‘Dirty John’ Episode 3 Recap: “Remember It Was Me”

In episode 3 of Dirty John, John Meehan’s titular dirty secrets are finally being laid bare—in two different timelines, no less. But it’s Debra Newell’s proximity to his misdeeds that remain a mystery. Is she a victim of John’s manipulations? Is she an informed participant, willfully ignoring them? Is she somehow both?

Connie Britton was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance as Debra Newell this week, and Sunday’s complex balancing act is both impressive enough to warrant the nom, and suggests there is even more nuance to come in the shocking tale of Debra and John. Eric Bana is no slouch either, particularly in this hour that goes between two different eras of John’s life, allowing one clear theme to shine through: the waste John Meehan lays to the women who dare to love him.

John is charming when he wants to be, and menacing when he’s having a little fun, but when he shows his truest colors, Bana goes totally flat: there was no affectation or performative drama when he told Debra’s nephew that it’s a good thing his father murdered his mother last week, nor here, when John calmly explains to his first wife Tonia that he’s having an affair because the new woman is an upgraded version of her. This is a man devoid of true care or empathy, especially for the people who are drawn deepest into his web. He’s not guilty enough to be defensive, or emotional enough to scream and yell. Lies, deceit, callousness—this is simply the way John Meehan operates.

As John’s best man later tells Tonia of the man she married: “There’s just a blank space where the story should be.”

Episode 3 of the Dirty John podcast might be the one I remember most vividly, because I’ve never been able to shake the voices of the real-life men who stood by John Meehan’s side at his wedding, watching him marry a nice, hardworking woman, knowing the kind of man he was—confessing it to a camera, even. In a homemade wedding video, John’s former law school roommates laugh and tease about all unmentionable things he’s done in his past, so filthy and lowdown, they earned him the name Dirty John: a nickname his new bride wouldn’t learn about until she married their watched their wedding video, not knowing she’s already tied her life to a monster.

The podcast gave us the audio of that wedding video, but the TV show—bless it—dives deep on the complicity of those laughing friends, and the role that toxic masculinity plays in allowing dirtbags like John to continue getting away with…well, dirtbagging. John didn’t attempt to deceive or manipulate his male friends the way he did his girlfriends and wives; these men knew about his credit card schemes, the fraudulent yardwork business he used to swindle elderly people, the way he’d sometimes throw himself in front of moving cars in order to blackmail the drivers…

And they did nothing, said nothing. John wouldn’t let his sisters or his mother come to his wedding to Tonia, but he knew his secrets were safe with his fleet of giggling male friends who simply joke about the idea of “filthy John” getting married to a nice woman, and then years later, after that woman’s life has been turned upside down, tell her how nice they thought she was, and it’s too bad she married John. It really is too bad…

Cutting between Debra’s present unfolding nightmare with John, and an effective use of flashback to show us how John cut his conman teeth with his first unknowing wife, episode 3 is like watching two horror movies at once. Surely Debra was not the only one feeling short of breath by the end, but unlike us, she doesn’t get to escape to Real Housewives reruns at the end of the hour.

This episode picks back up where the last one ended: with Debra discovering John’s stash of paperwork proving that he’s a lifetime conman who’s been terrorizing women for decades. In flashback, we see Tonia (Sprague Grayden) first meet John in Dayton, Ohio while she’s studying to become a nurse anesthetist. John tells her he’s studying to become a lawyer (even though he’s likely already dropped out and begun swindling the elderly by that point), they joke about how it’s impossible to say “anesthetist,” he pulls out his now signature “take me home with you” move, and the rest was history.

Did he also leave Tonia’s in a huff that first night because she wouldn’t sleep with him, then come groveling back with a manipulative apology? Who knows, but everything else seems quite similar to his wooing of Debra Newell, just in a different color palate with wider shoulder pads. Soon, Tonia and John are getting married, his friends are recording that charming wedding video, and Tonia is helping John study to become a nurse anesthetist himself. The head of the program tells him it will be hard work, but John replies: “When I want something, I know how to buckle down.”

Isn’t that the truth? Five years and two children into their marriage, Tonia meets a pretty pediatric neurosurgeon named Maggie at a conference, and they soon figure out that for the last 10 months, they’ve been with the same man: John Meehan.

When Tonia comes home, white with shock, John is the picture of domesticity: cleaning bottles, asking about her day, talking about the kids. And when Tonia brings up Maggie, we watch that persona almost literally seem to melt off of John, starting with a nasty little laugh: “Okay, alright, so you want to get into this now?” Tonia does, though she doesn’t know exactly what she’s getting into. John says that Maggie only has to work two days a week, probably makes $500K, and she exudes wealth. That’s his…explanation as to why he’s been having an affair for 10 months. “What are you even saying?” Tonia asks. “Are you trying to upgrade? You’re showing off?” Without so much as a flinch toward and apology, John tells Tonia he doesn’t know what he’s doing: “But it’s something.”

John Meehan doesn’t seem to know exactly what he’s doing…yet. But now we’ve seen him do it with Tonia; he was surely about to do it with Maggie; there are two drawers full of stories of other women he’s done “something” to. John Meehan is a vacuum: he comes into women’s lives, sucking out the energy, the color, the security, the money that once lived there, and replacing it with his own dark void. There’s just a blank space where the story should be.

It’s difficult to watch. It’s frustrating to watch smart women, successful women, get duped by nothing more than a mobster wannabe with a good head of hair. And now we have to watch him do it all over again…

But the thrill of watching Dirty John comes with the fight: it may not seem like it, but in Debra Newell, Dirty John has finally met his match. Because unlike Tonia, Debra has people in her life—women in her life—who not only recognize John for what he is, but who are willing to get a little dirty themselves in order to expose the truth. Listen, I wouldn’t want to exchange commerce with Veronica, or be her little sister in a sorority, or be her real little sister, or hear her speak…ever. But Ronnie gets shit done.

And she cares about her mother. Veronica tells Debra what John said to Toby about his parents last week, and Debra weakly replies, “I don’t know about any of that.” Precisely Veronica’s point: “You don’t know this man at all. Or what he’s potentially capable of.”

To build a hugely successful business while being a single mother in Orange County would take a pretty strong-willed person, but Debra is not different than the rest of humanity: our greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses are often separated by a razor’s edge. Veronica doesn’t understand how her mother can’t see that John is after her money, but Debra has been capable of seeing that all along, she simply hasn’t wanted to; she’s willed herself not to see it.

Even when confronted with page after page of proof of John’s decades of misdeeds, we see Debra try to keep her blinders on. Debra knows she has to do something, but even in taking the paperwork to her lawyer, Debra suggests that maybe these things—these restraining orders and scathing reviews on dating sites and arrest records she found in John’s drawers—are a different John Meehan. Debra knows she’s in trouble; she knows she’s made a mistake, but her instinct to want to undo the mistake is at war with the much more childlike impulse to simply want to unknow that mistake.

But her eyes have begun to open now, and when she checks the safe deposit box that John got a few weeks ago, those slightly-opened eyes see that her $90,000 in cash isn’t there for safe keeping like he said. That’s when Debra starts to build her own mask, play her own game. I’ve never felt more proud of Debra than when John tells her he got a text alert she opened the safe deposit box, and explains that he tooootally forgot to mention he’d invested the cash with a friend of his. Debra calmly says that’s fine and when he asks why she went to the safe, she pulls out a ring box: the marriage cat is out of the bag, so they can wear their rings now.

And I’ve never felt worse for her than the pained laugh she has to give after John coos, “We’re maaaarried.” This is not going be easy, and Debra might do a terrible job at it, but at least it’s a start. To quote John: It’s something.

It’s a lot, actually: Debra’s lawyer gets back with her, regretfully informing her that everything from John’s drawer—prison sentences in California and Ohio, the stalking, the blackmail, the restraining orders—are the same John Meehan. Her John Meehan. And those online purchases? Oh, those are him compiling a gun from separate parts. Oh, and she’s not going to be able to represent Debra because John has sued every lawyer who’s ever filed against him and tied them up with years of complaints, which she can’t deal with right now. Cool, cool cool.

The lawyer does advise her to file for an annulment right away, but first thing’s first: a panic attack. We see her in a hospital, where suddenly Debra’s lighting is looking a lot more like the lighting of Tonia’s flashbacks. Speaking of, as we watch the news come crashing down on Debra, we also see the final straw that broke Tonia’s disillusionment with John. One of their fellow nurses witnesses in real time the flashback scene we saw in hazy bits and pieces in the very first episode, where John leaves a young woman in immense pain, choosing to pocket her Fentanyl instead.

The co-worker tells Tonia that it didn’t look like the first time he’d done it, and that she’s reported it to the state nursing board. If they found any kind of drugs in their home, Tonia could be at fault too, and the children could be taken away from her. Tonia tears through their house, remembering all the times she witnessed John fall asleep standing up or run into doorways, and chose not to see it for what it was; chose to be blind. But now she’s looking, and she finds John’s stash. She gets rid of it; she changes the locks; she tries to keep herself and the children safe from John.

In the present day, Ronnie picks Debra up from the hospital; they go to Ronnie’s private investigator together and start to form a plan. During a conveniently timed trip to the hospital for an obstruction to his intestines which also conveniently reveals that John is still abusing pain meds, Debra clears out their house; she changes the locks; she makes the first steps toward keeping herself and her children safe from John.

Unfortunately, in Tonia’s story, we learned about John’s past, but we also get a glimpse into Debra’s future as a woman who won’t sit idly by while John ruins her…

The episode ends with Tonia holding her two children tight, listening on the phone as John mocks her, berates her, threatens her in a near word-for-word recreation of a real-life phone call from John Meehan: You know why I have this big smile on my face? Because trust me, you’ll understand when it happens. … You should enjoy your time left, Tonia. Your time left on this earth, that’s what it’s going to come down to. Just when it happens, when you see it in your eyes, and you know—promise you’ll remember it was me.

Jodi Walker writes about TV for Entertainment Weekly, Vulture, Texas Monthly, and in her pop culture newsletter These Are The Best Things. She vacillates between New York, North Carolina, and every TJ Maxx in between.

Watch Dirty John Episode 3 ("Remember It Was Me") on Bravo Now