Before – Season 1 Episode 3 Recap & Review

The Liar

Episode 3 of Before starts with Eli poring over the recordings he’s taken of Noah. He sounds exactly like him and between this and the Dutch, there’s definitely something spooky going on here. Eli believes it’s a message of some sorts, and he talks to Jackson about this. The latter encourages him to look outside the normal, conventional methods to find an answer.

That night, Eli is spooked and he can feel something inside the house. However, he doesn’t find anything when he looks, and instead begins writing down the symptoms of Noah’s behaviour, determined to find a proper solution to everything.

As for Noah, he’s feeling spooked too but his foster mum at least calms him down enough for him to get to bed.

When Eli speaks to his therapist about Noah’s case the next day, he believes this could be a matter of transference. He sees bits of himself in Noah and sees it as his duty to help the kid. The elephant in the room though isn’t Noah but actually Lynn. Eli just won’t talk about her though and he’s struggling to explain how he feels.

Eli returns to see Noah in the hospital and uses a form of hypnosis, including finger wagging back and forth and the clicking of a pen, to entrance Noah into thinking back on his earliest memory. Noah sees visions of the ceiling cracking and seemingly stabbing a mysterious figure, which he hurriedly sketches for Eli. As he mutters that there’s something wrong, Noah’s lips turn blue and he becomes really cold.

Eli helps him out, wrapping a blanket round him, but it’s clear that this case is a strange one, given the litany of different symptoms Noah has. That night, Eli shows up at the hospital and he’s shocked by what’s happened with Noah again. He has water in his lungs and it appears he’s nearly drowned. All he had was a glass of water and it appears these visions of the past are bleeding through. Unfortunately, the doctors see this as a possible suicide risk and warn Eli that they need to move him.

Back in therapy, Eli finally opens up a bit about Lynn. He saw her drowning in the tub, and even though he was only gone for an hour or so to get food, when he returned, he found her in the tub, her wrists slashed and very much dead. However, this may not be the full story, and as he grows spooked and leaves the room, further visions seem to indicate that Eli choked Lynn out in the bath.

The Episode Review

After a strong opening couple of episodes, Before switches things up and slows the pace right down, showcasing more of the connection that Eli and Noah seem to have but at the detriment of the brisk storytelling we saw across the first two chapters.

I’d imagine this is a case of spiritual connections between Eli, Noah and someone from the 17th Century, explaining how everything is connected. There’s not too much else here to sink your teeth into, but for Eli, this case could well help him unpack the death of his wife and how he’s feeling about everything.

The series has been compelling and atmospheric, but even this early, the show feels in danger of slowing to a methodical crawl and struggling to build momentum. For now, we’ll have to wait and see where things go from here.