Tiny Pretty Things Episode 3 recap: Will June be able to stay at Archer?

In Tiny Pretty Things Episode 3, a fundraising gala sets the stage for drama, and Nabil stirs suspicion.

Neveah continues to be plagued by sinister nightmares revolving around Cassie. In the opening of Tiny Pretty Things Episode 3, she awakens in Cassie’s hospital room, having spent the night there. She’s surprised to find Cruz there, who warns her to be wary of Nabil, as she might be his latest obsession.

Cut to dance class where Selena announces that the students have been invited to attend City Work’s opening ballet for half-price balcony seats. It’s still expensive, so there is also the option to volunteer as an usher and attend for free. Neveah jumps at the opportunity and is disturbed to see Nabil has too, seemingly only after seeing her raised hand.

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Bette’s x-rays have come back clear. She’s free to continue dancing despite Alan’s protests that she get an MRI. Bette argues that she doesn’t need more tests, she’s fine. Monique agrees to let her continue so long as she is kept in the loop if any injury should show.

However, when Oren sees the poor state of Bette’s feet later while they’re in bed together. He tells her that if she continues trying to hide her injury, she might ruin her entire career. Oren thinks she needs to back out of Ripper or risk losing everything.

Feeling the pressure from Ramon, Bette is forced to stay behind for some one-on-one time with him. Later, she takes Oren’s advice and tells Roman that she’s not ready to do Ripper, leaving out the injury. Ramon is disappointed in her.

Her boyfriend, Oren, is worried that Ramon is gunning for her. Shane assures him that Bette is a bulldog who can handle herself and tries to get his mind off things by coaxing him to partake in a money-making scheme. Downtown, Shane and Oren perform for passersby to drum up some cash; Shane wants to buy a new outfit for the City Work’s gala. It goes fantastic, but their camaraderie ends when Shane comments to Oren about needing to eat something.

Elsewhere, while preparing for usher duties, Neveah watches Delia rehearse for the ballet. She’s the night’s principal dancer. Nabil arrives, and he and Delia reminisce about her and Cassie’s previous visit to Paris. Delia then asks Neveah and Nabil to perform for her, but Nabil can tell Neveah is holding back. She lashes out at him, and he realizes she thinks he pushed Cassie. Hurt, he runs off. Delia tells Neveah not to follow him, “he’s in pain.”

June’s efforts to stay at school aren’t amounting to much. Even Monique doesn’t think she can persuade her mother to change her mind, especially since she didn’t hold up her end of the bargain by earning a principal role. But June is unwilling to give up. She intentionally bombs all of her interviews for other private schools in the area until her mother says she’ll be sent back to New York to attend public school. That really makes June panic. God forbid, public school! So, she starts looking into emancipation options, even going so far as to ask Alan and Topher to be her temporary guardians. She also begs Bette to see if her lawyer father will represent her in the legal proceedings.

Feeling bad for her earlier judgment toward Nabil, Neveah visits him on the roof to give him the torn photo of Cassie she found in her old dresser. Instead of making him feel better, it causes the opposite effect. Nabil gets pissed at Neveah for showing him the image because, according to him, he wasn’t in the other half of the picture. It seems to confirm that she was seeing someone else, something Nabil has long suspected.

Nabil’s angry reaction motivates Neveah to search his room with Caleb’s help. They find one of Cassie’s bikinis hidden inside of a box under his bed: It has been torn to shreds. Later, someone appears to shove Neveah in front of a bus. Thankfully, the bus stops just short of hitting her, but when she looks back, the first person she sees is Nabil. Spooked, Neveah goes to Cruz with her new findings and the bus incident. She asks Cruz to do her job and look into it.

Tiny Pretty Things Episode 3: The gala causes tensions to rise.

All of this comes to a head at the gala after the ballet performance, in which Delia performs beautifully. While sitting in the back row, Nabil explains to Neveah why he strongly reacts to the image. He gave up everything in Paris to come to Chicago for Cassie. He loved her and just wanted to spend time with her. But the moment he arrived, all she wanted to do was go to the secret party. He felt spurned by her but never would have hurt her. Neveah seems to believe him. But Cruz still tries to confront him during the gala. Nabil tries to run, so Cruz tackles him and brings him to the precinct.

Also, at the gala, Bette gets drunk off champagne and makes a scene, clearly jealous of Delia and bitter about her injury and giving up the role in Ramon’s ballet. Katrina tells Oren to escort Bette out of the gala so she can stop embarrassing her and their family.

Surprisingly, it’s Monique that comes to fight for Nabil. She tells the cops to release him, or she’ll make sure the next day’s headline is all about how the cops tackles and arrested a brown-skinned student without probable cause or a warrant. Since they don’t have enough evidence to charge him with anything, they can’t really hold him.

Nabil is impressed that Monique was willing to “fight like a dragon” for him, which ruffles Caleb’s feathers. Caleb has had it in his head that the headmistress thinks there’s something special about him and her attention to Nabil adds yet another layer to their rivalry. They get into a fight, and Oren is forced to break it up.

Oren has his own fight to deal with when he breaks things off with Shane. He doesn’t think he can be what Shane wants, which is a boyfriend. He punches Shane in the face when he makes an off-the-cuff comment about Bette and threatens to break his legs if he ever tells Bette about their hookups.

In the final moments of Tiny Pretty Things Episode 3, Neveah returns to Cassie’s bedside and finds Nabil already there. As Neveah has come to believe Nabil’s side of the story, the tension between them can continue to brew without suspicion in the way. They share a passionate kiss.

And Bette manages to get her father on board in the battle for June’s emancipation. Together, she Neveah and June confront June’s mother to present her with the emancipation papers. Either she’ll be in for an ugly legal scene, or she can just let June return to Archer without fuss.

Bette ultimately decides to go through with being the lead in Ripper, despite what it might cost her.

What did you think of Tiny Pretty Things Episode 3?  Let us know your thoughts and opinions in the comments below!

All ten episodes of Tiny Pretty Things Season 1 are now available to stream on Netflix.