes Nin.
Officer Platt knocks on their door and they quickly air the apartment out, Judith running out with her joint. Platt is there to give her news about the arrest, and about having no leads on the ring. She invites him in for a beer. “Would it be unlawful?” she asks, for him to drink with her. “I won’t report it if you won’t,” he flirts back. And of course, they get to know each other, in the biblical sense, as Dr. Ruth would say.
It turns out the errand Cleo was running for Reggie is an attempt on Senator Summer’s life. Duke makes Cleo be his getaway driver. “Please don’t do this,” Cleo beseeches him but it doesn’t help. As gunshots ring out, Cleo runs away from the scene.
