Drama
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“I never felt closer to God and more alone at the same time.”
So says Malcolm Jeffries, a Georgia pastor, father of three and still-grieving widower. His wife, Jenny, died last year, and only now has Malcolm felt capable of returning to the pulpit.
But Malcolm’s not alone in his grief. Jenny was the glue that held not just one family together but two. Now those two families are struggling to figure out what comes next. And a bevy of lives will look far different than they did before.
As Malcolm returns to lead his church flock, he’s also trying to lead his family, and that’s no easy task. Eldest daughter, Flora, has been in counseling for years. With her mother’s passing, Flora’s faith has been rocked, too. She’s not sure if she ever wants to set foot in a church again—not the best look for a pastor’s kid.
Middle daughter, Penelope, takes a different tack. She’s perched on one of her school’s highest social rungs, and she jealously guards her place there. If she has to be a little mean to her old friends to stay in good standing with her peers, so be it.
And then there’s young Justin, a small, sincere boy who tells bullies that he’s praying for them and processes his grief through cooking. He doesn’t want to worry his already overstretched dad, so Justin keeps his own schoolyard woes a bit bottled up. But if his life is shaken too much—well, the cap just might come off with a pop.
Look just across the street from the Jeffries’ home, and you’ll find Lori, Jenny’s longtime best friend. When Jenny died, Lori’s husband, David, left her. Life is just too short to be unhappy, he decided. And that split has rubbed his own family raw.
Eldest son, Merritt, seems ready to chuck everything he knew and start fresh. He quits wrestling (in part because it was his dad’s sport, too). He breaks up with his girlfriend (and shows interest in Flora—almost literally the girl next door). He’s furious—with his mother, with his father, with the world. And who knows where that fury will stop.
But just as Merritt quits wrestling, younger sister Casey picks it up—in spite of the jokes and discomfort that competing in a primarily men’s event can lead to. Hey, she’s gotta do something now that her one-time bestie, Penelope, has abandoned her. Why not take out her frustrations on the wrestling mat?
And as for Lori herself? Well, she’s still grieving. But she’s confused, too. See, she’s starting to have feelings for her dead BFF’s husband—Malcolm. And Malcolm is having those same feelings. But if they give those feelings free rein? She worries these two fragile families will collapse, and it’ll be all her fault.
It’s Not Like That feels reminiscent of heartfelt family dramas such as 7th Heaven or Parenthood. Indeed, co-creators Ian Deitchman and Kristin Rusk Robinson both worked as writers for the latter.
But It’s Not Like That comes with a distinctively faith-based twist.
Sure, 7th Heaven—which ran on the WB and the CW for 11 seasons—also featured a pastor raising a bevy of diverse, sometimes troubled kids in an unfailingly loving family. But it was also unquestionably a secular show—and according to the Plugged In review, the later seasons showed it. It’s Not Like That is distributed by Jon Erwin’s Wonder Project via Amazon’s Prime Video. Its pastor talks sincerely about God and grace, and most of its characters share Malcolm’s spiritual leanings. It would seem that the show’s sense of faith is baked into its very DNA.
But that comes with some caveats.
Often, when Christians see a movie or TV show that’s explicitly tied to a faith-based distributor, they may assume that it’s absolutely without issue. I’m not sure if that is ever a good assumption to make, but it’s certainly not in the case of It’s Not Like That.
We’ll hear discussion and intimations of sexual contact outside the parameters of marriage. Characters sometimes drink, and they sometimes swear. Flora is asking some very difficult questions about her faith and her God, and for some, those might be troubling topics to hear voiced. And while you’ll not find any biblical prohibitions against girls competing on school wrestling teams, many viewers may question whether it’s appropriate or not.
All those provisos shouldn’t take away from this one salient fact: It’s Not Like That is a good show. It’s good aesthetically, boasting strong acting, writing and narrative drive. And it comes with a good heart, too. Yes, its characters are flawed, and they grapple with some very serious issues at times. But again and again, the show returns to the bulwarks that most of us lean on: faith and family. And while faith can be frustratingly elusive in our fallen world, and while our families can make us want to pull our hair out, both are beautiful—even in the midst of their imperfections.
It’s Not Like That is all about that: those imperfections. That beauty. The sense that we absolutely need something to lean on. Faith and family are there for us. It’s nice to be reminded of that—even in the context of a TV show.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at letters@pluggedin.com, or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
Malcolm prepares to return to the pulpit for the first time since his wife died. Lori decides to return to the dating pool after splitting up with her husband. But both are completely unprepared for the sudden tug of attraction they feel for each other. Meanwhile, Casey decides to join the school wrestling team, and one of Penelope’s friends posts something on TikTok mocking her. Flora wrestles with her faith, the loss of her mother and cutting her hair. Justin is cooking souffles. And Merritt is angry. Very, very angry.
A friend of Lori’s signs Lori up for a dating app—a jump Lori wasn’t ready to make. But Lori decides to make the best of it. She asks for Malcolm’s help in choosing a potential date, admitting the whole thing makes her uncomfortable. “It’s making me think about things that I don’t want to think about,” she says. “You realize that I’ve only had to deal with one [romantic partner] since college?”
“Now I’m thinking about things I don’t want to think about, thank you very much,” says Malcolm. (Context suggests that both are talking about not just romantic relationships but sensually physical ones.)
Malcolm meets David, Lori’s ex-husband, at a bar. Two women approach them, and David apparently takes one of them “home,” to the long-stay hotel he’s living at. (Any physical intimacies are cut off when David discovers that Merritt is in his bedroom, expecting to stay with him for the night after having a quasi-fight with his mother.) Malcolm reports to Lori about his own experience at the bar.
“She basically made it clear that she wanted to have sex with me,” Malcolm says.
“OK, how did she do that?” Lori asks.
“She asked me if I wanted to have sex with her,” Malcolm says. He adds that he said no.
A man and woman kiss passionately. We see other couples kiss and hug, as well.
Both Malcolm and David drink sodas at the bar—Malcolm because he apparently doesn’t drink, and David because he’s a recovering alcoholic. Lori and David squabble a couple of times. When confronted about the mean video of Casey posted on TikTok, Penelope lies, telling her father that she doesn’t know who did it. (She later confesses, confronts the friend and forces her to take the video—and the account—down.)
Casey and other wrestlers wear tight wrestling singlets as they compete. We see some bruises on Casey’s arm—the results of wrestling practice. A bully pushes Justin’s face into a freshly baked dessert. “Enjoy your breakfast, loser,” the bully says. Characters say “a–” and “b–ch” once each.
In a flashback, Malcolm preaches about God’s grace. In the present, he admits to his congregation that he’s still not OK: “But I have faith that I will be. That God’s grace is enough.” He serves communion to a congregant who suffers from memory loss at someone’s home. When Flora says she won’t be returning to church, Malcolm says it’s OK. “It’s not about me,” he says. “It’s not even about your relationship with God because of me. It’s all about your own relationship with God.”
“What if I don’t have one anymore?” Flora says, beginning to cry.
After an unexpected kiss in Episode 1, Malcolm and Lori try to weigh whether it was a mistake—or the best thing ever. Malcolm also discovers that some of his congregants didn’t particularly appreciate the new, vulnerable Pastor Malcolm they saw in the pulpit. Meanwhile, Justin’s still dealing with bullies. Flora discovers a new potential outlet in writing—and a new friend in Merritt. Casey literally grapples with a new problem in the form of a fellow wrestling teammate. The teammate alleges that Casey only joined the team because she wants to “hook up” with him—a rumor that spreads to Penelope’s cadre of mean girls.
We learn that Flora engaged in self-harm a few years ago—and she’s been going to counseling sessions ever since. Flora shows Merritt her scar. And when Malcolm sees a pair of scissors apparently hidden in Flora’s room, he confronts her about it. (Flora insists truthfully that she has not purposely cut herself in years.) Flora also skips a counseling session without telling her father.
Merritt encourages Casey to stand up (and take down) her troublesome teammate: Otherwise, the rumors and the jokes will continue to escalate. Casey does so. And later, when a bully punches Justin in the stomach a few times (and Justin’s sister, Penelope, stands by), Casey catches the bully in a chokehold. “If you touch him one more time, I’m going to bury you,” she tells him.
Lori goes on a date with someone she met through a dating app. The two dance and drink. (He has a beer, and she apparently drinks a cocktail of some sort.) But when the guy leans over to kiss her, she turns her face away so that he only kisses her cheek.
Lori encourages her two kids to be nicer to their father. “Dad is not the bad guy [in their divorce],” she tells them. Justin tells a bully that he’ll be praying for him.
Malcolm talks with a couple of other faith leaders about his return to the pulpit and his unexpected attraction to Lori. One of his friends is a Muslim Imam. Characters say “a–” twice and “p-ssed” once.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
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