Tell Me Lies Is A Rare Adaptation That Surpasses The Book — And Season 3 Proves It

Adaptations are hard. I think I have some basic idea of how much work goes into bringing a novel to the big or small screen, but in all likelihood, I have no clue; what I do know is that when a book I love gets adapted, stuff ends up on the cutting room floor. And while this is completely understandable, it can be frustrating since those cuts or changes sometimes just don't make sense. (Unfortunately, the "Harry Potter" films, which made some truly inexplicable changes to their source material, definitely come to mind here.) I say all of this because "Tell Me Lies," showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer's television adaptation of Carola Lovering's hit novel, makes tiny tweaks to the source material ... but it expands the world of the novel in a truly phenomenal way.

Allow me to explain! Lovering's novel, released in 2018, focuses on the deeply toxic college relationship between Lucy Albright and Stephen DeMarco, played respectively on the series by Grace van Patten and Jackson White. The book employs rotating point-of-view chapters between Lucy and Stephen, both while they're attending the fictional East Coast-based Baird College and while they're at a mutual friend's wedding years later, and first-person POV doesn't exactly work perfectly on the small or big screen. Oppenheimer, quite smartly, doesn't employ any voice-over gimmicks. Instead, she's simply made Lucy and Stephen's world bigger, both at Baird near the end of the 2000s and the wedding of Bree (Cat Missal) and Evan (Branden Cook).

During the adaptation process, Oppenheimer seemed to realize that Lovering wrote a whole bunch of genuinely fascinating characters who deserved their own spotlight — and she's given it to them. That's the reason that "Tell Me Lies" is the rare adaptation that surpasses the book, as season 3 has now confirmed.

Lucy Albright and Stephen DeMarco are fascinating enough on their own, but the way that Meaghan Oppenheimer has adapted "Tell Me Lies" is something special, because it gives her the opportunity to explore different storylines from the perspectives of characters who feel generally underrepresented on TV. Bree, by way of example, grew up in foster homes for much of her life, and her lack of a family structure throughout her childhood continues to affect the way that she handles relationships and intimacy; still, Oppenheimer is careful to never tokenize Bree or place a stigma on her experience. Instead, Bree's story is handled with care and caution, as is the situation with Stephen's best friend Mike Wrigley (Spencer House), who goes exclusively by his last name. In season 2, Wrigley experiences a gutting loss when, after a night of hard partying, he awakens to find his brother Drew (Benjamin Wadsworth) dead in his dorm room after he asphyxiated on his own vomit — and the third season sees a devastated Wrigley still grappling with his own guilt and grief, which is something that we never see in the book.

Perhaps my favorite instance of this, though, is the relationship between Lucy and Bree's best friend Pippa (Sonia Mena) — who also happens to be Wrigley's on-again, off-again girlfriend — and Stephen's ex-girlfriend Diana (Alicia Crowder). This isn't even in the book, but amidst other toxic unions, Oppenheimer carefully crafts Diana and Pippa's love story in both timelines, and it's truly beautiful. By giving these characters a chance to shine, Oppenheimer has expanded the "Tell Me Lies" world and made it fuller, richer, and better, with the utmost respect to Carola Lovering (herself a consulting producer on the show).

Let's circle back to Stephen DeMarco and Lucy Albright. Aided by the fact that Grace van Patten and Jackson White are dating in real life and have absolutely astounding chemistry whether they're fighting, having an intimate moment, or both somehow (their relationship is very, very complicated), the push-and-pull between them is gripping and enthralling right from the beginning of the series, when freshman Lucy arrives at Baird and has a fateful meeting with Stephen that ultimately changes her entire life. From a narrative perspective, though, this is ... a little claustrophobic and has the potential to even be a little bit dull, and the expansion of the show's supporting characters means that their experiences can factor into Lucy and Stephen's toxic love story.

In season 2, for example, we find out that after one of Lucy and Stephen's many messy and often public breakups, Lucy sought comfort from her friend Bree's boyfriend Evan ... only for Lucy and Evan to end up sleeping together while they're both drunk. Lucy, in an attempt to try again with Stephen, tells him about this tryst for reasons that I will never fully understand — because if there's one thing about Stephen DeMarco on "Tell Me Lies," he won't let anything go. (In a just world, White would score an Emmy nod for playing Stephen as both impish and sociopathic all at once, and it's unbelievable.) Without getting into spoilers, this issue does obviously come up a lot in season 3, but it proves my point: Lucy and Stephen's disastrous journey is bolstered by the stories of the people surrounding them.

"Tell Me Lies" debuts new episodes every Tuesday on Hulu.