It's Not Like That Episode 8 Review: Christmas Stops Letting Anyone Fix the Wrong Thing

By Mira Vance · Editor & Lead Reviewer

Episode 8 turns the lake crash into a Christmas reckoning, forcing Flora, Merritt, Penelope, Lori, David, and Malcolm to sit with damage that cannot be solved by apologies, gifts, or a perfectly timed holiday speech.

Spoiler warning: This review discusses the events of It’s Not Like That Season 1 Episode 8.

The ER makes the crash bigger than Jenny’s car

The episode opens underwater, then cuts straight into the strange relief of an emergency room where everyone is technically okay and absolutely not okay. Merritt has a mild concussion. Flora is still waiting to be seen. Malcolm arrives terrified, and the first adult instinct is to assign blame before anyone has fully exhaled.

That is what makes the scene work. The crash is not treated as a random scare that can be hugged away. Flora says they had taken Jenny’s car out before, that Merritt was upset, and that he had been drinking. She also says he had been drinking a lot lately and was drunk at the party. Her guilt comes out before anyone asks for it.

Across the room, David and Lori face Merritt, and David cannot keep the fear out of his anger. The car matters because it was Jenny’s, but David is right that this goes beyond the car. Two kids nearly died, and Merritt is still trying to bargain with consequences he does not understand yet.

David sees the road Merritt is trying to deny

David’s conversation with Merritt the next morning is one of the episode’s sharpest parent scenes because it refuses to make sobriety sound clean. He tells Merritt that his life is not just his, that what he does touches his parents, his sister, his friends, and Flora. Then he says the part that scares him most: he has thrown away too much of his own life to alcohol, and he cannot watch his son head toward the same road.

Merritt’s response is cruel because it is also wounded. He says David got sober and the family still fell apart, so what does it matter? It is a teenager’s line, but it lands because the episode has spent weeks making David’s repair work feel both sincere and late.

Casey calling Merritt out for scaring everyone adds the sibling version of the same fear. She jokes that he set the bar low for her future driving, but the real point is simple: she does not want to see him like she saw their dad.

Flora asks Malcolm to let sadness be sadness

Malcolm’s instinct after the crash is to keep moving. Offer a ride. Check the car. Find a replacement. Say the thing that makes the crying stop. Flora finally tells him what the whole episode keeps trying to teach every adult: not everything is a repair job.

When she sees that the car has been pulled out and is gone, Flora breaks down. Malcolm immediately promises they will figure something out. Flora stops him. She tells him it is okay if she cries, that he does not always have to fix everything, and asks him to just let her be sad.

It is a beautifully plain scene. Jenny’s car is not just transportation, and Flora’s grief is not only about last night’s accident. It is about losing another piece of her mother, then having everyone around her panic because her sadness makes them feel helpless.

Malcolm actually hears her. That matters. He apologizes and stays with the feeling instead of trying to outrun it. For a show full of people making very messy romantic choices, this may be the cleanest act of love in the hour.

Penelope stops auditioning for Dakota

Penelope’s school story starts with Dakota turning Merritt’s accident into gossip: he “laked the car,” which Dakota calls cool until Penelope reminds her Flora could have died. Then Dakota casually asks Penelope to write her Little Women essay over break and adds the insult that Penelope should not make it sound like herself.

That lands differently after the crash. Penelope has spent recent episodes trying to be seen by people who only liked the version of her they could use. This time, she finally says no. Dakota reveals that Casey had guilt-tripped her at the thrift store, and Penelope hears the difference between performative popularity and actual care.

Her exit is small and huge at the same time: she tells Dakota she is not a real friend, then quits cheer. The episode does not frame this as Penelope instantly becoming wiser than everyone else. She is still hurt, still embarrassed, still unsure what she wants to do instead. But she stops paying admission to a group that keeps asking her to shrink.

Christmas Eve makes both families work through the awkwardness

The Christmas Eve gathering could have become forced holiday sweetness. Instead, it is a room full of people trying very hard because the alternative is worse. Justin is panicking over Jenny’s cookie recipe because he cannot read the special ingredient and wants them to be her cookies. Flora and Penelope help him turn that failure into something gentler: their own special ingredient, still with Mom in it.

At Lori’s house, Merritt calls the whole Christmas fake and lashes out at David about the townhouse, Flora, and the way David warned him away from her. David’s apology is the important turn. He admits it was wrong to put that on Merritt, tells him he is proud to be his dad, and says he loves him with all his heart.

Then Malcolm arrives with Flora and Justin, Penelope stays home, and the room chooses not to collapse. Lori’s line about loving the Jeffries and working through problems is not magic. It is a thesis with a casserole behind it.

Casey gets Penelope back before Flora lets Merritt stay

Casey showing up at Penelope’s door is exactly pushy enough. She knows things are bad. She knows Penelope is angry at Merritt. She also refuses to let that make their friendship worse without a conversation. Their walk works because Casey does not ask for cheap forgiveness. She admits she did not know what to say after Jenny died, even though Jenny felt like a second mom to her.

Penelope’s answer is just as honest: she does not understand what she has been going through either, and being a cool cheerleader was easier than being a sad PK. That is the whole cheer arc in one sentence, funny and brutal without needing a grand speech.

Merritt and Flora’s church scene is softer but not simpler. He leaves Malcolm’s sermon because talk of sacrifice hits too close, then tells Flora he was drunk the night she asked him to come over. She does not absolve him. She tells him feeling awful is good because feeling something is better than feeling nothing. It is friendship with boundaries, which is exactly what he can handle.

Jenny’s final gift sends Malcolm to Lori’s porch

Christmas morning gives the episode its deepest ache. Malcolm keeps Mom’s cocoa rule alive, the kids open presents, and then a package appears from Jenny. Penelope finds her mom’s jewelry box. The family watches a Christmas memory with Jenny and baby Justin, and nobody has to explain why the room falls apart.

Jenny’s letter to Malcolm is the moment that shifts him. Her gift is a hope for his future: that he will find love again with someone who loves the kids, shares his faith, cares for him, and is loved by him in return. It is not permission in a cheap sense. It is peace arriving late, in Jenny’s own voice, on the morning when Malcolm is finally ready to name what he wants.

So he goes to Lori. The episode lets his clarity exist in full before reality interrupts it. Lori is standing inside three possible futures: Joe, who brings flowers and a New Year’s weekend away; David, who gives her the thing she always wanted and says it is not too late for them; and Malcolm, who came ready to say more than “Merry Christmas.”

Instead, Lori tells Malcolm the truth first. She is confused. Joe is all potential. David is the father of her children and a known quantity. Malcolm, painfully, does the loving thing and does not make her confusion serve his timing. He tells her to trust herself, then leaves with the confession still sitting between them.

Tiny details worth clocking

Naomi clocking the timeline of Lori’s cryptic text to Joe before Lori slept with David is friend accountability with perfect aim.

Justin researching how to pull a car out of a lake is a very younger-sibling way of trying to make terror useful.

Dakota calling the accident cool is awful, but Penelope’s reaction shows how fast her priorities have changed.

Joe saying Lori already has enough men in her house is funny because he is not wrong, and because he knows it.

David estimating Joe’s flowers at $285 is petty, specific, and exactly the kind of math an ex would do from across the room.

Final verdict

Episode 8 is quieter than Episode 7’s cliffhanger, but it is just as consequential. The crash becomes the thing that exposes everyone’s favorite coping mechanism. Malcolm fixes. Lori delays. David makes his case late. Merritt deflects until guilt finally catches him. Penelope performs coolness until it stops being worth the cost.

What keeps the episode from turning syrupy is that Christmas does not solve anybody. It gives them rooms where they have to be honest for five minutes at a time. Flora can be sad. Penelope can miss being herself. Merritt can feel awful without being alone. Lori can admit she does not know which future is real yet.

By ending with Malcolm choosing restraint after Jenny’s letter, the episode makes love feel less like a declaration and more like timing, care, and the discipline not to turn your clarity into someone else’s emergency.

Rating: 8.8/10 - A warm, bruised Christmas episode that turns a near-tragedy into honest family fallout, sharp friendship repair, and one of the season’s most painful almost-confessions.

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