Dead to Me season 3 recap guide: All 10 episodes explained

Dead to Me season 3, episode 5 recap: We Didn’t Think This Through

The morning after they sleep together, Michelle gets dressed and prepares to leave. She laments bringing up Sonoma at all because even though she wants to do it, it’s not like she can up and leave her mom right now. Judy tells Michelle that she’s always there for her if she needs anything.

At the Harding household, Jen and Ben wake up in bed together, too. Ben asks Jen if it would be weird for him to take a bath. It’s totally weird, but she tells him to go for it. And then Charlie walks into the room to tell Jen the ceiling is leaking and catches them together. Ben volunteers to help Jen fix the leak, which appears to be coming from the bathtub.

No surprise there given that, in season 2, Jen put acid in the tub and dropped a dead rat into it. The acid ate through the pipes and left behind a big hole, hence the leak.

While he’s examining the pipes, Ben apologizes to Charlie for showing up drunk at the house and everything. Charlie says it’s okay, that he didn’t tell his mom. Ben assures him that he’s “not that guy,” a drunk, basically.

At the doctor’s office, Judy learns what her chemotherapy will entail. her doctor recommends she tell a friend or family member because going through treatment alone will be extremely difficult. Judy thinks she can do it since she doesn’t want to become a burden to Jen. Instead of telling Jen the truth, Judy tells her that she’s going to Sonoma with Michelle for a few months.

Judy returns home just in time to catch Jen freaking out about the leak so telling her about Sonoma just compounds her stress. Then there’s Ben, who is on a full-scale grief spiral over Steve’s death still. Jen and Judy take him with them to a grief support group meeting.

There, Yolanda (Telma Hopkins) says it’s about to be the anniversary of her husband Burt’s death. She plans to mark the occasion alone, until Judy volunteers to throw a party in Burt’s honor, much to Jen’s annoyance. The party goes well and Michelle even stops by. Jen starts talking about Sonoma to Michelle and since Judy lied about her going with Michelle, she quickly intervenes to talk to Michelle in private.

It turns out that Michelle did hear Judy say she has cancer but she wasn’t sure how to respond so she ignored it. She apologizes for that and tells Judy she’ll be there for her if she needs anything.

Ben shows up to the party completely drunk. While talking to Jen, he reveals that he learned Steve drowned. he didn’t die from the blow to the head, but from being left in the water. Jen is rattled when she hears this since it means she technically let Steve drown in the pool. And then Ben accidentally throws a bottle of wine into the pool and dives in after it, making the entire incident a frightening deja vu moment for Jen.

Once they pull Ben out of the water, Charlie is pissed. He confronts Ben and asks him what the hell he’s thinking since he just told Charlie earlier that he’s “not that guy.” Charlie’s words are a wake-up call for Ben and he realizes he needs help. He goes to the police station to find Nick and tells him as much. Nick promises that they’re going to get him help.

In the aftermath of everything, Jen tells Judy her feelings regarding everything with Ben and her guilt over Steve drowning. Judy finally tells Jen the truth about her cancer and of course, Jen promises to be there for her. The next morning, Jen prints out a schedule to keep track of all of Judy’s appointments and they go over it together at the breakfast table. And then the bathtub falls through the ceiling, crushing everything in its path.