Every Year After Episode 3 Review: "Playing with Fire" - Percy writes Sue's obituary, Sam admits jealousy, and Sue's will pulls her back in

By Mira Vance · Editor & Lead Reviewer

"Playing with Fire" moves between the summer Percy and Sam almost crossed a line and the present grief that makes every old habit feel dangerous again. It works through small domestic acts: an obituary draft, a borrowed shirt, a swim to the raft, a tray of pierogi. Percy and Sam do not need a grand confession to reopen the wound; they only need to stand too close in a room where Dolly is playing.

Delilah sees Sam at the lake, and Percy insists she will not risk the friendship

The opening returns to the lake as a whole summer mood: kids racing to the raft, Charlie splashing everyone, Percy watching Sam turn into someone almost unfamiliar. Her narration about the lake taking the boy she knew is melodramatic in the way teenage writing should be. Sam has changed, and Percy has noticed.

Delilah clocks the same thing immediately. She does not whisper around it either: Sam got hot, Percy should have warned her, and this is the summer Percy should “close the deal.” The joke works because Percy is trying so hard to keep the friendship in its safe old shape. Sam is close enough to wipe water from her face, and Percy still says the point is that they are friends.

The same pressure lands on Sam through Charlie, who needles him about Percy, then Delilah, before giving his brother a weirdly sincere boundary: Percy is basically family, and Delilah is Percy’s friend. Everyone can see the spark except the two people standing in it.

Percy writes Sue’s obituary, and Sam turns her job back into something that matters

In the present, grief gives Percy a reason to sit with Sam at the table without pretending she only came by for nostalgia. She asks about Sue’s defining quality, and Sam lands on strength: after his father died, Sue raised him and Charlie and kept The Tavern going by herself. Then he gives Percy the jukebox story. Sue told everyone it was broken because she wanted to keep playing Dolly Parton.

That is exactly the kind of detail Percy knows how to use. Taylor had tried a version of the obituary, Sam had tried too, but neither draft felt like Sue. Sam, who could have made Percy’s work sound small, does the opposite. Speaking as someone who just lost a person, he tells her people want the world to take notice of a passing. “You make that happen. It matters.”

For Percy, who keeps treating obituary writing as the smaller life she ended up with, the line lands harder than flirtation. Sam is grieving his mother, but he still sees her work clearly.

Delilah admits Whit asked for a separation, while Charlie warns Sam away from the past

Delilah and Charlie stay on their own messy track, starting with Delilah meeting Jordie on the golf course. She admits Whit asked for a separation and wanted the summer to “figure things out.” Delilah has already figured out they are done, but saying so brings up every social bruise she is trying not to show: her parents, the starter-marriage humiliation, the stupid couple-drink named the Whelilah.

Jordie is sweet in the exact way that makes this more complicated. He tells her Whit does not change the fact that she is incredible, and that she deserves someone who knows how amazing she is. Delilah is used to performing certainty; here, she lets someone be kind to her.

Across town, Charlie sees Sam and Percy together over the obituary and reads it as a scene out of the past. Sam insists he is with Taylor now. Charlie does not argue the facts; he argues the gravity. “Some things are better left in the past,” he tells him. Charlie knows exactly how long the past can keep burning.

A storm puts young Percy in Sam’s firetruck sheets, and Charlie ruins the morning after

The flashback storm is the most delicate stretch. Percy is home alone, watching The Blair Witch Project during a power outage, and she shows up at Sam’s door soaked and scared. He gives her dry clothes. They share a bed because the floor is ridiculous and the bed is enormous.

Nothing happens. The charge is in the lamp turned low instead of off, the firetruck sheets Sam has not used in years, the way both of them know the room has changed even if their bodies stay still.

Then Charlie walks in with a protein shake and wrecks it. Sam panics and reaches for the safest denial: “I’d never! It’s Percy!” He means he would never cross that line with someone who matters that much. Percy hears the other version, the one that says she is not someone he could want. She leaves in his clothes.

The raft race brings Percy and Sam back to an old rhythm

After Sam reads the obituary draft and calls it perfect, he invites Percy to swim there instead of on her way back to town. The race to the raft has all the old teasing in it: she cheats, he calls her on it, she wins anyway. For a few minutes, they are just in the lake again.

That makes the quiet afterward hurt more. Percy says the place is magical; Sam says he misses it too. They are talking about the lake, but the sentence carries the rest.

Sam asks her to help make Sue’s pierogi for the reception that night. Percy says yes. She came hoping she could help, and she was trained in pierogi-making by Sue herself.

At the bonfire, Jordie embarrasses Percy and a jealous kiss does the damage

The past thread sends everyone to the end-of-summer bonfire, where Delilah tries to make Percy put in some effort and then immediately gets distracted by Charlie. Sam introduces Jordie, who has heard all about “the Percy” and asks whether she really ate 15 pierogis in one sitting. Percy corrects it to 12, which is funnier and somehow worse.

Jordie is too much, Delilah is delighted by him until she is not, and Sam tries to clean up the embarrassment by explaining he did not mean to turn Percy’s appetite into her legend. Then a girl from his class says hello, and Percy learns Sam took her to Spring Fling. He has a life where she is not always the center.

So Percy asks another boy for a beer and kisses him instead of giving him her name. It is petty, young, and painfully legible.

Dolly, pierogis, and one almost-kiss lead straight into Sue’s will

The present-day pierogi scene is the warmest trap. Sam plays Dolly because they are making Sue’s recipe. He tells Percy she looks good. He ties her apron. They talk about the bonfire and the kiss, and Percy deflects by saying it was not her first - more like her 20th. Sam finally says watching her kiss that guy made him jealous.

His confession is careful and frightened. Being with Percy felt safe, and whatever their friendship was felt different and special. Percy says she did not want to lose it either. They agree not to mess it up, swear they are best friends, and then almost do exactly what they are swearing against.

Delilah arrives looking for Charlie and sees enough. Percy runs, calls Chantal, and says she almost did something stupid. She says she screwed up Sam’s life once and cannot do it again. Before she can leave, Sue’s estate lawyer arrives and tells Persephone Fraser she has to be at the will reading because she is in Sue’s will. The clean exit disappears.

Tiny details worth clocking

• Sue’s jukebox lie turns Dolly from background music into family language, which is why “You’re the Only One” hits so cleanly during the pierogi scene.
• The firetruck sheets are funny, but they also keep Sam young in a scene where he and Percy are trying to act older than they are.
• Charlie’s rant about Sue patching trucks, jeans, toasters, and ovens is grief coming out sideways as class resentment and a burned hand.
• Chantal’s expired passport is a sitcom contrivance, but it usefully strands her with Charlie and leaves Percy without her safest escape route.
• The pierogi number dropping from 15 to 12 says a lot about how much Percy hates becoming someone else’s story.

Final verdict

“Playing with Fire” is strongest when it lets history repeat in gestures rather than speeches: a race to the raft, a borrowed layer, a room with low light, a family recipe made under the wrong emotional weather. Sam’s most romantic act is not flirting. It is telling Percy that the work she dismissed has value.

The Chantal passport detour is convenient. One expired passport, one consulate contact, one broken truck, one absent best friend: the setup is tidy. Still, the payoff helps. Charlie’s anger at Sue’s repaired truck gives the hour another angle on grief, and Chantal is sharp enough to keep him from turning into pure swagger.

By the end, Percy and Sam have not crossed the line, but the line itself is the problem. They keep calling it friendship because friendship is the word that lets them stay near each other without taking responsibility for the heat. Sue’s will landing in Percy’s lap is a smart final turn: not a promise of romance, just one more tie to the family she is trying to leave before she burns it down again.

Rating: 8.6/10 - Excellent lake-house detail, a slightly convenient passport subplot, and a will-reading hook that lands because Percy was already halfway out the door.

More episodes from Every Year After — Second chances and old summers, episode by episode. Jump to any episode in the season:

Reviewed by Mira Vance · QuizFandom Editor & Lead Reviewer. Every rating is an honest per-watch assessment from the desk that also writes the quizzes — not a press release rehash.

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