Twist, twist! I’m ashamed that I didn’t see this one coming. I’d already fired up the Dump Him-mobile and gathered the Hot Take Feminists, for whom I’m the top of the phone tree. However, it looks that I owe an apology to poor deceased Luke since the girl in the revenge-porn film was Megan, not Isabella, making the true villain of this story whomever initially exclaimed “That’s Isabella!” at the party, as well as Luke’s elder brother Brent. Not only is this kid’s name “Brent,” but we also discover that Brent often forces females to record their sexual experiences without their will, ladies he subsequently refers to as “skanks” who like the attention. That is typical Brent behaviour.
Hello, and welcome to the second episode of Cruel Summer season two, in which this reporter bites crow while typing and blasts Alanis Morissette.
Megan still gives Isabella the stink-eye in the summer of 1999, while Izzy (it’s illegal to be called Isabella without a nickname) recounts her perhaps aggressive takeover of Megan’s social life in letters to a distant best friend named Lisa. To be honest, the July 1999 drama is all quite minor. Izzy arranges a pool party at Luke’s home, she and Luke spit, and she discovers a plastic bag of unknown medications in Megan’s backpack. Megan subsequently reveals that they are there to help her continue overachieving (sounds like your standard methylphenidate), and that this is how they connect. The action in “Ride or Die” takes place largely in December 1999.
A quick aside! If anybody believes Megan and Isabella can’t go from enemies to ride-or-die in six months, they’ve never been a 17-year-old girl with a semi-rough home situation (at the very least). Nobody blinks an eyebrow when Allie and Noah fall in love in a single summer, but teens can and often do go from zero to soulmates in no time flat, whether platonic, romantic, or somewhere mushy in between. Okay, let us return to our regularly scheduled programming.
The post-revenge-porn catastrophe begins in December. Sorry, I’m sorry. One more thing to mention. The programme refers to it as a “sex tape,” but I’m dubbing it “revenge porn” since I’m not presently living in 1999. Okay, let’s go back to the recap.
Teens having sex in Chatham is a felony punishable by school suspension, academic scholarship cancellation, and everlasting social isolation, and it instantly places you on the authorities’ murder suspect list. Izzy’s day begins with slut-shaming hooligans tossing a black-wigged blow-up doll in her yard with the message ‘Go Home Slut!’ Sharpied the inflated boobs of the doll. The camera pans out to find a whole zoo of breast balloons, gigantic inflatable dicks, a few bananas, and rainbow dildos encircling Isabella’s backyard-trailer bedroom, a sight Isabella stops to contemplate solemnly before making her way inside the house.
Debbie then gets on Izzy’s case, claiming that she’s just spent an hour trying to persuade Principal Bowers not to suspend Isabella, which is justified considering “the whole town saw you having sex.” One conceivable explanation for Debbie’s abrupt transformation from calm mum to ‘Shame!’ woman on Game of Thrones is that she still believes the footage shows Izzy boinking Megan’s guy. Debbie is unaware that the video shows Megan boinking Megan’s lover. I’m going to try not to let this detail bother me for the rest of the season, but if it was possible to see the girl in the tape at all, let alone well enough to point the finger at a specific person in a crowded space, it would be easy to tell that the girl is not Isabella because Isabella is Black and Megan is white. But, hey, whatever.
Megan is upstairs, holding her knees and intently viewing the full revenge-porn movie, which includes her face after a few minutes. (Did UDub have a purity pledge policy in the ’90s that I’m not aware of?) Nonetheless, Izzy believes it is a significant enough worry that she offers to just let everyone believe she is the girl on the video. What a lady! What a lady! Of course, Meg tries to talk her out of it, but Izzy is unconvinced.
“It’s something best friends do.” Take some bullets. Donate your kidneys. “I’m not going to let that idiot tape ruin your future,” Isabella insists. “To me, you are the most important person in the world. This is not something I would do for anybody else. ‘Ride or die’ is more than simply a phrase. We really mean it, don’t we? If I were in your shoes, you’d do the same for me. It’s just how we roll.” Is this excessive? Maybe! But what is the purpose of high school friendships if not melodrama? Isabella is ready to roar at midnight amid the garden of abandoned bachelorette-party presents.
Meg and Izzy can move on to more important concerns after they’ve burnt the evidence and persuaded Luke to let the village continue to believe he’s a wicked rotten cheater. They’ve already whittled it down to two possible suspects. Izzy is interested in Jeff (the cameraman), whom she characterises as “a local filmmaker with a grudge” and a spurned man. (But who scorned him?) Luke, on the other hand, believes the obvious suspect is Brent (self-explanatory). While Isabella doesn’t completely believe Luke’s notion, she’s a better-safe-than-sorry sort of girl and goes straight to the Chambers home, where she meets Parker, Brent’s ex-girlfriend and one of the ladies he tricked into taping their sexual experiences. In order to uncover the hide-a-key, Isabella smashes a planter through the glass door, and the two trash all of Brent’s handmade sports videos to the tune of Alanis Morissette’s “I’m a Bitch.” Yes, absolutely.
Aside from a few faintly scary hints, there isn’t much action in the July 2000 scenes. We discover that Megan and Isabella, whose hair is now in a sad ponytail, are no longer communicating, but we have no idea why.
According to the coroner’s findings, Luke died as a result of drowning. He does, however, seem to have a gunshot wound above his ear from a bullet that missed, as well as a boatload of benzos in his system. “Someone definitely took a shot at him,” Sheriff Myer finishes solemnly. “Whoever murdered Luke wanted to make certain he was severely impaired before he went in the water.”
They didn’t want any prospect of his surviving.” I’m no TV cop, but doesn’t that seem like a lot of inferences to take from a single ME report? Sheriff Myer is also penalised for interrogating Isabella, which includes a particular reference to the revenge-porn incident. “I’m a minor,” Izzy says, who is presumably an adult but is also right. “Shouldn’t you be more concerned with the person who made that tape?” Sheriff Myer is not one of them. He’s more worried about Isabella, who has attended three schools in three years and seems scary. Izzy requests a lawyer, which leads Sheriff Myer to believe she’s a baddie who’s had to deal with the law before.
“Ride or Die” ends with Isabella listening in on Megan and Luke (it’s December), and when Megan calls Luke her “ride or die,” Izzy seems almost envious. This would lend validity to the somewhat sapphic emotions I detected from Megan’s passionate gaze at Isabella during the 1999 pool party. In any event, Isabella goes downstairs and dials Debbie’s number. The show would have you think she’s going to expose Megan for the revenge-porn video, which I don’t believe.
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