It's Not Like That Episode 5 Review: Everyone Learns What "Normal Close" Really Means

By Mira Vance · Editor & Lead Reviewer

Episode 5 sends Malcolm on the date he has been over-preparing for, then lets everyone else test the difference between caring, hovering, hiding, and actually showing up when the night gets messy.

Spoiler warning: This review discusses the events of It’s Not Like That Season 1 Episode 5.

Lori hems Malcolm’s pants and accidentally measures her own life

The episode starts with Malcolm trying to be a person who owns date pants, which is already funny because Malcolm treats the hem like it might decide his entire future. Lori is tailoring them, teasing him about Ms. Colasante’s student nickname, then immediately becoming the person who gives him the practical dating advice he trusts most.

That is the problem Bridges names later without making it sound mysterious. Lori is not only helping Malcolm at church or feeding his kids. She is literally altering the clothes he will wear to dinner with another woman. The Brooke Alexx athleisure proposal, with its ridiculous “Mold” branding and jogging guitar, turns into the bluntest possible slogan for Lori: shape your own life. She hears it because she knows it is true.

David tries to restart trust with a breakfast burrito

David’s apology breakfast is careful and painful in equal measure. He wants Merritt and Casey to hear that the relapse was a slip, that he is committed to sobriety, and that he knows he scared them. Merritt has heard enough versions of this speech to leave with his burrito and his guard fully up.

Casey stays, and David gives her something heavier than reassurance. He asks her to hold his one-year chip until he earns that year again. It is a sweet gesture and an unfair amount of symbolism to hand to a kid, which the episode seems to understand. Casey asks about giving it back, asks about the two-year chip, and absorbs his promise in silence. David is trying. Casey is learning that trying still has a cost.

Casey and Penelope turn practice into a scoreboard

The gym sequence is one of the episode’s cleanest social pressure machines. Casey is grinding through wrestling drills while Penelope’s cheer practice is being picked apart for wobbles, wrists, and smiles. Then the wrestling team starts chanting Casey’s name, and Penelope has to stand there watching the girl she is already fighting with become the room’s favorite underdog.

Penelope’s answer is to ask Coach Alcala for another run, even though her body is already saying no. Later, when Malcolm notices her wrist, she calls it nothing. Casey notices it too and gives Penelope the kind of advice that sounds annoying because it is correct: tell an adult before a small injury becomes a whole season. Penelope refuses, but the ice pack still lands like a truce neither girl wants to name.

Malcolm and Grace find a date that can survive being specific

Malcolm’s dinner with Grace works because neither of them can fully clock out of their calling. Grace spots the Holdens and hides behind Malcolm because their son Ryan once dipped a class hamster in paint and his parents blamed the hamster. Malcolm understands the particular exhaustion of being recognized outside work by people who still need something from you.

The date gets better when it stops pretending either of them is uncomplicated. Malcolm talks about Grace Community and the pull he felt as a teenager. Grace talks about teaching as something that runs through her family. Then Penelope texts, Lori comes up, and Malcolm attempts the phrase “normal close” while explaining that Lori helped with his pants. It is disastrous in content and somehow charming in delivery. Grace laughs instead of running.

Lori’s babysitting night becomes a group investigation

While Malcolm is out, Lori’s house becomes a tiny domestic lab for jealousy, internet stalking, and grief. Casey and Penelope team up to find Cuppa Joe through public Venmo activity, which is very funny until the facts are exactly the wrong shape: Minneapolis, wine, cheese, and a very expensive florist charge. The girls’ secret girlfriend theories are playful, but their conclusion lands. Whoever Joe is buying flowers for, it is not Lori.

Justin’s cookie plan cuts through the joking. He wants to bake for Ms. Colasante because she likes baking, lets him hang out, and reminds him of his mom in one small, concrete way. Penelope’s “Cold Salami” jab suddenly stops being harmless sibling noise. Justin is not being a suck-up. He is holding onto an adult who makes a missing thing feel reachable.

Derek’s party makes Merritt and Flora public too fast

Merritt and Flora begin the episode trying to keep school normal. They kiss, exchange gifts, and agree not to make a big deal of it, which is exactly how teenagers make something feel enormous. By the time Derek’s party comes around, Flora is there, Chloe is complimenting her hair, and beer pong turns into the least subtle flirtation possible.

For a while, it is genuinely lovely. Flora gets to be fun in public. Merritt gets to look at her like he forgot other people are in the room. Then Penelope shows up uninvited, catches enough to weaponize, and Flora has to become the older sister instead of the girl having a night.

Jill’s arrival makes the whole thing worse. She says she and Derek broke up, tells Merritt she misses him, and kisses him. Merritt eventually says he cannot, but “eventually” is the part that matters. Flora sees enough to leave hurt, and no amount of later keyboard gifting can make that first explanation acceptable.

The late-night repairs are tender, not tidy

The last act is full of people choosing care without getting a clean answer in return. Malcolm leaves his date after learning Virginia is in the hospital with what the doctors call a mild stroke. Virginia is still very much Virginia, brushing off attention while accepting prayer because that is the kind of help she can stomach.

Lori picks up Flora and feeds her instead of interrogating her. Their conversation is awkward in the best way: Lori tries to talk about high school boys, accidentally exposes the limits of her own advice, and finally admits she only wants to believe the lesson she is giving. When Flora says her mom would know what to say, Lori does not compete with that absence. She reaches for what Flora’s mom might have said and gives her courage a little room.

Casey makes a similar grown-up move with David. She does not need the one-year Cone Zone ceremony to be perfect anymore. She knows he is trying, and she knows he might slip again. That is not cynicism. It is a kid making space for reality while still choosing her dad.

Tiny details worth clocking

Malcolm calling Ms. Colasante “a female person” to his kids is exactly the level of panic this show understands best.

Grace hiding behind Malcolm from the Holdens says more about teacher burnout than a speech would. The hamster detail is absurd, but the parent reaction is the real joke.

Casey having David’s chip and Penelope calling it a poker chip is a tiny collision of two families’ private emergencies.

Justin baking for Ms. Colasante works because the episode does not overstate it. He says she likes baking like his mom did, and that is enough.

Lori and Malcolm splitting the cookie instead of crossing the line again is not restraint without feeling. It is restraint with the feeling still standing right there.

Final verdict

Episode 5 is one of the season’s sharpest uses of romantic comedy structure because every date-adjacent beat is attached to somebody else’s obligation. Malcolm can have a good night with Grace, but his phone still belongs partly to his children and his church. Lori can tell Flora to put herself out there, but she is still standing in the shadow of Joe, David, and Malcolm. Merritt can mean what he says to Flora and still make the worst possible choice when Jill appears.

That messiness keeps the episode warm without making it soft. The jokes are specific: date pants, “normal close,” Venmo detective work, secret-wife theories, cookies meant for the woman Malcolm is seeing. Underneath them, the hour is about people discovering that care is not neutral. Helping someone can become hiding from your own life. Protecting someone can become control. A promise can comfort a child and burden her at the same time.

The final Merritt and Flora scene earns its sweetness because Flora makes him say the real thing before she lets him back in. He cannot buy his way out of the hurt. He has to admit fear, embarrassment, family history, and the fact that she is the person who makes his life feel legible. That is the episode at its best: funny, bruised, and honest enough to know that choosing someone is only romantic if you also choose to stop dodging the consequences.

Rating: 8.7/10 - A warm, socially precise episode that turns first dates, teenage jealousy, and late-night caretaking into one very funny argument for emotional honesty.

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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