'Alice & Jack' Recap: Episode 3

Alice & Jack airs Sundays at 9:00 pm on WTTW and streaming. Recap the previous and following episodes.
Keep up with your favorite dramas and mysteries by signing up for our newsletter, Dramalogue. 

The first time that Alice and Jack were out of touch for a long time, Jack ended up married. Now it’s Alice’s turn to unadvisedly tie the knot, as Jack learns when he receives an invitation to her wedding two years after she told him that if she could be with anyone, it would be him, but that their relationship would end in ruins. They haven’t seen each other since.

Jack has become less forgiving of Alice: this time, he’s the one to call and demand a meeting. He’s upset that she didn’t tell him in person or even over the phone that she was getting married. She took the way that was easiest for her but most painful for him – just another instance of how she keeps hurting him. For the first time, he condemns her behavior.

She tells him she fell in love, but in a different way than she did with him. He wishes she would simply tell him that she met someone else and moved on, and so she unconvincingly tells him that, and he walks away.

He goes to take out his frustration in boxing with his friend Paul, but then finds Alice waiting for him outside the house he has now rented for two years, which she furnished. She has taken off her engagement ring to talk to him.

He reluctantly lets her come inside, and she explains that she met her fiancé, Danny, at a charity event. He’s an agent for soccer players, to the surprise of both Jack and Alice. After they had been dating for a while, she unexpectedly realized that she was happy, and so accepted when he proposed to her.

Jack asks the obvious question, which is: why does Alice want him at her wedding? She says she doesn’t want to lose him from her life, and even asks him to give her away and be her man of honor. He tells her that he couldn’t stand being there; she responds that it won’t be real if he’s not. He tells her that he doesn’t want it to be real, and she leaves him be.

And then it’s Paul’s turn to take out his frustration in boxing, as Jack reconsiders and decides to go to the wedding after all. Jack has chosen the route of acceptance rather than anger. He RSVPs as the man of honor, and adds that he’s bringing a guest.

It’s his young daughter, Celia. When Danny meets her at the hotel hosting the wedding, he offers to let her be flower girl, and then Celia and Jack join Danny and Alice for photos. While Alice poses with Celia, Danny tells Jack that his sister has the disease which Jack researches – Jack and his team have made her life better. (Is this part of the appeal of Danny for Alice?) Danny admires Jack for coming to the wedding, and thanks him for showing Alice that her happiness was a possibility, and thus leading to her willingness to get married.

At dinner that evening, the best man hands over the floor to Jack after making a speech, and Jack improvises a touching ode to Alice. He stays at the party with Celia for a bit, then brings her up to their room. She spells out her name, and then Alice with blocks before going to bed – they share the same letters, perhaps the appeal to Jack of the name Celia.

Alice quietly knocks on Jack’s door and asks to talk, so he goes out into the hallway. She thanks him for his lovely speech, and then explains that she has had a realization: she did fall in love with Danny, but it was because Jack wasn’t there as a contrast. Now she worries she’s making the wrong choice. She has no one to talk to other than Jack. He tries to reassure her, but says he’s not the right person to advise her in this – however, he will support her decision either way. She lightly kisses him one last time. As he goes back into his room, Alice whispers to herself that the problem with Danny might be that he’s not Jack.

When Jack goes to fetch Alice from her room the next day to escort her to the wedding, he sees Danny angrily storming out of it and finds the room empty.

Jack doesn’t hear from Alice again for three years. He even calls her assistant, Maya, to make sure that Alice is still alive. When Alice does again get in touch, it’s for a reason that enrages Jack: an investment opportunity. This time he refuses a meeting, unless she wants to make the effort to come to him. He’s angry and tells her to go away. When she says she could multiply his money by ten times, he says that she just feels guilty. She rebuts that the offer is an apology, and he agrees to at least hear her out.

As a financial analyst, she has realized that there’s an oil bubble that will soon burst – and she and her company can make a lot of money off it. She’s confident in her plan, but does admit that if it fails they would lose any money they invest. He leaves her to go to work and tells her that she’ll either hear from him or she won’t.

That night, she gets a text from him that he will invest all his savings and take out a loan to invest even more. As always, Paul disapproves of Jack’s decision, arguing that Jack’s life has been good since Alice again disappeared, but Jack ignores him. Jack texts Alice that the investment is not about her. He wants the money for his daughter, since he is not as much a part of her life and wants to provide for her in the same way that his ex-wife Lynn’s new husband Mark does.

Mark works in commercial real estate, which Jack openly disdains to Lynn. Jack and Lynn still see each other at Celia’s sporting events, in which Mark often takes part as coach. Their relationship is testy, to say the least. Jack even manages to offend his daughter when he insults Mark while she’s around.

Lynn thinks Jack’s investment is crazy, pointing out that he now has a negative net worth. But after a few months, the bubble finally bursts. Maya and the rest of Alice’s company have been nervously awaiting this moment and want to sell their stocks right away – but Alice insists that they wait even longer. When she finally orders them to sell, everyone has made a 1,227% profit. The company is jubilant, as is Jack and even Paul and the rest of their boxing gym. The only person who doesn’t join in the ecstatic revelry is Alice.