Every Year After Episode 4 Review: "Anatomy of a Romance" - Sue's Will, Percy's Lake Swim, and Sam's Hard Line

By Mira Vance · Editor & Lead Reviewer

"Anatomy of a Romance" moves between the summer when Percy and Sam let friendship become desire and the present where Sue's last decision makes that history impossible to tuck away. The inheritance is legal, but the real estate is emotional: The Tavern, Percy's old cottage, the lake route she once trained to cross, and the version of herself she left behind. It is warm without letting anyone off easy, especially Sue, whose love keeps arriving with strings attached.

Sue leaves The Tavern to Percy, and the room turns on her before she can refuse it

The will reading starts with everyone already braced for bad theater. Charlie and Sam are grieving in that brittle way where Jameson feels like a breakfast condiment, while Percy is pacing herself into a panic because seeing Sam after the almost-kiss is bad enough before the lawyers arrive.

Then Sue’s will does what Sue apparently wanted it to do: it detonates. Her estate is split between Charlie and Sam, except for The Tavern and everything inside it, which goes solely to Persephone Fraser. Percy is as stunned as the Florek brothers, but surprise does not protect her from the look on Sam’s face. She insists she does not want it. Chantal, instantly moving from friend to lawyer, makes sure panic does not become an official resignation.

It is a cruelly perfect gift: Sue leaves Percy the place that made her feel most like herself, and hands Sam proof that his mother was still choosing Percy years after everything broke.

A summer run becomes a lake-swim promise, and Percy finds the dare she needs

The flashback has the ease the present keeps choking on. Young Sam has talked Percy into running, Percy has arrived in Converse, and their whole friendship lives in the way they tease each other through the pain. She brings jokes; he brings articles about shoes.

But the run opens something. Percy admits that the physical misery gives her a half minute away from the story she cannot write. Sam tells her that is why he started running during midterms. At the water, the dare comes into focus: she wants to swim across the lake, something big and impossible enough to pull her out of her own head.

Sam says he will help her train. That is the romance before either of them names it: someone taking your impossible idea seriously before you have talked yourself out of it.

Delilah offers to buy The Tavern, and Percy hears what her old house is becoming

Back in the present, the news travels across town almost immediately. Delilah appears with congratulations that are too shiny to be innocent, and Percy clocks the tells: the lower lip, the sudden kindness, the agenda. Delilah wants to buy The Tavern.

Her fantasy is “Soho House at the lake,” all velvet poufs, low lighting, signature cocktails, and members-only mystique. Percy recoils for the right reason. The Tavern is for locals, day fishers, tourists, and kids; it is not another place for people who use “summer” as a verb. The argument lands harder when Delilah mentions that Percy’s old cottage is being demolished and replaced by a giant modern farmhouse with a faux-barn boathouse.

So Percy climbs into the abandoned house with Chantal and Delilah. It is reckless, funny, and sad all at once, because the trespass is also a goodbye tour. This was her home. Soon even the shape of it will be gone.

Charlie tells Sam what happened after their father died, and The Tavern stops looking simple

While Percy is crawling through the ruins of her old life, Sam and Charlie are cleaning up The Tavern and finding out that grief has separate versions for siblings. They remember first beers, terrible hangovers, a legendary breakfast burrito, and the table where Charlie’s ex-girlfriends allegedly formed a support group against him.

Then Charlie says the thing Sam never saw. After their father died, Sue did not simply keep everything together. She fell apart. Charlie remembers her staying in pajamas, sitting at the kitchen table, staring, while he handled groceries and tried to keep Sam’s childhood running. The sugar cereal rotation Sam remembers as a fun routine was actually Charlie doing the shopping.

Charlie loved Sue, still resents what that year took from him, and finally says how young he was when the house fell onto his shoulders. Sam calling him a good big brother is simple, and it lands because the episode has earned that quiet.

Percy, Delilah, and Chantal tell the truth inside the abandoned cottage

The old cottage turns into a confessional by accident. Delilah admits that her marriage to Whit is in trouble. They are spending the summer apart, and The Tavern has become something she can want that is hers instead of hers-and-Whit.

Chantal answers with her own fear: she loves her work, loves it enough that marriage to Drew feels less like a milestone than a threat to the life she has built. Percy, surrounded by boxes from her old room, finds her stories and sees a version of herself she barely recognizes. The writing is cringe in places, sure, but fearless. She used to have that.

The comedy helps. The broken window, the kicked boob, the cops in the driveway - all of it keeps the scene from turning precious. These women are hiding from their own choices in a house that is about to be erased.

The lake swim ends in a first kiss, and Sue warns Sam and Percy not to lose their dreams

The flashback’s centerpiece is the lake crossing. Percy swims with Sue, Diane, Arthur, Charlie, and Sam cheering her on, and by the time she reaches the other side, she is wrecked and glowing. She calls Sam pretty before she realizes she said it out loud. He is proud of her; she is proud of herself.

Then comes the anatomy lesson, the episode’s title scene and its best bit of friendship-to-love detail. Sam is studying the muscular system. Percy teases the diagram, then asks him to enlighten her. He starts with ankle and knee, gets mocked for the obvious, and finally moves into the real vocabulary: vastus medialis, vastus lateralis, tensor fasciae latae. It is shy, funny, and unmistakably intimate before the kiss finally happens.

Sue sees where this is headed and gives them a sex talk that is really a life talk. She knows this is not casual. She also knows Sam wants to be a doctor and Percy wants to be a writer. Her warning is not anti-love; it is anti-disappearing. Promise you will not forget what you want out of life, she tells them. Both promise, and the present keeps asking what that promise cost.

Sam bails Percy out, Arthur points her back to the lake, and Charlie agrees to contest the will

The young romance breaks on timing. Percy is leaving the next day. Sam wants her, but he is terrified of ruining his plans, missing scholarships, and asking her to wait while also refusing to ask. “You’re an asshole either way,” Percy tells him, which may be the fairest line anyone gets in the hour.

In the present, Sam bails Percy out after the break-in, and the old pattern curdles. Percy names the mixed signals: the lake swim, the late-night Tavern invitation, showing up when she is in trouble. Sam admits seeing her again brought up old feelings, then says it was wrong and will not happen again. The apology is clean. The damage is not.

Percy calls Arthur, who gives Sue’s decision a different shape. Sue called him after Percy’s first Seattle Times byline because she worried Percy had abandoned fiction. Arthur wonders whether leaving Barry’s Bay cost Percy more than Sam; Percy remembers that the lake made her feel most like herself. Across town, Sam tells Charlie that Percy being there is bad for him. Charlie says they will contest the will.

Tiny details worth clocking

• Sue updated the will in 2021, shortly after the conversation Arthur describes, which makes her choice feel less random without making it less painful.
• Chantal’s “friend and lawyer” bit keeps paying off, especially when she stops Percy from accidentally giving away The Tavern in shock.
• Percy calling Sam “Samwise” in the flashback is exactly the kind of old nickname that makes the present-day awkwardness worse.
• The sugar cereal rotation shifts from a cute childhood memory to evidence of Charlie’s invisible caregiving in one conversation.
• Percy’s lake mantra, “The only way to the other side is through,” returns as advice without pretending that through will be painless.

Final verdict

“Anatomy of a Romance” lets the golden memory stay golden, then holds it up against the mess it left behind. The lake swim, the anatomy lesson, and Sue’s gentle warning could have played as pure nostalgia. Instead, the present keeps interrupting with legal paperwork, property development, family resentment, and the rotten feeling of wanting someone who is no longer available.

Leaving The Tavern to Percy may have been an act of love, but love can still be unfair. Charlie’s confession about the year after his father died gives the Florek grief a harder edge, and it keeps Sue from becoming a saint just because she is gone.

If there is a wobble, it is that the Delilah-Chantal-Percy break-in occasionally leans broad while the surrounding material is working in a more bruised register. Even there, the episode uses the looseness well. By the end, everyone is trying to hold on to a place, a person, or a version of themselves that may already be gone.

Rating: 8.8/10 - A tender, specific chapter that makes Percy and Sam’s romance feel lived-in while giving the family grief enough teeth to keep the nostalgia honest.

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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