Apple TV+ thriller The Last Thing He Told Me hits the books this week as Bailey and Hannah recover from some dead ends and track down some new promising leads in the search for a missing man.
The limited series, about an AWOL software programmer and the trail of devastation he left behind him, finds bereaved Hannah and Bailey inching closer to the truth of who their husband/father really was, while the noose tightens back home. The episode, entitled “Witness to Your Life,” is a reasonably gripping installment of a show that’s getting a little better with each episode.
The Last Thing He Told Me recap: ‘Witness to Your Life’
Season 1, episode 4: Hannah Hall (played by Jennifer Garner) is remembering a complicated — but markedly less complicated — time in her life. She thinks back to a dinner with her husband, Owen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), and his angst-ridden daughter, Bailey (Angourie Rice). Bailey resented having a stepmom and let it show, but Hannah tried hard to win her over.
Still, it could have been worse: Owen could have lied about his identity, fled an indictment, and vanished without a trace. That’s Hannah’s reality now, and Bailey’s even more miserable.
In last week’s episode, Hannah and Bailey went to Austin, Texas, to look for clues. And though they haven’t turned up much, Bailey isn’t in the mood to give up. She just found out her dad isn’t even really named Owen. Basically, nothing about him that she knew was true.
By extension, nothing she knows about herself and her childhood is accurate, either. Her name and birthday are probably not real. It’s freaking Bailey out, but also causing her to redouble her commitment to finding out the truth of her dad’s betrayal. All this new info triggers Hannah, too, because her mom abandoned her when she was a kid. She was mostly raised by her grandfather (Matt Craven).
Chasing leads and shadowy motives
Hannah only has one lead. When Owen’s company was raided and he vanished into thin air, a U.S. Marshal named Grady Bradford (Augusto Aguilera) showed up at her door offering to help. She calls his home office only to learn that Bradford’s supposed to be on vacation. So what was he doing flashing his badge and tailing a witness?
She calls him, and he insists he’s trying to help — but won’t say why or what his connection to their family might be. She hangs up rather than telling him where she and Bailey are. But before she does, he manages to tell her that her house is being watched by a heavy, Eric Cousins (Frederick Lawrence), sent by Owen’s old bosses.
Bradford gets chewed out by his boss (Michael Hyatt) for taking a special interest in Owen’s case, especially for working while he was supposed to be on vacation. This strikes the Marshals’ office as being none of their concern, though that doesn’t seem like it’s going to stop him.
Missing money and a web of deceit
Meanwhile, Hannah’s friend Jules (Aisha Tyler) goes to her house to look for the bag of money Owen left, but it’s gone. Jake (Geoff Stults), Hannah’s former fiance and current lawyer, catches her poking around. When he presses Jules on the subject, she confesses about the money — and he flips out. Hannah’s going to look way more guilty if the Department of Justice finds out she’s holding the bag for her criminal husband.
As Hannah and Bailey start trying to piece together some of the old memories Owen used to share with them, they remember the name of a math professor he used to bring up all the time. Turns out he wasn’t at Princeton, like Owen used to say, but rather at a college right there in Austin.
The prof’s name is Tobias Cookman (Victor Garber). Hannah and Bailey lie to his secretary (Taylor Dearden), and track him down for an interview. Cook is an ornery SOB and needs a lot of memory jogging. But when they tell him the specific stories Owen used to tell them, and they reveal that he’s gone missing, he softens up and offers to help. They search through his old class rosters and, finally, the yearbooks in the college library. There they find a picture of a woman who looks exactly like Bailey.
Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday
Photo: Apple TV+
The Last Thing He Told Me is gaining a decent head of steam, I gotta say. The more the show stays in pure detective mode, the better — and more importantly, the faster — it gets.
It helps to have pros like Matt Craven and Victor Garber on hand to deliver exposition, but Jennifer Garner also tightens up a little when working against them. Garber’s such a great actor, with endearing gravitas, and the show gives his character a great little arc, too, from hard-ass to softy in a few minutes of screentime.
The professor’s pride is still evident even when he’s being helpful. And to see him really make an effort to come through for wounded Bailey was quite wonderful — probably the best stuff on the show so far. I’m anxious to know how much more is being kept from us. And I also can’t wait to figure out what Bradford’s part is in all this.
★★★☆☆
Watch The Last Thing He Told Me on Apple TV+
New episodes of The Last Thing He Told Me arrive Fridays on Apple TV+.
Rated: TV-MA
Watch on: Apple TV+
Scout Tafoya is a film and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay series The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Film Comment, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Nylon Magazine. He is the author of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Form of Tobe Hooper and But God Made Him A Poet: Watching John Ford in the 21st Century, the director of 25 feature films, and the director and editor of more than 300 video essays, which can be found at Patreon.com/honorszombie.
