Dead to Me Season 2, Episode 5 recap: Jen reaches her breaking point

Jen gets to know Ben

At work, Jen asks Lorna how much she could get by selling their house. Jen is considering downsizing after realizing she’s drowning in mortgage payments. But Lorna is all “well it’s our house, my name is on the deed,” and she flat-out refuses to let Jen sell. Man, this woman is a piece of work.

She also disses Jen’s personality and calls her a bitter woman who sucks at making sales. Despite her rough exterior, Lorna’s vicious words clearly hit their mark. She returns to her office and calls the security company asking them if she can “scale back” due to the astronomical cost.

But since she signed her contract, they’re not going to let her get out of it. She also asks them to help her figure out how to erase footage. In the middle of dealing with everything, Ben barges in her office to confront her about what Judy said about Jen working with Steve.

Jen is freaked out both because now Ben thinks she has a motive if Steve screwed her over, and he also thinks she could be one of the least people who saw his brother alive. However, then he surprises Jen by asking if she does short-term rentals since he doesn’t want to keep living with his mom while searching for his twin.

In the process of looking for rental information for Ben, Jen nearly keels over due to her back pain, something Judy notices earlier in the episode, too. Thankfully, Ben is a nice guy and offers to help  Jen home where she can relax her sore back.

While Ben is helping her out at the house, Karen stops by with the famous orange wine. She notices that Ben looks very familiar and mentions that she remembered seeing him at her house the other night and caught him on the street cam.

Ben connects the dots in his head, realizing she could be referring to Steve if some guy was here who “looked” like him. Jen lies, saying it was some random guy named Timothy. She also tries to play it off as if Karen is going through a hard time since her husband is cheating on her. For now, it seems that Ben believes her.

He stays with Jen a while longer to take care of her, helping crack her bones and massage her a little. I’m definitely sensing some sexual tension between these two. But also, the sight of Ben makes her remember what happened with Steve and she starts to break down.

I’m guessing Lorna’s comments served as a catalyst for some of the stuff she’s feeling. Jen bursts into tears, remembering the way Steve called her bitter and miserable, similar to the kind of things Lorna told her.

After the breakdown, Ben and Jen bond over wine and realize they have quite a bit in common since they’re both dancers, and Ben is good at making Jen laugh. The scene parallels nicely to Michelle and Judy’s moment together. Both women are seeking comfort from someone new in their lives.

Then their conversation turns emotional as Ben starts talking about his relationship with Steve. He tells Jen how hard Steve’s disappearance has been on his mother and on him. He hasn’t talked to his brother in over a year and the last time they did it was part of a massive argument. Now Ben is terrified that he’ll never get to make amends.

Jen pours more wine in her glass.