I Know What You Did Last Summer – Season 1 Episode 2 Recap & Review

Smoking Kills

Episode 2 of I Know What You Did Last Summer begins with Lennon looking over the severed ram’s head left in her closet. As we know though, this isn’t actually Lennon but really Allison adopting her identity. And if that message wasn’t clear enough, Courtney comes rushing in through the front door after gutting a wild animal and bringing it in by the tail, blood dripping over the floor.

Now, Allison’s father, Bruce, is actually aware of the truth. The evening Allison returned from the party, she broke the truth to him about Lennon dying and how she’s adopted her sister’s identity. She intended to go to the cops and turn herself in but instead, Bruce encouraged her to play along. Purely selfish reasons of course, he just didn’t want to lose two daughters in one night.

Back in the present, her father implores Allison not to break her character. As she heads out to see her (see: Lennon’s) friends, Bruce pleads with her to be careful.

Well, Allison jumps into her flamboyant role of Lennon, with Riley, Margot and Johnny all there to see her. They meet in the gym, where Allison shows the others the message left in her closet. Dylan is nowhere to be found, having not spoken to anyone for a year following what happened.

After agreeing to keep tight-lipped for now, Allison heads over to Dylan’s house, where he happens to be out in the garden. She shows him the message and he nonchalantly shrugs, uttering “yup” when he sees it. “There’s no accidents, only karma,” He shrugs. Now, given it was a ram’s head that Allison found in her closet, she notices that Dylan is laying out traps for goat. Could he be responsible?

This paranoia follows Allison on her way to meeting Riley too, who shows up to help clean up the goat’s head. While Margot and Johnny contemplate whether Lennon could be the one responsible, given how much of an attention-seeker she is, Riley worries about her. She tells Allison she needs to get back the “cool girl” vibe and tells Allison (whom she believes is Lennon) to chill out. Honestly, how none of these kids have figured out this isn’t Lennon is beyond me.

Anyway, further flashbacks see Allison forced to write her runaway letter, with Bruce deciding her words are “too sad” and would evoke a big responsible for people to try and find her. So instead, she’s forced to write one that’s less obvious.

Allison isn’t exactly subtle when we return to the present, smoking down on the beach. Given Allison – not Lennon is the smoker, Johnny picks up on this and quizzes her over it. Allison shrugs it off as a way to stay close with her deceased sister.

Johnny heads into the school gym, intending to try and find his lover, Eric. With doubts cast in his mind over what happened with Allison, he finds the guy upstairs, with heavy weights weighing him down.

Johnny rushes over, trying to pry the weights off Eric but struggling to do so. The bannister breaks, the weights land nastily on Eric’s face, while Johnny slips down off the balcony and lands awkwardly on his legs. Blood trickling from his mouth, Johnny calls out for help, as someone shuffles across the floor and smacks him in the face with what looks like a lead pipe.

Out on the road, having not learnt her lesson from before, Allison checks her phone and notices a message reading “I’m coming 4u.” Slamming on the brakes, she finds the decapitated deer, laid out on the road. Bit of a bonus that she’s the one to stumble upon it!

Anyway, off the back of this, all of our kids receive a video of Johnny being decapitated. This is a recording though, as Johnny’s severed head actually happens to be with Allison by the side of the road. And if that wasn’t enough, we cut to Courtney out down by the caves, hiding a ram’s head.

The Episode Review

The mystery continues to deepen in I Know What You Did Last Summer – as do the plot contrivances. Now, I know Allison was a loner and these kids have hidden the truth, but surely the police would at least question some of the people around town over what happened? I mean, there must be CCTV around the place and lots of witnesses at the party would have been aware of the two being there and leaving at different times.

Beyond those nitpicks though, I Know What You Did Last Summer takes that neat twist last episode and does expect one to suspend your disbelief a bit. This is especially true when it comes to Allison acting like Lennon. Her mannerisms are off and I know her friends aren’t the sharpest tacks but Johnny noticed something awry almost straight away after a 3 minute chat, thanks in part to Allison smoking. It remains to be seen how long she can keep this charade up for.

Despite this though, the series is pretty interesting and there’s enough here to stick with for the time being.