Blood and Water – Season 1 Episode 5 Recap & Review

Frenemy No. 1

Episode 5 of Blood and Water begins with Wendy telling the principal about Fikile’s affair with the Coach. Meanwhile, Fikile takes Puleng aside and apologises for what happened between them last episode. This prompts Puleng to have second thoughts about releasing the scandalous information but as she messages Wendy, she realizes it’s too late given she’s already spilled the details.

Puleng sits with the principal and admits the truth about Coach and Fikile kissing. Outside her office, Puleng speaks to Wade about what she’s revealed and he expresses disappointment in her, telling Puleng she’s better than that. The conversation soon turns though and they speak about Fikile’s Mum being unable to bear children, believing this may relate to her abducting Phume all those years ago.

After a meeting with coach, Chad messages Fikile and tells her about the affair and how she needs to leave his office.

Meanwhile, KB takes Puleng to his studio and they sing together. With a heavy dose of auto-tune over her voice, the pair connect well on the track. Back home, Thandeka decides to take Puleng’s words at the start of the season to heart and promises to put Phume’s disappearance to rest, moving ahead with their own identity.

While hanging out with her friends, Fikala is called away by Chad who happens to be in the hotel room upstairs. As they start kissing, they talk about what happened and suggest cooling things off for good. When he admits that Riley is pregnant, she gets up to leave and runs into Chris who believes Puleng was the one who spotted them kissing that night.

Puleng and KB start growing closer together while Fikile spills everything to her parents. When she leaves a voicemail for Chad telling him this, he breaks the news to Riley.

Back at school, Wade acts coldly toward Puleng after seeing her kiss KB. Things take a turn for the worst though when Riley comes storming into school requesting to speak to Fikile. This obviously causes a whole world of problems as students record the entire drama unfolding until Chad grabs her and takes Riley home.

Meanwhile, Wade continues his investigation and believes KB’s Dad is the key to everything given he was involved in something called “Point of Grace”. Puleng ignores the voice message she receives from Wade for now and heads over to KB’s house for the party taking place that evening. Only, as she heads up the stairs she notices Fikile and her Mother there, causing awkwardness to ensue.

With lots of melodrama and a cliched teen romance/marriage break-up angle coming into the fold, Blood and Water’s drama is pretty formulaic and ultimately acts as busy-work over the central mystery that just doesn’t carry enough weight or dramatic stakes to rise above feeling like an average and mediocre teen drama. The deeper conspiracy with Puleng and her past is interesting enough to prevent this being a disappointment but Blood and Water is also unlikely to be a show you’ll jump back into in a hurry if the next episode ends on a cliffhanger.