Fool Me Once Episode 1 Recap and Review
Fool Me Once Season 1 Episode 1 Recap: The episode starts with the funeral of Joe, who was murdered a few days back. The story revolves around Maya Stern, an ex-Army combat pilot whose sister Claire and husband Joe have both been shot to death within months of each other. At Joe’s funeral, we’re treated to functional flashbacks fast-forwarding us through their meeting, their marriage, and Joe’s eventual untimely demise, seemingly at the hands of teenage muggers. Joe comes from a rich family and his mother, Judith, doesn’t like Maya, who is still smarting from her trauma and, to make matters worse, left the Army amid an ongoing scandal. She thinks she’s a “bit rough”, but that’s what a Mancunian accent gets you.
The plot gets kick-started when Maya’s friend Eva gifts her a digital photo frame that not only cycles through family pictures but also contains a hidden camera that can be used to spy on Izabella, the nanny of Maya’s daughter Lily whose family has been in the employ of Joe’s family for years. On literally day one of this thing sitting in Lily’s playroom, it records a man who looks very much like Joe come into the room, hug Lily, and leave, seemingly with the complicity of Izabella.
He’s wearing a green shirt and shoes that are missing from the closet upstairs. But nobody believes Maya about this since she’s still struggling with her grief and combat flashbacks and can’t sleep. When she confronts Izabella about it she plays dumb, implying she can’t even see a man in the footage and thus that Maya must be imagining it.
But when Maya turns her back for a second, Izabella pepper sprays her and flees, which is at least a little bit suspicious. DS Sami Kierce, who is investigating Joe’s murder, doesn’t believe Maya either — less so when the SD card containing the footage seems to be missing, presumably taken by Izabella.
He thinks Maya is losing it. When she recounts the details of Joe’s murder, during which two youths on bikes tried to mug them and eventually shot Joe dead with a pistol Maya recognized as a 9mm Glock 17, Kierce rather strongly implies that Maya’s gun might have been the murder weapon.
