TV review: The Beautiful Lie, episode 3, ABC (2015)

The story moves on smartly while Xander Ivin faces some difficult questions about conduct. How should a man act when his lovely wife is having an affair? Does he go off like a cracker? Does he lash out violently at all and sundry? Or does he accept that things have changed and move quietly aside, making sure not to bruise anyone in the process?

Kingsley's reconstruction happens slowly but it happens, as Dolly comes to terms with her mortality in a mature albeit sometimes chaotic fashion. The dinner scene is hers alone, which is not surprising as she tends to dominate every scene in which she appears. Peter regroups following his loss of face at the engagement party and Kitty takes the vital steps back toward him that the story needs in order to remain whole.

This is a really terrific episode, much better than episode two, but it is nonetheless transitional. Still to come is the final reckoning between Anna and her husband, the cuckolded Xander. Also still to come is the witnessing of the lover Skeet's maturation into a full adult. Will he go on to become a father, as Anna obviously wants him to? Will he pull the rug out from underneath her, as we all fear - and know - he will? Skeet has a chance at this point to change for the better, to put aside the things of youth and take up the things that pertain to manhood. Xander also has a choice as to whether he behaves well or badly vis-a-vis his compromised wife - compromised because now pregnant and doubly vulnerable.

This episode was very important for the makers of this series because if things were going to fall apart for them it would have been at this point, when the first rush of the love romance has been quelled to a certain degree. Fortunately for them they have kept things moving in the right direction.