I’ve spent most of The Perfect Lie trying to figure out whether Babette is a victim, a manipulator, or simply a woman whose marriage and family have gone completely off the rails.
Six episodes in, I’m still not sure. And that’s what makes Season 1 Episode 6, “Babette,” so interesting.
In Episode 5, Patricia proved she knew exactly how to turn somebody else’s problems to her advantage. Now we’re getting a closer look at the woman whose problems Patricia exploited, and Babette is turning out to be considerably more complicated than the frightened wife we’ve been led to believe she is.
She’s keeping Karen’s secrets, protecting Wolf, questioning Evert’s relationship with Hanneke, and lying to the police.
That’s quite a collection for somebody who already has enough trouble in her own household.
But Babette isn’t alone. Practically everybody in this ridiculous Dinner Club is protecting somebody, lying about something, or trying to remember which version of events they’re supposed to be telling.
And with the police asking questions, the whole thing is beginning to unravel.
Babette Isn’t Nearly as Helpless as She Looks
The episode picks up where we left off, with the police arriving at Karen’s house to question Babette.
Karen is understandably nervous. She’s already lied about her whereabouts, and now the detectives want to speak to Babette alone. Which means Karen has absolutely no idea what her friend is telling them.
Watching Karen panic from another room is almost entertaining. She can’t interrupt the questioning without looking suspicious, although that doesn’t stop her from trying.
She eventually wanders in with coffee and cookies, as if the detectives have dropped by for a pleasant afternoon visit.
Det. Visser isn’t fooled. She’s watching the looks passing between Karen and Babette, and I suspect she’s already figured out these two are hiding something. But what interests me more is Babette.
We’ve seen her frightened, insecure, furious, and desperate to repair her marriage. We’ve also watched Patricia take control of Babette’s problems in ways that served Patricia’s own interests.
Yet Babette is perfectly capable of taking control when she needs to.
When she discovers that Wolf has been selling drugs for Simon, she’s understandably horrified. Evert is already out of the gym, and now she learns that Simon has dragged another member of the Dinner Club’s family into his operation.
What does Babette do? She coaches Wolf on what to tell the police.
I understand wanting to protect a child, particularly one who’s been pulled into something this ugly. But Babette has now made herself responsible for concealing another piece of Simon’s criminal activity. And she knows it.
By the time she’s sitting across from the detectives, Babette isn’t simply a woman answering questions about her friends. She’s a woman with secrets of her own, deciding which ones she can afford to reveal.
That’s a rather different Babette from the one we’ve been watching for the past five episodes.
Was Evert Really the Problem in That Marriage?
One thing The Perfect Lie keeps doing is making me question what I thought I knew about Evert and Babette.
Episode 5 gave us disturbing evidence of Evert’s behavior. His drinking, aggression, and treatment of Babette were serious enough that Patricia used the situation to force him out of the gym and the family home.
And let’s not forget that Babette secretly recorded him.
But now we’re seeing more of what happened after Evert left, and I’m beginning to wonder whether either of these people was capable of having a healthy relationship.
Babette visits Evert at Patricia’s apartment with the children, hoping they can reconcile. He initially doesn’t want to let her in, but eventually he does.
He still loves her, or at least seems to want things to work out. His anger isn’t entirely directed at Babette, either. He’s deeply suspicious of Simon, and considering what we’ve learned about the gym, he has good reason to be.
Then Evert casually mentions that Hanneke is coming over for movie night. Oh, boy. I can practically hear Babette’s suspicions kicking into high gear.
She’s already insecure about Evert’s friendship with Hanneke, and now she’s supposed to accept that this woman is spending evenings with her estranged husband and children?
I can understand why that bothers her. But I also remember what we saw in Episode 2.
Hanneke kissed Evert. He rejected her. That happened. We watched it.
So when Hanneke later tells Karen that Evert never wanted her romantically and that they were just friends, her explanation actually matches what we’ve seen.
Babette’s suspicions, meanwhile, keep escalating. She accuses Evert of having an affair, questions Hanneke’s intentions, and swings between wanting her husband back and believing he’s betrayed her.
We also learn that Evert had listed Hanneke as his emergency contact during therapy, and that he’d apparently been recording conversations because he was afraid of Babette. That’s not a small detail.
I’ve had plenty of reasons to question Evert’s behavior, but Babette’s treatment of him deserves scrutiny, too.
And her relationship with the children isn’t exactly reassuring. She can be harsh, particularly with Beau, and there are moments when I wonder whether the entire household has been living under an enormous amount of emotional pressure.
Maybe Evert and Babette were both contributing to a miserable marriage. Maybe the version Patricia presented in Episode 5 was only part of the story.
And maybe Hanneke, who has been sticking her nose into everybody’s business since practically the beginning, actually understood more about that marriage than the rest of them.
I never thought I’d be considering Hanneke one of the more reliable people in this group.
Yet here we are.
Everybody’s Keeping Everybody Else’s Secrets
Here’s where the Dinner Club has become completely absurd.
Babette knows Karen is having an affair with Simon because she saw them together during the Christmas play.
Karen knows about Babette’s problems with Evert. Hanneke knows about Karen and Simon. Babette knows Wolf has been selling drugs for Simon. Hanneke knows things about Evert that Babette doesn’t want to believe.
And now Michel has his own enormous secret involving Simon.
Everybody knows something about somebody else, and everybody keeps insisting that nobody can tell anyone.
How the hell are these people supposed to keep their stories straight? And why does anybody trust anybody?
Karen is a particularly good example of how ridiculous this arrangement has become.
She tells Babette the affair with Simon is over, even though it isn’t. She lies to Michel about where she’s been. She leaves Simon a message admitting she’s lied while a police investigation is happening inside her house.
Why would you leave a message like that?
We’ve already had Hanneke’s suspicious call to Evert back in Episode 2. Now Karen is leaving messages that could raise a whole new collection of questions.
Whether the police have found any of these communications yet, we don’t know.
But Karen and Simon aren’t exactly demonstrating the sort of caution you’d expect from people with this much to lose. And the really ugly part is that the lies aren’t limited to affairs and wounded feelings anymore.
There’s drug dealing, money laundering, and two serious investigations involving people in the same social circle.
Keeping somebody else’s secret might feel like loyalty when you’re sitting around the dinner table. It’s a different matter when a detective starts asking questions.
Michel Finally Tells the Truth. Too Bad Karen Doesn’t.
I have to give Michel some credit. Not for getting involved with Simon in the first place, because that was spectacularly stupid. But at least he eventually finds the nerve to tell Karen what he’s done.
He’s falling apart, terrified that the police are going to uncover his involvement in Simon’s business.
Then he admits he helped Simon launder money.
And suddenly all those earlier scenes of Michel trying to fit in with the wealthy Dinner Club look considerably worse.
He wasn’t simply enjoying his new friendships and business opportunities. He’d allowed Simon to pull him into something that could destroy his career and his family.
But here’s the thing. Michel actually tells his wife. He’s crying, frightened, and clearly ashamed, but he tells her.
And Karen? Karen is sleeping with the very man who’s gotten Michel into this mess.
I don’t know what Simon has that makes Karen willing to throw away practically everything in her life. She wants him. Then she doesn’t want him. She insists they have to stop. Then they continue the affair. She’s even considering not returning to work.
For what? Simon? A married man who’s already demonstrated that cheating is practically a hobby and whose criminal activities are threatening everybody around him?
And Karen keeps acting as though she’s somehow above the rest of these people.
The irony is that Simon now has something over both her and Michel. Michel’s involvement in the money laundering could ruin him, and Karen’s affair gives Simon another secret to exploit if things turn ugly.
She’s put herself in an impossible position. And I have very little sympathy left for her.
Patricia Has a Sword. Because Clearly We Needed One.
Just when I thought this Dinner Club couldn’t become any more ridiculous, Patricia shows up outside Simon’s gate with a sword.
A SWORD.
Karen has gone to Simon’s house, and before she can get away, Patricia attacks her car, smashing the glass while Karen scrambles to escape. Holy hell.
After everything we learned about Patricia in Episode 5, I’m not surprised she’s furious. We’ve already established that she doesn’t appreciate losing control, and Simon’s latest affair gives her plenty of reasons to be angry.
But attacking a car with a sword? That’s a whole new level. And somehow Simon ends up standing there with the weapon at his feet.
I would love to know how Karen planned to explain the damage to Michel.
Then again, considering how many lies she’s already told him, I’m sure she could come up with something.
What makes this scene more than just a completely outrageous confrontation is what it tells us about Patricia’s state of mind.
She’s angry enough to lose control in a spectacularly public way. She’s also connected to the gym’s finances, Simon’s criminal activities, and the apartment where Hanneke fell.
Does that make her responsible for what happened to Hanneke? Of course not. But it certainly doesn’t make me any less suspicious of her.
And Babette and Karen are beginning to wonder whether Simon might be protecting Patricia.
Which raises another possibility: What if Simon isn’t the only one these women should be worried about?
Karen Has Some Nerve Lecturing Anybody About Honesty
Of all the moments in Episode 6, the one that really got under my skin had nothing to do with the police investigation. It was Isis showing up at Karen’s house with flowers.
Remember the workplace scandal that destroyed Karen’s career before the family moved to Bergen?
Isis admits she was the person who filed the complaint against Karen. But she explains that she didn’t go to the press. She went to HR. Other people were responsible for turning the complaint into a public scandal.
Karen doesn’t seem especially interested in the distinction. Instead, she starts telling Isis about everything she’s lost. Her career. Her marriage. The problems Sophie has endured.
And I understand why Karen would be angry about the consequences of what happened.
But then she gets into the car and tells Sophie that Isis lied because she put herself first instead of telling the truth. EXCUSE ME?
Karen has spent six episodes lying to practically everybody she knows.
She’s cheating on her husband with a man involved in criminal activity. She’s lying about her whereabouts, coordinating stories with Babette, and keeping information from the police.
And now she’s giving her daughter a lesson about the terrible consequences of putting yourself first? Oh, Karen. You have GOT to be kidding me. The woman has absolutely no self-awareness.
I was sympathetic to Karen when this series began. She’d lost her career and was trying to rebuild her life in a town where everybody seemed to know everybody else’s business.
Now I’m beginning to think she fits right in.
She’s become every bit as dishonest as the people she once seemed intimidated by. And the worst part is that she still thinks she’s different.
The Timeline Is Finally Making Sense. Almost.
I’ve complained about The Perfect Lie‘s timeline since the beginning.
Sometimes the flashbacks have been so tangled that I’ve had trouble remembering whether a particular conversation happened before or after another event. With all the affairs, marriages, friendships, and suspicious behavior, keeping track of who knew what and when has been a job in itself.
Episode 6 hasn’t completely solved that problem, but I’m finally beginning to see what the series has been doing.
Each episode has given us another person’s perspective on events we’ve already witnessed or heard about. And every time we return to one of those moments, we learn something that changes how we understand it.
Babette’s knowledge of Karen’s affair is one example. Hanneke’s relationship with Evert is another.
Even Patricia’s actions in Episode 5 look different once we see more of Babette’s marriage and learn just how much was happening behind Evert’s back.
The police interviews are beginning to feel less like interruptions and more like the pieces holding the whole story together.
We’re not simply watching events unfold out of order. We’re watching people explain themselves, conceal things, and occasionally reveal information that contradicts somebody else’s version.
And that’s where the mystery is getting interesting.
By the time Babette finishes speaking with the detectives, Karen is desperate to know what she’s told them. Babette assures her that she stuck to their story.
But the investigator has already noticed enough suspicious behavior to make me wonder how long that story is going to hold up.
Meanwhile, Babette is terrified of losing the gym if Karen reveals what she knows about Simon’s money laundering.
So even now, when telling the truth might help the investigation, these women have another reason to keep quiet.
Then Karen visits Hanneke in the hospital, takes Sophie home, and heads to the police station.
Back to where we started in Episode 1. And this time, Karen apparently intends to tell the police everything.
I’ll believe that when I hear it, because after six episodes, I have absolutely no reason to trust that woman. But I am beginning to appreciate how carefully this whole mess has been put together.
🔥 Our Verdict: WATCHABLE
It took a while to get here, but “Babette” makes me think The Perfect Lie might have been playing a much cleverer game than I initially gave it credit for.
The timelines have been confusing as hell, and I still think some of the jumping around makes an already complicated story unnecessarily difficult to follow.
But now the pieces are coming together, and I’m starting to appreciate why we’ve spent so much time revisiting the same people and events.
Babette is the perfect example.
She started out looking like a frightened woman trapped in a miserable marriage. Now we know she’s capable of protecting people, concealing criminal activity, manipulating what the police hear, and making accusations that don’t necessarily match what we’ve witnessed.
That doesn’t erase Evert’s behavior or mean Babette hasn’t suffered. It means she’s more complicated than the role everybody else has assigned her.
And the same goes for practically everyone in the Dinner Club.
Patricia might be dangerous. Simon is involved in criminal activity. Michel has finally admitted his part in it. Hanneke might be telling more of the truth than anybody expected.
And Karen? I can’t stand her, but I absolutely want to know what she’s going to tell the police.
With one episode left, we still don’t know exactly what happened to Hanneke, and I’m not convinced we’ve heard the last word about Evert, either.
Now we’re moving into Ivo’s story, which is almost hilarious, because back in the first episode I was still trying to figure out who the hell Ivo was.
Six episodes later, I’m actually looking forward to hearing what he has to say.
Let’s see whether he’s got any secrets left that the rest of this bunch haven’t already managed to expose.
Read All Our The Perfect Lie Season 1 Coverage
- The Perfect Lie S1E1: Karen
- The Perfect Lie S1E2: Hanneke
- The Perfect Lie S1E3: Simon
- The Perfect Lie S1E4: Michel
- The Perfect Lie S1E5: Patricia
- The Perfect Lie S1E6: Babette
- The Perfect Lie S1E7: Ivo
