The series premiere of Lady in the Lake entitled, “Did You Know Seahorses Are Fish”, opens on Thanksgiving Day 1966, in Baltimore, Maryland. We are admittedly introduced to a Jewish family trying to make their way through the Thanksgiving parade. As two parents begin to argue, their little girl named Tessie, played by Bianca Berry, wanders into a pet store that only sells fish; she stares at the fish in the tank and talks to a man in the store named Reggie Robbinson, played by Josiah Cross. Reggie tells her about a rare albino Malawi eyebiter fish that’s in the store. As they talk, a store worker comes out. Reggie seems uncomfortable and moves to a different part of the store. The worker asks where Tessie’s parents are, and they talk about fish. She asks him, “Did you know seahorses are fish?”?
Next, we are introduced to Maddie Schwartz, played by Natalie Portman. Maddie Schwartz is a housewife doing her grocery shopping for Thanksgiving. She goes to a supermarket to buy lamb, and on her way back home, she realizes the blood from the fresh lamb has spilled onto her dress. Maddie knows she won’t have time to change before making it to an event she is headed to. She stops at a department store, looks in the window, and sees an African American woman modeling a yellow dress. This woman’s name is Cleo Sherwood, played by Moses Ingram, the woman who will end up in the lake. Maddie enters the store and asks a sales representative for the dress off of Cleo. The sales representative grabs another worker to tell her Maddie’s request. The two workers are both shocked and confused. Maddie is okay wearing the dress right after an African American person wore it.
One of the workers rushes Cleo to step out of the window and change out of the dress. The sales representative is in such a rush to get the dress off of Cleo that she leaves her in the dressing room without new clothes to change into. From this point on, we see Cleo and Maddie go about their days with constant parallels between them. Both Cleo and Maddie rush home to spend the holidays with their families. They both are mothers trying to get their children ready for the holidays. Cleo faces a challenge when she gets home and her children aren’t ready due to their father’s lack of responsibility. Maddie faces a challenge when she cooks the lamb with dairy utensils, breaking the kosher rules. They both have slightly emotional outbursts and decide to leave their significant others on Thanksgiving. They also both attend award ceremonies in their communities. While all of this is happening, news is spreading of a missing Jewish girl; this girl is Tessie.
The news of this missing girl occupies Maddie’s mind and conversations around Cleo. Despite leaving her husband Milton, played by Brett Gelman, Maddie quickly finds an apartment and receives the keys. Once she sees her new apartment in person, she leaves some of her things and goes to look for Tessie with her landlord’s daughter Judith, played by Mikey Madison. As they look for Tessie, Cleo works in a jazz club, where we meet Reggie again. This time Reggie looks suspicious; he spots a flyer of Tessie and rushes to flush a fish he bought down the toilet. Cleo talks in a booth with a man named Shell Gordon, played by Wood Harris; he comes off as threatening and reminds Cleo that he pays her. We know he might be dangerous, but we don’t exactly know what he has done. As we bounce back to Maddie and Judith’s search, they find Tessie. Tessie is dead, lying on the edge of a lake. Maddie resists the urge to pick her up as Judith goes to get help.
The writing in this show isn’t spectacular; however, it does a really good job of making the parallels between Maddie and Cleo noteworthy. There is a constant undertone that we as the audience are supposed to be paying attention to how different and alike they are. It does a good job of not being predictable. We know that Cleo ends up dead in the lake somehow, and we know Maddie will familiarize herself with the case. However, we are still not given enough information to have a suspect list. Multiple characters seem suspicious and guilty of different crimes. It has still not been revealed how Tessie’s death is related to Maddie and Cleo. This leaves a lot of room for questions and different complex storylines, which is very good on the writer’s part.
Rating: 6/10