Apple TV’s new thriller miniseries The Last Thing He Told Me released its latest episode this week, and it’s everything that we wanted from a thriller with star power like Jennifer Garner and Nikolaj Coster Waldau. The episode finally clears up a lot of the confusion regarding the whole situation and helps give us a picture of what is happening. In the previous week, Hannah and Bailey had arrived at the library of the University of Texas, where they found a yearbook that had a picture of a woman named Katherine Smith, who looked strikingly like Bailey. What do Hannah and Bailey find out about this woman? Here’s the detailed recap of Episode 5.
The Never Dry
Hannah and Bailey still can’t believe the picture they have just seen on the computer screen of the woman who looks so strikingly like Bailey Michaels. Bailey thinks back to the time when she asked her father, Owen, about her mother, Olivia, and mentioned how he never brought up his wife, whom he lost in a car accident. Owen had said that it was very difficult to talk about his late wife. However, he did attest that every time he looked into his daughter’s eyes, he could see his wife. Upon further inspection, Bailey finds that the picture shows Katherine Smith and the debate team she was the president of celebrating at her family’s bar, The Never Dry. Hannah is skeptical about visiting a place from a picture that is 20 years old, but Bailey insists that they must go to this place. After a little arguing, Hannah finally gives up and decides it’s best if she accompanies Bailey to the bar.
Charles Smith
Meanwhile, at the Marshall’s office, Grady is barking orders at his team about how he wants Hannah’s location to be traced now that he knows she’s in Austin and wants a wiretap on her phone. Grady walks into his boss Maris’s office and lets her know that Hannah Hall and her ward, Bailey, are in New Austin and that they need to go there immediately because the two women might be in imminent danger. Maris asks Grady if they might know about a particular matter, and Grady says that is not possible. Back in Austin, while traveling to The Never Dry bar, both Hannah and Bailey are checking their phones for any details they can find on either Charles Smith or Catherine Smith, and Bailey finds the Facebook profile of Charles Smith. He’d studied at the University of Texas as an architect, and Hannah found out some details about The Never Dry bar on Yelp. Upon coming across Andrea Reyes’s picture, Bailey is a little taken aback, but she cannot say for sure if she knows Andrea from the photo. When they reach the bar, Hannah insists that Bailey should not go in there and says that she might not be ready to find whoever she might see inside, her mother. Instead, Hannah asks Bailey to wait at the coffee shop opposite the bar and go through the names in the yearbook so that she can find some more details about her parents’ lives.
Skeletons In Closet
Upon entering the bar, Hannah goes down a flight of stairs to find nobody inside the bar, but there is a photograph where the picture they had found in the yearbook has been framed on the wall. While looking at the picture, Hannah is surprised by a man who walks in. He is the bartender, and he is none other than Charles Smith. Hannah and Charles get to talking, and he even offers her a drink in the house after learning that she is here as a teacher at the university on the topic of architecture. He says that he was pursuing a master’s, but two setbacks in life made him give up his dream and return to manage his grandfather’s bar. When Hannah asks about his father, Charles becomes serious for a moment and says his father had no interest in the bar. She makes up a fake story about how Hannah and her friend had come to Austin years ago and had probably come to this bar itself. They might’ve found a girl who was serving as a bartender that night, and it could have been the girl from the picture. Charles gets upset for a moment, says that’s not possible, and adds that it was his sister Katherine, who had passed away in a car accident. They also speak about Charles’s twin sons, and then Hannah decides it’s time for her to leave. At the cafe on the other side of the road, Bailey is getting impatient and speaks to her boyfriend, Bobby, who is also surprised at the uncanniness of the picture of the woman who could be Bailey’s mother. Bobby assures her that Owen would not lie about her mother to such an extent and finds out where Andrea might live. However, he insists that she should wait for Hannah and not go there alone. Bailey’s phone’s battery is almost dead, and she looks for a charger while Hannah is striking up a friendship with Charles before going. However, Hannah asks Charles if she can show him a picture of a man her friend had spoken to and liked, and she wonders if he can point out who he might be. She shows him a picture of Owen, and immediately Charles bursts into a rage, grabs her hand, and demands to know how she came across that picture. He thunders as if his family’s tragedy is a joke for her, just when Bailey runs in and demands that he let go of her stepmother. Charles stops in his tracks, looks at Bailey, and exclaims, “Kristin.”
Escape
Realizing they’re in trouble, Hannah grabs Bailey’s hand, and they start running, with Charles at their heels. The women run through the busy street with Charles running after them, shouting at them to stop. After getting to a safe distance, they stop for a breather, and Charles returns, realizing they’ve escaped. Bailey and Hannah stand under a bridge where a lot of people have gathered to watch the flight of a flock of birds, and as the birds take flight, Bailey is lost in a trance where she can remember a scene from her childhood. She was on Owen’s lap; her mother, Katherine, was with her, and Andrea and Charles were standing with them, laughing. Katherine had addressed Bailey as Kristin, and this made Bailey believe that Katherine was indeed her mother and Kristin was surely her name. Hannah tells Bailey that her mother had indeed died in a car accident so that much was true about what Owen had told his daughter. However, looking around at the people, Hannah realizes it’s not wise to wait in this area any longer, and they start running.
Hannah’s Memories
They arrive at the town hall hotel and take the elevator to their floor, but they get out and use the stairs when a suspicious man gets in with them. In the hotel room, Bailey wants to talk about what just happened, but Hannah says they need to flee to San Francisco at the earliest, and then they will be able to speak on the matter. She is convinced that it is not safe for them in New Austin anymore, and they must leave, while Bailey still does not believe her stepmother. Hannah puts her foot down and asks Bailey to start packing as she goes into the washroom and starts thinking about a moment in her past. Hannah had been looking at her wedding ring in front of a mirror when Owen came and hugged her from behind. Hannah asked Owen how Bailey had taken the news, and he said Bailey was not exactly pleased. Hannah could understand the teenager’s emotions and said that growing up without a mother can be difficult, especially when one has to accept someone new out of the blue. She then asked him why he was so vague with Bailey when she asked about her mother. Owen said that it is difficult to bring his wife up and assured Hannah that he would tell Bailey about her mother when she graduated high school. The pair then embrace and kiss, a reverie that is broken when Hannah receives a call from her friend Jules.
A Package For Grady
At the Marshalls office, Grady receives a package addressed to him, and inside, he finds a phone with the code. Upon opening it, he finds the anecdotal evidence of the emails Owen had sent his boss Avett about how buggy the new software was. He takes it to his boss, Maris, and tells her that Owen had tried to stop Avett from taking the app public, but as it turns out, Avett had not listened. Just then, the alert comes that Hannah and Bailey have checked into the hotel, and Grady leaves for the location and asks Maris to contact the FBI agent who is looking into the case of The Shop.
Who Is Ethan Young?
Jules calls Hannah to inform her that Owen’s real name is Ethan Young. Jules has found the will that Owen had kept in the vase Hannah’s grandfather had made, and worked out Owen’s real name from it. She adds that Owen had married Katherine Smith, whose father was Nicholas Bells, an infamous mob lawyer to the criminal Campano family. Owen had turned state witness and exposed all the connections to Nicholas, which is why he had to change his identity. The lawyer Jake Davis warns Hannah that she and Bailey need to escape New Austin, and Jules assures her that she will meet them in Albuquerque. They add that it is imperative that Hannah and Bailey do not leave behind anything that can be used to trace them and strongly advise them to get rid of their phones. After receiving this immense amount of information, Hannah is taken aback, to say the least, and she places her phone on the bathroom floor and stomps on the wallpaper where Owen’s face is visible. This is the scene from Episode 1, where we first meet Hannah. Now, like before, she goes out to look for Bailey, but obviously, she does not find her.
Bailey Goes Missing
On the other hand, Charles Smith returns to the bar and starts checking the footage from the bar’s CCTV camera. He calls his father, Nicholas Bells, and warns him that he has just seen Kristin. Owen and his assistant, Larry, arrive at the hotel and ask for Hannah from the receptionist, but there is no record of her because she did not use her real name. However, the receptionist who had checked her in was within earshot and asked them to check under the name Parness. Grady barges into Hannah’s room, and by that time, Hannah has already finished checking downstairs, asking anyone she can find about her stepdaughter Bailey, who has seemingly disappeared. Hannah comes face-to-face with Grady, who asks her what she has done. The fifth episode of The Last Thing He Told Me ends with Hannah being taken away in the Grady’s car to the Marshal’s Office as the search for Bailey continues.
Who Was The Man At The Bar?
The man at the bar was none other than Charles Smith, Owen’s brother-in-law. Now, the story is finally starting to make a lot of sense, and we can paint a picture of what is truly happening. First things first, Owen, real name Ethan Young, married the daughter of mob lawyer Nicholas Bell, and Charles Smith is Nicholas’s son. Owen had turned a state witness and exposed the lawyer’s shady dealings, which is why Charles had to give up on his dream of pursuing a master’s and come back to take care of the bar. This is the reason Maris had asked Grady if Hannah knew about the particular matter, which was Owen turning state witness against the lawyer. The other story is that Owen was not completely guilty of the software scandal that had happened at The Shop because he had tried warning Avett several times about how problematic the software was, but Avett did not listen to him. This presents Owen in a much better light to us, the audience, who had wondered if Owen was truly dirty.
The question remains, however, what became of Bailey and where she is now. In the past as well, she had suddenly disappeared, only to be found listening to a practice session in a hall nearby. However, things are not so fine now, and she might actually have been taken by Charles or his men. We won’t know for sure what became of Bailey until we tune into next week’s episode, but we can say for sure that if there was any doubt left about whether The Last Thing He Told Me would pick up a sense of urgency after this week’s episode, all doubts have been put to rest.
