Gonna Set Your Flag On Fire
THE LAKE – created by Julian Doucet – Season Two – limited spoilers
Justin and Riley
Couples are the focus of things. Wayne Moore (John Dore) is living in a sea plane he does not know how to fly because Jayne (Natalie Lisinska) threw him out of the house after he traded their boat for the plane. Their four children, quadruplets born circa 2004, are not pleased about the situation and want their parents back together. (Olive, the eldest, is so upset she has given up weed.)
Justin’s daughter, Billie Barnes (Madison Shamoun), wants to be part of a couple but hasn’t quite gotten there. A group of tree-planters headed by Ivy Buisson (Max Amani) is working nearby this year, and Billie finds herself attracted to both Ivy and her brother Forrest (Jhaleil Swaby). (She doesn’t find out till later that the two are related.) The situation is sufficiently distracting to influence Billie’s career decisions. Naomi (Lisa Codrington), Bilie’s adoptive mother, is surprisingly understanding about her daughter’s indecisiveness, leading one to suspect that Naomi might be having problems at home, though no such thing is mentioned.
Billie and Ivy
The season’s main event belongs to Justin Lovejoy (Jordan Gavaris) and Riley Rosseau (Travis Nelson). Standing in shallow water, Riley proposes marriage, and Justin accepts. Three days later, the wedding, planned in detail by Justin’s nephew Opal (Declan Whaley), is set to happen at the boathouse. Justin buys a box of fireworks to enhance the celebration but just as vows are about to be exchanged, he panics and flees into the night leaving Riley at the (figurative) altar. Then the fireworks explode and the boathouse burns down.
The Moore Quads: Kerrigan (Emily Roman), Jerika (Kaitlyn Bernard), Terrier (Brielle Robillard), and Olive (Julie Lalonde) — Robillard is also Hester in Audrey Cummings‘ thriller PLACE OF BONES.
No one is injured in the fire, but the boathouse is completely destroyed. Everyone assumes Justin is responsible, but he is certain he removed the fireworks from the place (at someone’s request, he cannot remember whose) and left them outside. This is confirmed when he locates the empty box. Everyone who attended the wedding becomes a suspect, but the identity of the arsonist remains a mystery until the final episode of the season. The number of suspects is reduced after Maisy-May dupes Jayne into picking up Tegan and Sara, who are scheduled to perform at a fundraiser to help rebuild the boathouse, because on the way to the airport, Jayne’s left rear tire goes flat as a result of someone’s sabotage.
Maisy-May Lin (Julia Stiles) and her husband. retired hockey star Victor Lin (Terry Chen), are the only lakeside couple without apparent relationship difficulties. Maisy-May is the daughter of Mimsy aka Miriam Turner-Callahan-Lovejoy-Perez (Lauren Holly), who (through a very complex process of inheritance) owns the Lovejoy family cottage where the Lins reside. After Justin and Riley come to dinner and announce their engagement, Mimsy steals their thunder by revealing that she has a terminal illness and will be dead soon. Maisy-May feigns skepticism, but is more upset about this than she lets on, and goes for a fully-dressed swim in the lake, all the while fuming about how her mother got both her children jobs without consulting her.
The season’s best scene involves two couples having relationship difficulties. Jayne & Wayne and Justin & Riley pretend to compete as potential buyers for a property owned by Phoebe (Nikki Duval), a long-time resident of The Lake who is moving somewhere “out west”. The two couples engage in role-play designed to impress Phoebe (who insists that the invisible spirit of her deceased Gam-Gam is present) and in the process reveal their true feelings for one another. An anonymous phone call tips Phoebe to the deception, the angry spirit of Gam-Gam knocks down a shelf, and neither couple gets the property.
Nikki Duval as Phoebe (pronounced Phō-ē-bē), whose name might be an indirect reference to a certain oddly pronounced character in FRIENDS
Justin alienates several people in the pursuit of the arsonist. but eventually figures out who burned the boathouse and reveals the culprit while channeling Hercule Poirot (from the 1978 classic DEATH ON THE NILE). Justin wears a deerstalker in the scene, thereby missing the opportunity to don a Poirot-style moustache, which would have dovetailed nicely with his ongoing disapproval of Riley’s facial hair.
Mr. Henderson (Bill Lake), whose first name has not been revealed, left his first wife twenty years ago for Maureen (Alison Lawrence), with whom he was having an affair. It was a major scandal at The Lake, and though his first wife forgave Maureen, the nicknames Horny Henderson and Whoreen stuck to the pair and have been in universal use ever since. Mr. Henderson’s daughter, Claire (Jenny Young), has been podcasting for years, and eight episodes of “A Moment of Clari-Tea” are available as bonus content on Prime Video. Claire also seems to have coupled up recently, because since meeting Krusty Jake Fingleman (Kym Wyatt McKenzie), the name of her podcast has changed to “Fingle-My-Tea”.
Podcasters Claire and Krusty Jake
THE LAKE was not renewed for a third season, but had it been, Riley and Justin might have married and become the Rosseau-Lovejoys. Ideally, they would open a gallery/antique shop near The Lake.
The Cooper quadruplets might have had expanded roles. In the first season, Olive and her sisters wielded a Ouija Board well, so there was potential for some occult interaction with Phoebe and her dearly departed Gam-Gam, should Phoebe decide not to sell her house. Also, more of Ivy would not have been a bad thing.