It's Not Like That Episode 7 Review: The Gala Makes Everyone Stop Pretending

By Mira Vance · Editor & Lead Reviewer

Episode 7 turns a school fundraiser into a stress test for every almost-relationship in the room, pushing Flora onto a stage, Penelope into the cost of being seen, Malcolm into the Lori truth, and Merritt into the exact danger people kept trying not to name.

Spoiler warning: This review discusses the events of It’s Not Like That Season 1 Episode 7.

Noah’s retirement news makes change feel less theoretical

The episode starts with Malcolm and Grace already trying on a more public version of their relationship. There is a wedding, a nail gun, and Grace asking him to the school gala so they can soft-launch things at her workplace too. It is light, cute, and immediately followed by the kind of adult announcement that makes everything feel less cute.

Noah is retiring from St. John’s First Baptist Church as of New Year’s and moving to Ohio with Didi to be closer to their new grandchild. He sounds ready. The congregation is half what it was, and it may be time for new blood.

For Malcolm, that news lands in the gap between blessing and panic. Noah knows what his next chapter is. Malcolm is dating Grace, raising kids, pastoring, and still emotionally tangled with Lori in ways he has not fully admitted. The episode does not turn Noah’s retirement into a giant plot twist. It treats it as something scarier: another person calmly naming a future while Malcolm is still improvising his present.

Flora turns “just friends” into a public song

Flora has been in her room a lot, and Malcolm’s attempt to check in is loving in the least useful possible way. He wants her to know she can talk about anything, including Merritt. Flora hears a dad standing in her room while she is trying to turn humiliation into a song.

The TikTok she posts is not subtle, which makes her denial to Merritt much funnier. He says the song is clearly about him. She says it is about her. He points out that she used his name. She dodges on spelling and tells him to get over himself.

Flora is not playing innocent so much as protecting the one scrap of control she has left. Jill says the song is blowing up and tells her no regrets, but Flora already looks like she is having several. Going viral does not make the hurt cleaner. It just means everyone gets to watch Merritt realize he has become material.

The gym exposes Malcolm’s boundary and Penelope’s injury

Grace asks Malcolm about staying at her place after the gala, and Malcolm chooses the gym, of all places, for a sex talk. The awkwardness is the joke. The sincerity is the problem.

He tells her he likes her, is attracted to her, and believes sex belongs inside marriage because of his faith. Grace respects where he is coming from, but she is also direct: marrying him is not on her radar yet, while sex is. Nobody is wrong enough to make the scene easy. Their wants simply do not line up.

Across the floor, Penelope is trying to base Dakota while hiding a wrist injury that has been bothering her for a while. Her wrist gives out, Dakota falls, and the social stakes become physical before anyone can wave them away. Later, Penelope admits she thought she could deal with it. Malcolm wants her to take care of herself. Penelope is hearing something else: cheer has made people see her, and for the first time, she does not feel invisible or stuck as the pastor’s kid. Being benched is not just a safety consequence. It is a status collapse.

The thrift store shows Casey what friendship costs

Penelope drags Justin to the thrift store to meet Casey and Dakota, partly because she wants a hangout and partly because she is still trying to hold onto this newer, cooler version of herself. Justin has been promised video games, then learns the available games are old enough for him to ask what Atari even is.

Dakota does that part herself. She critiques clothes, uses Casey as a better example for a pink piece, then finds Penelope a vintage Dior item that costs almost $200. When Penelope says she cannot, Dakota makes the PK joke into something ugly, twisting pastor’s kid into poor kid.

Casey steps in. She tells Dakota that if she really is the queen she thinks she is, she should not need to make other people feel terrible. It is a good friend move from someone still rebuilding the right to be Penelope’s friend at all. Dakota does offer Penelope and Justin a ride and pizza afterward. That is not forgiveness. It is a tiny course correction.

The gala table makes “normal close” impossible to sell

Lori’s gala prep spiral starts with Naomi calmly listing assignments until Lori realizes she has volunteered for gift pickup, music, and a version of school-mom labor she does not recognize. David offers to help because there are two parents in the family. The old competence clicks back fast: he takes music, gets a band, brings in a video wall, and turns the fundraiser into an actual event.

Then everyone arrives with the wrong emotional luggage. Lori has Joe as her plus one. Malcolm has Grace. Lori introduces Malcolm to Joe as her pastor, friend, and neighbor, which is accurate and still not enough. Grace and Lori are polite over Brazil nuts and earrings. Joe asks Malcolm about Lori and her kids. Malcolm praises Lori too easily.

The dinner table makes the problem visible. Lori and Malcolm compare the chicken marsala to Lori’s and talk about Sunday dinners with their families. Joe and Grace have to ask who “everyone” is. Lori says their families always do Sunday dinner together, or used to. Grace supplies that the families are close. Malcolm and Lori insist it is normal close, which is exactly the phrase people use when something has stopped looking normal.

Joe is not a villain here. His camping-package tangent, Kilimanjaro stories, cargo-ship idea, and Mount Fuji dream are charming in a person-who-can-leave way. But when he suggests Lori could leave the kids with her ex for a few weeks, the gap shows. Joe sees freedom. Lori is sitting inside a family system that still has Sunday dinners, shared kids, school chaos, and Malcolm at the same table.

Flora’s performance gives the night its cleanest moment

David asking Flora to perform could have been too much. He wants to show her off as a Monument Arts Program success story, and a couple hundred parents is a terrifying warm room. The detail that changes her mind is Merritt. David says the performance was Merritt’s idea and that Merritt believes in her.

Before she goes on, Flora is terrified. David gives her the right kind of advice: she has rehearsed, she wants to do it, and whatever happens, she should keep going. It is simple, practical, and mercifully not syrupy.

Onstage, Flora dedicates the song to her mom. The performance gives the episode one clean win. Malcolm is proud enough to become annoying, Joe tells him she is great, and the room sees Flora as more than a grief-shaped problem. She is nervous, talented, and present.

Afterward, the adults finally start saying harder things. Joe asks Lori what is going on with her pastor friend. David tells Lori that the way he left their marriage was not right and that she put up with a lot. Grace tells Malcolm she can deal with the God thing, but not with pretending she did not see what is between him and Lori. When she asks if she is crazy, Malcolm says she is not.

Merritt’s apology turns into the episode’s scariest ending

Merritt waits in Flora’s mom’s car after the gala, wanting to talk. His apology is real enough to matter and self-centered enough to fail. He knows the TikTok song is about him. He asks her to forgive him because he wants relief, not because he has fully understood the damage.

Flora refuses to hand him a clean ending. She says she had a great night thanks to him and appreciates what he did, but she does not know what they are. It is the answer Merritt cannot sit with.

Once they are driving, the scene turns fast. Flora says one lonely, awful night does not mean she has to forgive him. She reminds him she already forgave him once over Jill. Merritt argues the details, speeds up, and starts blaming David’s warning for why he pulled away. Flora cuts through that instantly: David did not hurt her. Merritt did.

Then she realizes he has been drinking. She tells him to pull over. He insists they are fine. The episode ends on brakes, panic, Flora shouting Merritt’s name, and then her scream. It is frightening because it is Merritt’s whole pattern in one car: guilt, defensiveness, blame, and refusal to stop.

Tiny details worth clocking

Grace complimenting Lori’s earrings while Lori blurts out a note about Brazil nuts is social panic in snack-table form.

Team Gracolm is a terrible portmanteau, which makes it exactly what a school gala parent would invent.

Malcolm tugging at Flora while trying to calm her down is peak anxious dad behavior: loving, useless, and actively making the fabric situation worse.

David saying the gala room has to clap because they are all parents is both manipulative and true.

David getting a drunk bidder to pay $2,000 for dinner with Claire Leslie proves sobriety has made him more dangerous at fundraisers.

Final verdict

Episode 7 is one of the season’s strongest social-collapse episodes because almost every scene is about performance. Flora performs online, then onstage. Penelope performs coolness until her wrist and bank account betray her. Lori performs normal closeness with Malcolm while Joe and Grace sit close enough to see the wiring.

The gala gives the episode a bright, funny container, but the writing keeps finding the bruise under each joke. Lori and David’s old partnership still works. Grace and Malcolm’s connection is sincere. Joe is not wrong to want a wider life with Lori. Penelope’s need to be seen is not shallow just because Dakota is shallow.

That is the episode’s real discipline: the nice moments are actually nice, and the bad choices still count. By ending on Merritt drinking, speeding, and trying to litigate blame while Flora begs him to stop, the episode turns a romantic-dramedy gala into something much colder.

Rating: 9.0/10 - A tense, funny, emotionally exact gala episode that lets every awkward adult and teenage performance crack before ending on the season’s most frightening cliffhanger.

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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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