The fourth episode of The Last Thing He Told Me, directed by Olivia Newman, was released today on Apple TV, and we’re finally starting to get somewhere. The TV series based on the novel by Laura Dave stars Jennifer Garner, Angourie Rice, and Nikolaj Coster Waldau and focuses on how a stepmother named Hannah and her stepdaughter Bailey close the bridge between themselves while searching for Hannah’s husband and Bailey’s dad, Owen. After Owen went missing following a raid at The Shop, the company he used to work at, Hannah and Bailey arrived in New Austin, Texas, to look for him. In the previous episode, Bailey had remembered faint memories about visiting a church and a football field with her dad as a kid, but no proper clues could be produced from these memories. Here’s what follows in Episode 4.
Spoilers Ahead
Past Memories
The fourth episode of The Last Thing He Told Me begins with another flashback that Hannah has about her husband Owen, about the time when Owen, Hannah, and his teenage daughter Bailey had visited a restaurant, and Hannah had gotten tickets to a play for the three of them. However, she respectfully bowed out upon learning that Bailey would rather it was just her father and her, and Owen had assured her she was doing a great job. At present, however, Hannah is far from alright as she explains to her stepdaughter what Jules just informed her about Owen and Bailey’s true identities, and Bailey is equally devastated. As she begins freaking out, thinking everything she knows about herself might be fake, Hannah tries to console her, but Bailey brushes her off. She then announces to her stepmother that she can feel a connection to Austin and that they might come across some valuable information in this city, and they decide to stay back.
In the morning, Hannah thinks about the time when she told Owen about how her hair used to be a mess when she was Bailey’s age because she had to grow up without a mother. She pauses her reverie to look at the number US Marshal Grady Bradford had left her on a napkin and calls the Marshals’ office to speak to him but is informed that he’s on vacation. Irritated, she demanded to know why this vacationing Marshal had shown up at her place and was asking questions. Meanwhile, Grady is having breakfast with his son and talking about basketball when Hannah calls him and informs him that she knows about Owen and Bailey’s fake names, surprising the Marshal. Grady refuses to divulge any information and insists that he’s trying to keep Owen and his family safe, and then repeatedly asks Hannah to tell him where she is. He adds that Avett had sent men to her house, which sends Hannah into panic mode, and she hangs up the call while Grady keeps asking about her location.
Looking For Clues
While standing on the balcony of the hotel, Hannah thinks of a time in her teens when she received a letter from her mother, who’d taken off on her. What irritated the teen most was that her mother, Carole, didn’t even remember the grade Hannah was in, and she threw away the bowl her grandfather had prepared. When her grandfather arrived to help her with the vase she was working on at the workshop, she expressed her fury at Carole and huffed out of the room, but his words stuck with her: “It’s up to you to choose what you want to focus on.” In the hotel room, Bailey isn’t in the mood to speak to anyone, and disconnects the call from her boyfriend Bobby, promising to speak to him later. Hannah walks into the hotel room and starts questioning Bailey about little things Owen had mentioned about himself over time so that they can tell more about who Owen was before he changed his name. However, most facts are vague until Bailey remembers the math professor at Princeton. The professor had framed Owen’s failed assessment in his office, but he used that as motivation to do better next time, and together, they figured out the Fields medal-winning professor’s name as Tobias Cookman. What’s more, he takes classes right here at the University of Texas in Austin, so together, they set off to look for Professor Cookman.
The Missing Bag
While heading to the university, Hannah gets a call from Jules asking her if Owen ever had a safe because the key she’d found in the piggy bank looked like it could fit in a safe. Hannah then asks Jules to go into Han’s house and take a duffel bag that should be under her bed; while in the Marshal’s office, Grady instructs others to find out everything they can about Hannah before learning his boss wants to see him. The boss demands to know what Grady is doing in Sausalito and asks for a detailed explanation. When Grady brings in the detailed file, however, the boss is of zero help, and she says it’s not the Marshal Office’s problem to handle this. Grady tries his best to make her see reason, including the threat to Owen’s daughter’s life, but the boss doesn’t seem to budge, making the Marshal furious. He’s huffing at his office when another Marshal hands him a paper that shows Hannah and Bailey’s tickets for flying out of San Francisco the previous day.
Even after looking everywhere, Jules can’t find the duffel bag that Hannah had asked her to find when Jake, the lawyer, walks in on her and starts asking questions. Upon being pressured, Jules reveals that she’s searching for the bag with a little more than half a million dollars in cash, and the two quickly begin arguing. It comes down to how Hannah chose a man who decided to abandon her, leaving them in trouble over Jake, and Jules retorts with the fact that Hannah had chosen Owen because Jake is a horrible guy. Hurt, the lawyer reminds her that even though he’s so horrible, he’s the one fighting to help Hannah.
Professor Tobias Cookman
Inside the university, Hannah and Bailey are amazed to see just how much of a math genius Prof. Cookman is, based on his myriad accolades hanging from a board. When they try to meet him, however, his young assistant Cheryl asks them to return a couple of months later, so Hannah cooks up a story. She poses Bailey as a mathlete and says that she’d love to meet Cookman to get his thoughts, and the two women are allowed to wait for Cookman to finish teaching, but Bailey rushes in, irritating the professor. While initially the professor had outright denied any assistance, his memory was jogged by the anecdote of how he’d hung the failed exam of his student, and his good sense kicked in when Hannah added more details. She said Cookman’s student, her husband, had worked at The Shop, and he’s been missing for three days, so he finally decided to help them get the answers they needed. Cookman really tries, going through the register he’d had as well as his notes, but nothing really comes up until Cheryl brings in the list of students he’d had for ’97. While going through the list, he’s reminded of the girl whom Owen had fallen in love with, the reason he failed the first exam, and this makes Bailey show him the picture she had of her mother, Olivia. However, Cookman doesn’t remember the girl from the picture, and there’s no record of any Olivia on the ’97 list. Hannah takes Bailey to go check out the yearbooks at the library that stores the albums as a last resort to recall how her husband must’ve looked in his senior year of college.
Closing The Gap
Once at the library, Bailey begins hyperventilating and being concerned about the things she might find out about her father and herself, but Hannah consoles her and leads her to the computer to look up the yearbook. She gets a call from Jules, and she’s reminded of a moment in her teens when Hannah and Jules, then girls, were driving back, but Hannah’s face changed when she saw her mother’s car parked outside her home. She didn’t go into the house to meet her mother but instead headed to the workshop to fine-tune her grandfather’s vase. Her granddad comes in and tries to get her to meet her mother, but she refuses, even when he says that Carole might not remember the latest details about Hannah, but she knows who she is. She calls Jules back and asks her to head to Han’s workshop and find her grandfather’s vase because that’s where the safe might be. Jules informs her friend that the duffel bag she’d asked her to find is missing, and Hannah advises her to make finding the safe her main priority. She then sits back down beside Bailey and advises her, saying it doesn’t matter that the details about her life are untrue, but she knows who she is as a person, and that’s what’s important.
What Do Hannah And Bailey Discover From The Yearbooks?
Hannah gets a call from Elenor McGovern from the church that Hannah and Bailey had visited asking about the weddings, and the church lady has information. She informs Han that there were scrimmages hosted in 2011, and the football stadium would be filled with crowds and festoons for these games as well. Elenor adds that a pre-season wedding had been hosted during the final scrimmage of the season, and it was a noon wedding between Reyes and Smith. On further enquiry, Hannah learns the husband’s name was Charles Smith, while the bride’s name was Andrea Reyes. Bailey spots the name Katherine Smith from the students list Cookman had given them, and when the stepmother-daughter duo continues searching, they come upon a photograph where Katherine Smith should be in the picture. However, they don’t need to look for too long because Hannah spots a woman in the picture who looks almost exactly like Bailey, with her complexion, blonde hair, and sparkling blue eyes.
After a string of bad luck, no matter where they looked, Hannah and Bailey finally succeeded in excavating details about Bailey’s life, or at least information related to her life. The church lady’s information, combined with the photograph from the ’97 yearbook, informed the duo that Bailey’s mother was actually at university with her father. The woman whom Hannah spotted was named Katherine Smith, a relative of Charles Smith, who’d gotten married at the pre-season wedding on the final day of the scrimmages. It was this marriage that Owen attended with Bailey before attending the scrimmages. Thus, based on the almost identical physical features, Hannah hazarded a guess that Katherine Smith was Bailey’s mother. Although Olivia Smith was a fake name, there must be some record of Katherine Smith’s marriage, and once they find Owen’s real name, the mystery might just get solved.
Final Thoughts
Bailey has come a long way from not being able to stand the sight of Hannah and disliking any interaction with her. After confessing to her boyfriend in the previous episode that her stepmother may not be all that bad, there’ve been various instances in the latest episode where Bailey could be seen silently appreciating Hannah’s presence of mind. As the series rolls on, we can only hope this unstable relationship develops into a better one where Bailey doesn’t snap at her stepmother at the slightest inconveniences. Meanwhile, the US Marshal Grady Bradford has found out that Hannah and Bailey are no longer in San Francisco, so in the next episode of The Last Thing He Told Me, he might be showing up to Austin to check up on the women, and we’ll be able to find out more details about Owen’s real identity and Grady’s connection to him.Â
