It's Not Like That Episode 3 Review: Everyone Wants a Fresh Start Without Letting Go

By Mira Vance · Editor & Lead Reviewer

Episode 3 turns a church rummage sale, one failed house swap, and a very loaded borrowed shirt into a sharp little study of what people keep, what they donate, and what they pretend is not already sitting in the room.

Spoiler warning: This review discusses the events of It’s Not Like That Season 1 Episode 3.

Jenny’s rummage sale turns memory into a negotiation

The episode opens with Jenny in flashback, loving the old church sign exactly as it is. Malcolm wants to replace it; she stops him because the sign is tied to family photos, their wedding, and the kind of community work that made her happy. Her interfaith rummage sale idea becomes the episode’s warning label: new life is beautiful until someone asks which old thing has to leave the house first.

That is why Malcolm’s practical plan lands so badly with the kids. He wants Flora, Penelope, and Justin to go through Jenny’s belongings and decide what to donate. He frames it as honoring what Jenny loved. Penelope hears erasure. Flora immediately asks about the car. Justin, quietly, becomes the only one ready to sort.

Malcolm says the stuff is not what matters, then spends the episode proving the exact opposite. The cowboy belt buckle he never wore becomes untouchable the second Mr. Carlin tries to buy it early. Grief has terrible inventory logic. One minute you are ready. The next, a joke gift is sacred.

Dakota gives Casey the worst useful divorce advice

Casey gets one of the episode’s strangest kindnesses from Dakota, which is exactly why it works. Dakota was part of the Halidom cruelty last episode, and Casey has every reason to wonder why she is suddenly talking to her. Dakota’s answer is not warm: Casey was there. Still, the conversation gives Casey a badly needed map for the weekend.

Dakota calls David’s condo complex on Westin “divorced dad central” and treats the whole thing like a field she has already survived. Her advice is bleak, funny, and probably effective: binge depressing reality TV, then cash in on parental guilt. She is not pretending divorce becomes cute with the right attitude. She is saying there are small ways to make a bad arrangement less useless.

Casey listens because Dakota is not selling her comfort. She is offering competence. Dakota is the only person blunt enough to say the new place will probably suck, and yes, you may as well get something out of it.

Lori and David try birdnesting, and everybody hates the nest

David wants the kids to come to his new place. The kids want absolutely no part of it. Lori, trying to protect their routines and still give David his time, suggests birdnesting after Malcolm sends her an article. The idea is tidy: the kids stay home, and the parents move around. Its Scandinavian halo does not survive the weekend.

David arrives at the house with “Surprise!” energy and gets two closed doors for his trouble. Merritt goes to the drums. Casey has homework. The air mattresses waiting at David’s place sit there like an accidental confession: he built the audio-visual life first and the kid life later.

Lori’s side of the swap is no easier. At David’s place, Larry Talia and his neighbors turn the pool into a divorced-man gauntlet. Then she ends up in David’s bed, wearing his shirt because she forgot pajamas, and calls Malcolm in a panic. Birdnesting is supposed to make the transition softer. Instead, it puts everyone inside the exact rooms they are not ready to understand.

Malcolm and Lori keep asking for the wrong Malcolm

The Malcolm and Lori material stays interesting because both of them keep trying to put a label on him that will make the situation less dangerous. Malcolm tells Virginia he has a congregant in crisis. Lori tells him later that Pastor Malcolm was helpful, but friend Malcolm was helpful too. The problem is that the distinction is getting thinner every time they call each other.

He brings pajamas from Flora’s rejected clothes, which is practical enough to pass as help and personal enough to make the boundary feel thinner. He listens while Lori admits David’s empty place makes her sad and jealous. David gets a blank slate. She gets the family routines, the guilt, and the house full of consequences. Malcolm answers with the careful language of a pastor, and Lori immediately clocks it. She wanted friend Malcolm.

The scene does not turn into another kiss, but it is not innocent just because no one crosses that line again. Comfort can be its own escalation. Lori is asking him to witness the part of her divorce she cannot hand to David. Malcolm knows better, says better, and still stays late enough for Flora and Merritt to see him leaving.

Merritt stops letting David perform dad mode

David’s old-school dinner is his sweetest effort and his most painful misread. He cooks, slips into Spanish, tries to bring Casey into the plantain routine, and believes the family shape can be summoned if he hits enough familiar notes. Merritt sees the performance first. Casey tries to be kind about the food, but the room is not fooled.

The wrestling lesson turns that tension physical. David and Merritt start by teaching Casey, with David leaning hard on the Soto wrestling legacy. Merritt lets the demonstration become something sharper, reversing David, trapping him, and refusing to stop until Casey and David both tell him to. It is not a clean rebellion. It is a son using the exact language his father understands to say, look what you made me carry.

When David asks what Merritt wants him to do, Merritt finally stops translating his anger into sarcasm. David cannot come back into the house and play at normal like he is not the reason the family broke. That accusation is not tidy, but it is direct.

Flora, Penelope, and Justin find a system for the unsortable

The best sibling scene is the one that looks the least dramatic. Justin moves Jenny’s things into one room and makes a system: definite donate on the left, definite keep on the right, maybes in the middle. It is very Justin, and it gives Flora and Penelope something they badly need. They do not have to solve grief. They just have to choose the next object.

Penelope is still searching for Jenny’s jewelry box with the ivory tree on it. Flora is stuck on the car because Malcolm made it her call and then trusted her judgment, which somehow feels worse than being told what to do. The sisters snap at each other, then soften over smaller memories: the piano book Jenny used to teach Justin, a shirt Penelope picked out for her at the mall, a piece of clothing Flora says is so her.

By the time Penelope arrives at the sale wearing something Flora chose, the sorting has done what Malcolm hoped and what the kids feared. It lets Jenny’s presence move without disappearing. The boxes can go. The car can stay. Nobody has to pretend those choices are equal.

Flora and Merritt’s ride turns a secret into evidence

Merritt goes to Flora after the blowup because he cannot look at David. Flora does not rush to defend anyone. She lets him say David is fake, then receives the compliment he probably did not plan to give: she is nothing like that. She is real. She is always herself.

Her answer is to offer a ride. She has a permit, he has a license, and Jenny’s car becomes a tiny, reckless pocket of freedom. The driving is funny because it is so obviously not freedom yet. Flora is crawling slowly enough for Merritt to joke that she can be pulled over for it, then revs too hard when he pushes her. Still, it lets both of them breathe outside their houses for a minute.

Then they see Malcolm leaving David’s place, where Lori is staying. Merritt takes it as proof. Flora insists her father would never lie to her. Merritt answers with the ugliest lesson divorce has taught him: parents lie. By the time he tells David that Malcolm and Lori are hooking up, the episode has turned one almost-private boundary mess into a family-wide detonation.

Tiny details worth clocking

Gail treating Joe’s ghosting as a rite of passage is brutal, but Lori’s “I swiped so many to get to him” is the better joke.

Larry Talia introducing Lori to Mike and Pete after she asks for me time is transition-townhome horror comedy.

Malcolm claiming he “raised his voice” at Carlin, then admitting he said please numerous times, is exactly his level of scandal.

David telling Lori the house is not his home anymore is one of his clearest moments of self-knowledge.

The “oink, oink” memory hurts because it is warm, not broken; it explains why David can miss what he chose to leave.

Final verdict

Episode 3 is the show’s strongest hour so far because every comic setup has an emotional bill attached. Birdnesting sounds humane until Lori and David each end up surrounded by the other person’s absence. The rummage sale sounds generous until Jenny’s belongings force three kids and one widower to define what keeping someone means. Even the pool scene, the air mattresses, and the Mr. Brightside needle drop are jokes with teeth.

The episode is also smart about teenagers. Casey, Dakota, Merritt, Flora, Penelope, and Justin all understand pieces of the adult mess before the adults are ready to say them clearly. The ending works because Merritt is not entirely right and not entirely wrong. He has the wrong evidence for a real emotional problem. Malcolm and Lori may not be doing what he thinks, but they are already too entangled for “nothing happened” to feel honest.

Rating: 8.7/10 - A sharp, funny, emotionally exact episode that makes every fresh start trip over the box nobody wanted to open.

More episodes from It's Not Like That — Messy romance and timing, 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.

← All It's Not Like That reviews