It's Not Like That Episode 4 Review: The Truth Keeps Arriving Too Late

By Mira Vance · Editor & Lead Reviewer

Episode 4 turns a backstage pass, a pastor's first date, a teenager's poem, and one awful night at Claire Leslie's show into a painfully funny study of honesty that arrives after everyone has already been hurt.

Spoiler warning: This review discusses the events of It’s Not Like That Season 1 Episode 4.

Malcolm tries to date like a normal person, which is exactly the problem

Malcolm opens the episode trying to act casual in a life that keeps refusing to let him. Merritt has already decided he is switching to the 11 o’clock service with David, which lands with the quiet thud of a kid creating distance in public. Then Malcolm has to smile through church handshakes while planning a date with the woman David introduced him to.

The joke is that Malcolm cannot even send a photo without turning it into a moral puzzle. He has church pictures, kid pictures, and apparently no version of himself that feels date-app neutral. Lori gives him the cleanest possible rebrand: CEO of a non-profit organization. It is not a lie, just “different words.”

That advice is funny because it is also the episode’s warning label. Everyone keeps looking for different words. Malcolm wants to describe pastorhood without leading with it. Lori wants to describe the kiss without making it a relationship. David wants to describe betrayal without admitting how much control he has lost. The vocabulary changes, but the mess stays right where it is.

David turns Claire’s show into a custody fight with better lighting

The Claire Leslie storyline could have stayed harmlessly logistical: press schedules, backstage passes, label plans, a pop star closing her tour. Instead, it becomes the place where Lori and David’s professional partnership and divorce finally trip over each other in front of the person they are supposed to be managing.

David is already irritated that Lori booked Charlotte Gallow from Pop Music World without running it by him. Lori apologizes and says she will check with him next time, but the fight is not really about one podcast slot. The Penelope ticket problem arrives at the exact wrong second, and David hears Malcolm’s daughter where Lori is trying to hear a disappointed kid.

Then he says what Merritt told him. Lori admits she and Malcolm kissed, but insists it was one time and not the other night. David’s hurt comes out ugly, possessive, and not entirely baseless. They were all friends. Their kids are tangled together. Divorce does not remove him from Lori’s life. It does, however, remove his right to police who she kisses, and the episode lets that contradiction sit there without smoothing it over.

Flora and Merritt turn embarrassment into a song

Flora’s school scene is small, but it explains why the episode keeps returning to her. Mr. Watson catches another student doing barely disguised Lana Del Ray plagiarism, then calls on Flora before she is ready. She freezes, not because she has no work, but because being the girl with the dead mom already feels like standing under a spotlight.

With Merritt, she only has to read to one person. He has just been pounding on drums and insisting he has nothing to say. Flora does not buy it. He does not buy her fear either. When she reads the poem, the scene works because he does not treat her grief like glass. He hears structure in it. He tells her the part about keeping space sounds like a chorus.

That is the first time this episode makes romance feel less like escape and more like translation. Flora has words she cannot share in class. Merritt has rhythm he refuses to call creativity. Together, they find a shape neither of them could quite claim alone. It is awkward, sweet, and exactly young enough to be mortifying.

Malcolm’s date collapses under the weight of all the words

Malcolm does try Lori’s advice. For about half a sentence. When his date asks what he does, he starts toward the non-profit line, panics, and tells the truth. He is a pastor at Grace Community Church. He grew up Methodist, went to seminary, felt a calling, saw Lucas Mason preach, and has been with Grace Community ever since.

That is not a first-date answer. That is a biographical statement with footnotes. The woman across from him does not become cruel, but the air changes. She says he did not look like a priest in his photos; he corrects that he is a pastor, not a priest, and tries to explain that he is allowed to date. Malcolm has escaped the lie and still walked straight into weirdness.

The scene is not only about dating after loss. It is about how hard Malcolm finds it to exist without context. He cannot offer a light version of himself because the heavy version is the true one. That is admirable in church. At lunch, it is a lot.

David’s relapse makes Casey a witness

David’s night at the show is the episode’s harshest turn because it starts in a room built for celebration. Bridges offers him a drink without knowing what he is stepping into. David, already raw from the Lori and Malcolm revelation, goes past the point where anyone can pretend he is just blowing off steam.

The AA chips hurt more than the drunken jokes. David gives Bridges the tokens and says two years, almost three, as if the fall has erased the work behind them. Bridges tries to return them to him. The episode does not let David’s relapse become a single bad choice in a vacuum. It has an audience, and the worst part is that the audience includes Casey.

Casey sees enough to ask if he is drunk. Lori tries to move her away, but damage does not wait politely offstage. Claire becomes the steadier adult in that hallway, telling Casey that it is hard when someone you love is going through something and that her dad loves her. It is a gentle scene, and it is also devastating. Casey came for a quick pit stop and leaves with a memory she did not need.

Penelope gets replaced in her own fantasy

The cruelest social comedy belongs to Penelope. She loves Claire. She wanted passes. Casey had already been downplaying Claire after the ticket failure. Then Casey ends up at the show, gets comforted by Claire, and is apparently posted about by her afterward.

From the outside, it looks like a miracle upgrade for Casey. From Penelope’s side, it looks like theft. She sees Casey with her favorite singer, not Casey caught in the fallout of David’s relapse. When Malcolm tells her he still expects her to be kind, Penelope does not fold into an easy lesson. She pushes back: Casey said she could not get her backstage, and now Casey is the one with the story everyone wants.

Malcolm’s answer is very Malcolm and, for once, pretty well aimed. He is less concerned about Penelope living up to his expectations than her living up to her own. “Find some grace” could have sounded like a sermon. Here, it sounds like a father asking his daughter not to let jealousy make all her choices for her.

The ending offers repairs, not clean resets

The final stretch is full of people trying to make the next decent move. Lori asks Merritt how often he drinks, then tells him David fell off the wagon. Merritt immediately blames himself. Lori shuts that down. David is responsible for David’s choices. Merritt is responsible for Merritt’s. It is one of Lori’s best parenting moments because she refuses both panic and denial.

Malcolm apologizes to Grace Colasante for getting defensive about Justin. She accepts it with surprise, because parents apparently do not usually apologize. Their exchange turns into the episode’s cleanest flirtation, right down to Malcolm realizing too late that a compliment sounded like one. Grace giving him her number is a small door opening after a date that went nowhere.

David goes back to a meeting and calls himself a newcomer with one day. Malcolm apologizes to him afterward and says he should have trusted their friendship. David cannot receive the pastoral comfort yet, and that feels honest. Meanwhile, Lori and Malcolm sit close enough to admit the kiss will not happen again while proving, with every pause, why the sentence is hard to believe. The episode ends with Flora singing Merritt the song and Malcolm calling Grace. Nobody is fixed. A few people are at least facing the right direction.

Tiny details worth clocking

Merritt saying he is going to church with David is not loud rebellion. It is quieter than that, which makes it worse for Malcolm.

Justin asking if he did something wrong when Malcolm checks on his friendships is a tiny gut punch. Malcolm thinks he is helping and accidentally makes the concern sound like a charge.

Claire being kind to Casey works because she does not overperform it. She sees a kid in an awful adult hallway and gives her something steady.

Lori telling David she is not going back to those days draws a line the episode badly needs. Caretaking is not the same as re-entering the old pattern.

Casey enjoying the Claire attention at school is messy, but very fair for a teenager. She can be shaken by David and still want the social win.

Final verdict

Episode 4 is less tidy than Episode 3, but the sprawl fits the hour. Everyone is carrying one version of the truth and withholding another. Malcolm is honest on a date but evasive with David. Lori is clear with Merritt but still emotionally slippery with Malcolm. David is wounded by the kiss and responsible for the relapse. Flora and Merritt are the only ones turning honesty into something useful, and even that comes with teenage terror attached.

The comedy works because it acts as pressure, not decoration. The non-profit line, the Claire Leslie passes, Penelope’s dinner-table livestream, Malcolm fumbling with Grace’s phone, all of it sits on top of real family stress. That balance keeps the show from getting syrupy. It can be warm without pretending anyone is behaving beautifully.

Rating: 8.5/10 - A crowded, emotionally specific episode that lets the funny parts bruise and the bruised parts stay human.

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.

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