Cruel Summer – Season 2 Episode 8 “Confess Your Sins” Recap & Review

Confess Your Sins

August 1, 1999

Episode 8 of Cruel Summer Season 2 starts with Megan telling Isabella all about her kiss with Luke, thanking her for setting them up with each other. Isabella believes that the two are destined to be together, no matter what.

Megan goes out to meet Luke and the couple decide to hang out, just the two of them leaving Isabella in her room feeling abandoned. Debbie and Lily show up at the house and learn from Isabella that Luke and Megan were together now.

Debbie checks up on Isabella, asking her if she’s okay. Isabella claims that she’s looking forward to Senior Year. Meanwhile, Luke and Megan are making out in her bed. She tells him that she’s glad they can be each other’s firsts and Luke lies, retorting that he’s glad to have waited too.

Isabella shows up at the car wash, an event the teenagers hosted to raise money for charity. Parker is shocked to learn that Luke and Megan are together but Isabella shrugs it off, she’s apparently okay with it. She tells Isabella that she too has broken up with Brent as the girls wash cars.

At the party, Jeff sells off a cassette tape for a movie he had illegally downloaded. Meanwhile, Parker and Isabella talk about their expectations from senior year at high school while washing cars. The girls discuss how Megan and Luke were together but Isabella says she’s okay with it and is looking forward to senior year instead.

Isabella talks to Jeff and asks him about the handy camera. He tells her how he’s interviewing his friends before and after senior year to make a time capsule for them to see how much they have changed over the year.

Isabella tells him what she wanted from the year and she tries to cheer Jeff up as they see Luke with Megan. Isabella overhears Brent brag about how he hooked up with girls and filmed it, with and without their consent sometimes.

He also brags about watching recently leaked celebrity sex tapes and how he has a collection of his own that he’d let his friends borrow for a cost. Isabella is disgusted with Brent and walks away but Luke follows after her. He asks Isabella to keep the fact that they had had sex a secret.

Luke asks Isabella to lie to Megan because she’s very excited about the fact that she’ll be Luke’s first time and he wants her to have that. Brent follows after Isabella and asks if she’s ready to hook up with the better Chambers brother – aka. him.

Isabella is disgusted by his offer and rejects him, insulting the guy. Brent unties her bikini top in public to tease her and Steve, who sees Isabella is shocked tries to reason with her saying, “Boys will be boys”. Isabella meets Megan and the latter notices the change in Isabella’s behaviour.

She hides the incident involving Brent and Megan claims that she’s going to go home to hang out with Luke, leaving her at the car wash drive. Megan and Luke hang out in her room and chat about how Steve and Debbie are perfect for each other.

January 1, 2000

After the Y2K party, Megan and Luke end up going to the cabin where they hook up. Megan wants to tie him up when they make love and Luke agrees. Luke gets undressed and Megan does just that. They pick ‘control-alt-delete’ as their safe word when Isabella shows up.

Megan asks Luke about the plunge and suggests he confess the truth as he struggles to free himself. Megan and Isabella put some drugs in Luke’s drink calling it the “truth serum” and have him drink it. After Luke is drunk, Megan asks him about lying to her about the kiss.

Megan films Luke’s confession in order to teach him a lesson and learns that Luke was just lying about two-timing the girls to seem more manly in front of his guy friends. Megan and Isabella believe Luke is responsible for ruining their lives and he comes clean about the fact that he knew Brent filmed girls he hooked up with.

Luke also confesses that he had accidentally watched a few tapes and Megan blames him for bringing her to the cabin to hook up despite knowing that Brent had installed a camera there. Luke finally comes clean and tells Megan that he filmed them having sex because he wanted to brag about it to his friends.

Megan is heartbroken but Luke promises that it wasn’t him who leaked the tape. Luke tries to gaslight Megan by saying that Isabella is no saint either, and that she also lied to Megan about having sex with Luke. Isabella gets angry and tries to make Megan see that Luke had asked her to lie.

Megan is blindsided by both Luke and Isabella’s lies but Isabella pulls out a gun after being pissed at Luke for ruining her friendship with Megan. She shoots at him in anger as the video camera captures it.

August 1, 2000

After learning about her scholarship being rescinded, Megan texts Ned but she does not respond to her. Isabella shows up at Megan’s room and tells her that the cops know about their lie, asking Megan to talk to her. Megan learns that the cops knew that it was her on the tape and not Isabella.

Megan accuses Isabella of ratting her out but adds that their problem is actually Ned. She tells Isabella that Steve was accusing Ned of killing Luke and claims that Ned had a tonne of security cameras outside his house, pointing to the street view where Luke’s family cabin is.

The girls decide to go to Ned’s house. At the Sheriff’s station, Meyer asks Deputy Hal Hardwicke to look into Megan and Isabella because they’ve been lying to them the whole time. Meyer asks Hardwicke to look into Jeff’s tapes to see if there’s something pertaining to the girls on them.

At the same time, Megan unlocks Ned’s apartment using his passcode from her memory as she and Isabella get inside his apartment. They go to the basement, into his computer room, but Megan is not able to find the CCTV footage.

Isabella claims that someone as paranoid as Ned would have stored such information in a non-obvious location and Megan starts trying to find the footage at a different location on the device. Isabella asks Megan why she kept her interactions with Ned private and the latter claims that she wanted something just to herself instead of letting the world in on her situation.

Isabella believes that hiding the truth about the tapes makes things so much worse. Just then, Sheriff Meyer shows up in the basement room, catching the girls red-handed. Outside the station, Steve and Debbie talk about protecting their respective children, Brent and Megan, from each other by keeping the truth from the other.

Steve accuses Debbie of protecting Isabella who has no connection to Debbie and is possibly responsible for Luke’s death. At the Sheriff’s station, Megan and Isabella are interrogated separately in the presence of their respective lawyers.

The girls give an oddly identical statement claiming they were both at Ned’s house to yell at him for killing Luke but Sheriff Meyers is not impressed. He shows the girls the footage from Jeff’s handycam from the Y2K party.

Meyers states that the police department have isolated Megan and Isabella’s conversation from the party about how they wanted to teach Luke a lesson. Both girls finally come clean and admit that Megan and Isabella were both at the cabin on the night of Luke’s murder.

The Episode Review

The boys/men on this show make me want to throw up but then again I realise this is the 90’s and sex tapes were huge then. It is unclear why Isabella didn’t tell an adult about Brent bragging about filming women he was having sex with without their consent. A lot of things could have been avoided if Isabella would’ve done things differently.

Debbie and Steve being together while Megan and Luke date each other feels incestuous and it’s difficult to understand how everyone is so okay with it. This episode makes me doubt Isabella because the show is suddenly trying to make her this evil person who is obsessed with Megan when the last 7 episodes did not show any hints of it.

The Sheriffs in this show are working too hard for their generation because in no real sense is it possible for the cops to have isolated Megan and Isabella’s conversation from the handycam footage without the use of separate external microphones with their own audio. As someone who used a Handycam in the late 2000’s, it would be miraculous for this to have happened back then!

This show is delivering the classic women against women plot when it is really the boys to blame. In this season we have Megan accusing Isabella of betraying her when it is Luke that is pitting the girls against each other.