New Person, Same Old Mistakes

Sophie questions Baden about their affair. He deflects that though and brings up the evidence he’s found thus far. According to Baden, James bought a plane ticket a day before the accident but the plane manifest doesn’t see him on there. Furthermore, GPS records on his car hint that he was half a mile from the pier.

Sophie wants to arrest James for lying about his alibi, but without hard proof then there’s not much they can go on. However, Baden believes it could be linked to their affair. He and Sophie had been seeing each other for several months but Sophie got reckless toward the end and made it more obvious they were sleeping together. Could it be that James was aware of their affair and wanted to kill Sophie as revenge? ..

Sophie leaves work to find her burner phone, only to find it inside a yellow bag.

Sophie switches the phone back on and numerous messages from the pair flash up. Sophie clearly is in this affair and using every moment she could to have some alone time.

James is a bit of a saint in this too, given that he’s constantly checking in on Sophie and trying to log into her computer. James eventually leaves her to it after a rather uncomfortable chat, although he does briefly touch on the conversation he had with Caroline about her memories coming back.

James heads to work today and learns that there is an internal investigation about to get underway. The investigator is MacKenzie Isen and she’s looking for unaccounted money in the business. Given James’ sketchy attitude toward this, it wouldn’t surprise me if we learn he’s the one responsible.

Sophie heads to the police station looking to speak with Baden. It turns out Baden was never assigned to her case, it was actually an officer called Linda Johnson. According to him, there’s no one by that name working at the SFPD.

Sophie catches up to Baden outside the office and points out that he’s working undercover in narcotics. The guy on the desk was just keeping up pretences and protecting his identity. Although Baden also lied about his job, Sophie goes all-in on trusting the man she was having an affair with.

According to Baden, Sophie had not been happy for a long time and it seems that’s the reason for their affair. Sophie also tries to justify her actions, claiming her life is empty.

Sophie heads home and finds Caroline waiting for her. She admits to missing out a part of the story from the past.Apparently Sophie and James were going through a rough time and Caroline ended up sleeping with James. Sophie’s memory loss and accident felt like a “second chance” for everyone.

Sophie left a voice message the morning after she and James walked off the pier. This message doesn’t say much else other than that they were together and he walked away.

That night, Sophie attends a work party with James but takes some time to go and message Baden, informing him that James was at the pier that night. As for James, he’s super stressed about the finances. Baden just happens to show up at the bar, where he puts on a persona and pretends that he’s working “with Cyprus”. The thing is, James doesn’t know who Baden is, meaning he had no idea about their affair after all.

After drinking himself into a stupor, Harrison catches up with James who’s crying and a mess upstairs. He asks about the investigation, where James points out that he “found an opportunity” but unfortunately he’s been screwed over. He tried to replace the money but now everything is going to come tumbling out in the messiest way possible.

Sophie also learns about the missing money through Baden and believes James may have tried to kill her because of this. Sophie is dead-set on her story that she didn’t commit suicide. And then decides, while talking to Baden, to lean forward and kiss him, cheating on her husband again.

The Episode Review

James is the one who pushed Surface to investigate the missing money. He’s been lying to us all this time and it’s time we caught up with him. The only thing left is to find out what happened at the pier and who pushed Surface.

The story feels like it’s moving at a snail’s pace and the characters are all so boring. It’s hard to care about them when they’re just lying around and doing nothing.

Apple TV’s Lisey’s Story, Shining Girls and Losing Alice tackle the same memory loss premise as Surface, but are much better.