It's Not Like That Episode 6 Review: The Lock-In Finally Says the Quiet Part Out Loud

By Mira Vance · Editor & Lead Reviewer

Episode 6 turns a church sleepover into a pressure cooker, forcing Casey and Penelope to name an old hurt, Justin to learn what his "bad" phase is really about, and Lori to stop pretending Malcolm is just an easy person to help.

Spoiler warning: This review discusses the events of It’s Not Like That Season 1 Episode 6.

Casey wins the match while everyone else loses their cool

The episode opens with Casey wrestling up a weight class, which is a tidy little metaphor and also just a good sports beat. Malcolm, Lori, David, and the crowd are locked in on her, cheering like the entire gym has decided she is the emotional favorite of the day.

That victory gives Casey a clean public win and leaves Penelope standing near a feeling she cannot organize. The praise around Casey turns the match into exactly the kind of social shine Penelope later hates having to watch around Dakota. Meanwhile, Grace arrives, Malcolm gets awkward, and the kids clock that his date was with “Cold Salami.”

Naomi’s holiday gala table pitch to Lori is the other kind of contest: the small adult social duel where “working moms” comes wrapped in a smile. Lori says yes, Malcolm mutters support, and almost nobody is as generous, easy, normal, or fine as they look.

The Love Basket lock-in exposes Malcolm and Lori’s default setting

The Love Basket lock-in sounds sweet on paper: kids stay overnight at the church, pack food baskets, and help with the food drive. In practice, it is pizza, phones in a basket, sixth-grade chaos, and Malcolm making jokes that make every teen in the room want to disappear into the carpet.

It is also the most Malcolm-and-Lori setup imaginable. They are not dating. They are not co-parents. They are not exactly nothing. They are simply the two people who know how to run a room together before they have agreed what the room means. Lori says the kids would not want Pastor Malcolm or her to catch them doing anything suspect; Malcolm immediately turns that into “we are a team.” He means the lock-in. The episode hears the bigger sentence.

Virginia’s phone call adds a strange little omen. She is supposed to be resting after the hospital, but she still calls Malcolm with scripture and warning-shaped encouragement. It is funny because it is Virginia. It is unsettling because she is right.

Justin’s salami prank is ridiculous until it isn’t

Justin’s rebellion could not be more Justin if it arrived laminated. He does not key Grace’s car or throw paint on it. He covers it with neatly sliced salami, and Malcolm knows it was him because every piece is too carefully arranged. The lunch ladies love him, the salami has been baking in the sun, and Malcolm is left trying to apologize to the woman he likes while his son insists he may not be a nice kid anymore.

The prank is gross, elaborate, and emotionally transparent. Justin is a ten-year-old who heard Penelope say sometimes it feels good to be bad and decided to test the theory with deli meat. Malcolm handles the aftermath with more care than panic: apologize, clean, then name what is underneath it.

What is underneath it is bigger than a crush on a teacher. Justin says Grace was his teacher and that he loves her, and Malcolm realizes he has treated his own new feelings as if they were the only ones in the room. Later, Justin asks what the point of doing good things is if bad things still happen. He misses his mom, and the unfairness of that has nowhere easy to go.

Flora and Merritt get interrupted by every version of adulthood

Flora and Merritt’s night starts gently. She brings something they might play, they drift into cooking, and every silence has first-real-privacy electricity. Flora admits she has not been alone with someone like this before. Merritt tells her there is no pressure. Then David calls, because parents have radar.

The scene stays sweet for a while. They cook, kiss, laugh, and promise to continue after David leaves. But David’s later conversation with Merritt changes the air. He is not crude or cruel. He believes Merritt about the drinking. He even thanks him for being honest. The damage comes from his caution around Flora. He reminds Merritt that Flora has been through a lot, that she is Malcolm and Jenny’s daughter, and that getting involved with her is not like getting involved with Jill or someone else at school.

David thinks he is protecting Flora. Merritt hears that he is a risk to her. By morning, he has turned that warning into distance, telling Flora they should stay friends and pretending they were not vibing. Flora does not buy it. He is pulling away from the first person she says she has really talked to after a year of not talking to anybody.

The storage closet turns Casey and Penelope’s fight into the real one

Locking Casey and Penelope in the storage closet is sitcom architecture with actual emotional plumbing. At first, it is spiders, blame, dust, and Penelope’s anger that Casey has apparently become Dakota’s new favorite person. Then the old history starts leaking in: Dave and Busters, the claw machine, Blue Bunny, shared shows, and inside jokes before everything calcified into rivalry.

Casey keeps pressing the real question: what did she do? Penelope finally answers. Casey “sucked” when Penelope’s mom died. Casey came to the funeral, left quickly, and Penelope had to stand in her house all night with people around her and no best friend beside her.

It is a brutal scene because both girls are telling the truth from where they stood. Casey was a kid who did not know what to do around a grief too big for her. Penelope was a kid whose mother had died, which means “I did not know what to do” is not enough. When Penelope tells Casey she does not get to be the sad one, it is harsh, but the episode understands the math. Some apologies start years late, and some hurts are still hot because no one ever named them.

Lori and Malcolm finally admit the kids are not the whole problem

After the storage closet, the salami car, Flora-and-Merritt intel, and a movie choice nobody seems fully in control of, Malcolm and Lori sit in the dark and take inventory. Justin is rebelling. Casey and Penelope are at each other’s throats. Flora and Merritt are doing whatever Flora and Merritt are doing. Malcolm thinks the kids are falling apart. Lori says the kids are not the problem. They are.

That is the episode’s adult thesis, and it is sharper because Lori does not dress it up. Malcolm kissed her. He called it a mistake. She helped fix his pants so he could look good for Grace. Then Kayla and Eva joked about Grace being his girlfriend, and Lori was jealous. She can name Friend Lori, the one who wants to help. She can also name the other Lori, the one who does not want him looking good for dates.

Malcolm cannot joke his way out of that. Lori says they are too comfortable and too easy for each other. They keep making things better for one another, but that ease has become a hiding place. They choose the familiar helper, then act surprised when everyone else feels the wobble.

The morning makes everyone choose a harder version of care

By morning, nobody gets the clean reset a church lock-in might promise. Lori volunteers with Naomi’s fundraiser gala because she needs to change things up. Justin and Malcolm talk in the quiet, with Malcolm explaining that being kind and good is not about getting what you want. Justin gives Malcolm permission to keep seeing Grace because Grace deserves a great guy, and Justin is trying to become one again.

Malcolm and Grace get their own small repair. He brings her rental car keys, apologizes for being weird at the match, and says they have Justin’s blessing. Grace calls the whole mess rookie mistakes. Malcolm says he likes her and does not know why he would hide that.

Lori gets a different door opening. Joe calls. His explanation matches Malcolm’s charitable version more than Lori expected: his mother got sick, she was in the hospital, she lives in Minneapolis, and he has been out of town with a fold-out couch, an angry cat, and snow. Lori says she would love to see him again. It is not a cure. It is Lori stepping toward a life not automatically organized around Malcolm.

Tiny details worth clocking

Justin’s salami prank being beautifully arranged is a strong character joke. Even his rebellion has presentation standards.

Virginia calling while “resting” is exactly her speed: spiritually useful, medically disobedient, and quietly terrifying.

Penelope keeping the purple candies because Casey likes them is leftover best-friend knowledge neither girl can erase.

David saying “always that kind of careful” to Merritt is awkward parenting poetry and the moment Merritt starts hearing the wrong warning.

Lori volunteering for Naomi’s gala signals real motion. She is choosing discomfort that is not just Malcolm-adjacent.

Grace accepting the Mitsubishi Mirage era of Malcolm’s courtship may be the episode’s most adult romantic beat.

Final verdict

Episode 6 is messier and more painful than its lock-in premise suggests. The church setting gives the show a simple comic machine: kids without phones, adults pretending they have systems, baskets missing chocolate turkeys, and a storage closet with a door everyone should have fixed years ago. Underneath that, old grief keeps getting mistaken for bad behavior.

That is true for Justin, whose prank is funny until he asks why goodness matters if bad things still happen. It is true for Penelope, whose jealousy around Dakota and Casey is really a grief wound with Casey’s name attached. It is true for Merritt, who lets David’s caution turn into a cowardly breakup. And it is true for Lori, who finally sees how easy it is to make Malcolm the center of the room.

The episode does not solve the biggest hurt. Casey and Penelope are not fixed because Penelope finally says the thing. Flora and Merritt are not fine because he mumbles an apology. Malcolm and Lori are not healed because they are honest in the dark. But everyone knows more than they did yesterday, and here, that counts.

Rating: 8.8/10 - A sharp, tender lock-in episode that turns church chaos, kid jealousy, and adult co-dependence into one of the season’s clearest emotional resets.

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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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