His and Hers Recap Episode 4: The Friendship Bracelets

Near the end of the fourth episode of His and Hers was a shattering scene of love and grief between Jon Bernthal’s Jack and Tessa Thompson’s Anna. Anna finally agreed to meet with Jack, and what started as two people clearing the air on what happened the night Rachel was murdered — Jack was with her having sex in the woods, Anna was there and saw them — evolved into a long needed talk on the tragedy that tore them apart. Jack was hurting because he felt Anna gave up and left in the face of their unendurable loss. Anna left because she could not carry her own grief and reassure Jack too. ‘When you kept telling me I was fine, it felt like a request’. This was an especially well written and acted scene, kudos to everyone involved. 

Anna’s career has been experiencing a second wind since she insisted on taking this field assignment in Dahlonega. The night shift clerk at the Dahlonega Manor, the bed and breakfast where Anna was staying, confirmed that he received a call from a woman after midnight and only gave the message to Anna in the morning. It was purportedly from Helen, who asked to meet her at the school that day, a Saturday, at seven in the morning. Anna found the body at 7:05, she called her cameraman, then her boss Jim, and after they had gotten the footage they wanted, called 911. Anna was absolutely unapologetic about being all about the scoop. 

After subjecting her to the humiliation of almost giving her anchor job back, then wresting it away, Jim was back to buttering up Anna. He said Atlanta loved her, and asked her to do something to spike up the numbers. Anna went to the mayor and proposed a televised town hall. The mayor was not exactly happy with the idea – and he was skeptical of Anna as a celebrity – but he agreed. He also rather condescendingly told Anna to consider how Dahlonega helped with her success and to adjust her attitude about the town from a perspective of gratitude. 

Anna hosted the town hall, with a very unhappy Jack forced to speak to the angry populace. He said they believed the murders were connected, that the women were targeted, which only heightened the people’s fear, that there was a serial killer on the loose. Jack tried, but he just kept saying the wrong things, until he finally just walked away. Zoe tried to intervene for her brother, but the townspeople turned on her, too.

Anna stepped in and declared that what they saw was a detective doing his job. She spoke of how she found Helen Wang’s body, of how horrific it was. Jack angering the townspeople was accidental, the result of him not knowing how to PR his way through this crisis and his own efforts to hide his involvement with Rachel and Anna’s presence in the forest that night. Anna’s words, however, were carefully calculated. When she mentioned that the killer might be in the room, the crowd turned to Zoe, who was friends with Rachel and Helen. People ended up just yelling at each other, the very opposite of the vision she sold to the mayor. Quietly, she murmured, ‘Thanks Dahlonega’, after a very successful skewering of the mayor who was rude to her and securing footage that would likely go viral. Jim, when he received the footage, was elated.

Zoe waited for Anna outside the town hall; Jack may not have recognised what Anna did, but she did. Zoe asked Anna what she was doing back in town. Zoe could not quite believe Anna still held a grudge over whatever happened 20 years ago; she said it was not that big a deal. Why do I get the feeling it was very much a big deal? Zoe was losing it whilst Anna remained calm. Zoe tried to taunt Anna about being scared of who might be next, but Anna simply turned the question back to her. Zoe was clearly shaken, whilst Anna calmly walked away. 

At least, she was calm on the surface. How she felt within was quite another matter, for she finally agreed to meet with Jack and hash things out by the falls. Their emotional argument ended with apologies to each other and the two of them falling into each other’s arms. 

Lexy, meanwhile, could not allow the resurgence of Anna’s stock in the company to go unchallenged. She drove to Dahlonega and got her husband to shoot her short interview with Clyde Duffie, who did not attend the town hall meeting. Clyde tearfully offered 50 thousand dollars to anyone with any information on his wife’s murder. Lexy’s sympathy face was so visibly fake in that interview, it was a little funny. To be fair, it was in line with Clyde’s grieving widow act, which very much looked like an act. Jack may be trying to focus the investigation on Clyde to take the focus off from himself, but he was not wrong about Clyde looking suspicious.

Priya, however, had one eye fixed on Jack even as she diligently worked the case. Helen’s office had been wiped clean, and when Priya murmured about how maybe they were looking for a professional, she looked straight at Jack. Did Jack notice that? Or was he too distracted watching his wife talking to her lover outside? He told Priya to check Clyde’s phone records and bank accounts, perhaps he hired someone.

The killer wrote LIAR on Helen’s forehead and stapled her eyes. Combined with the 40 stab wounds on Rachel, whoever killed them demonstrated a fairly intense level of fury. Helen, too, had a friendship bracelet stuffed into her mouth, but the threads looked new, like they had not been worn. Priya was already looking into what connected Rachel and Helen in the past; as she looked through their old high school yearbook, she found a photo of the four girls – Rachel, Helen, Zoe, and Anna – all wearing friendship bracelets. Jack also raised a legitimate investigative point – the call for Anna to meet Helen at the school came after midnight, when Helen was already dead. The caller was a woman.

A boot print identical to the one Jack wore was found on the scene. Priya now knew that the DNA sample he submitted was contaminated, and that he cancelled the request to run Rachel’s phone records. His wife and sister were both friends of the two victims when they were in high school, and at least at that time, they possessed friendship bracelets similar to the ones stuffed in the victims’ mouths. From Priya’s point of view, Jack was looking very suspicious indeed.

Jack was looking into the friendship bracelets as well, right there in his sister’s room. Zoe found him rummaging through her drawers. When he finally found the bracelet he was looking for, he asked her where she got them. Zoe told him that Anna made those bracelets for all of them. She also said that Helen was a lesbian and Rachel was bisexual, and that Rachel wanted Anna too. When Jack asked if that was why they stopped being friends, Zoe refused to answer. 

With the allusions to something that happened 20 years ago, and the flashback scenes we’ve been getting, whatever it was clearly was key to solving the murders. We’ve already seen scenes from Anna’s 16th birthday, recorded through that video camera her mother had kept in her room all this time. This time, the scene was from before Anna’s birthday, when she was showing off a Juicy Couture outfit she had begged her mother to buy her. Rachel had a gift for her too, a wonder bra, which Rachel insisted that Anna try out right then and there. Zoe and Helen came in, surprisingly with Catherine. Rachel explained that she apologised to Catherine and told her what was on the soda was not really pee. Catherine thanked Anna for the birthday invite; Anna looked surprised, which probably meant that her friends told Catherine she invited her. Rachel insisted on taking photos of Catherine and Anna with her top still off, wearing just the wonder bra Rachel had given her. The scene felt wrong, given what we know of Rachel’s cruelty. 

‘The most dangerous thing we do is lie, to others and to ourselves’, Anna’s voiceover intoned. Anna had called out Jack for simply not coming clean about his relationship with Rachel to his fellow cops. Jack tried to justify it by saying he would be taken off the case when he was the only cop in town with homicide experience. Jack was perhaps more honest with Zoe; he did not want the glare of investigation on him. Perhaps there was also the fear that once the boyfriend was identified, the very man who was with Rachel that night, the police would look no further, because his DNA was all over the victim’s body. In any case, the deception had gone on for too long. When Priya followed Jack’s instruction and had the call to the Dahlonega Manor traced, she also asked for Rachel’s phone records. If Jack were hoping to solve the murders before the most basic of investigative techniques revealed his involvement with at least one of the victims, time was quickly running out.

Rating: A-

Strays

🌳Lexy’s husband called her out for trying to take the shine off Anna, when she already had the anchor job. Lexy retorted that Anna was trying to take something that was hers. If she suspected that Richard had already cheated, this conversation would maybe not have ended up with the two of them heading to their lake house. Maybe.

🌳The background check on Richard Jones revealed an assault and battery charge three years ago, when he broke a woman’s jaw.

🌳The working theory was that the nail clippings taken from Rachel were the killer’s souvenir.

🌳According to Jack, perhaps Rachel broke their lover rules, which was why Clyde killed her. If that were the case, Priya asked what Clyde’s motive would have been for killing Helen. Jack could not very well tell her that both Rachel and Helen were involved in and had videos of (well, Rachel did) Clyde’s particular sexual preference. 

🌳A Deputy Adams called Anna to check on Alice, because Alice had wandered off again. Alice assumed it was Jack who told Anna. Anna wanted to take Alice with her to Atlanta, but Alice refused to leave her home. Mother and daughter had a tender moment on the couch, with Anna leaning on Alice, and Alice hugging her and kissing her head. 

🌳Richard saw that Anna carried a gun in her purse.

🌳Jack’s cracked phone screen was a nice little detail. 

Episode Writer: Dee Johnson

Episode Director: Anja Marquardt

Original Release Date: January 8, 2026

You can access Recap Lab’s coverage of His and Hers via this link.

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