Adolescence episode 3 recap: a psychologist visits Jamie in the detention centre

Adolescence is a hard-hitting crime Netflix drama following the arrest of a 13-year-old boy on suspicion of murder.

Each episode is filmed in one continuous shot starting from the boy’s arrest and picks up on different points of his and his family’s lives. In just four episodes, the story unfolds in real time as the main characters of the investigation try to seek the truth behind the horrific crime and the reason behind it. A stellar cast list includes Stephen Graham as Jamie’s father, Ashley Walters as the main investigator, Owen Cooper as Jamie, Erin Doherty as a clinical psychologist and more.

Here's a recap of everything that happened in Adolescence episode 3.

The third episode starts three months after the murder. Briony, a clinical psychologist, arrives at a detention centre. As a police officer lets her in, she says that she’s heard Jamie was involved in a violent incident and wants to see it. The officer asks if it’s relevant and she insists. The CCTV shows Jamie getting into a fight with another inmate and the officer asks Briony about how much she has come to see him and says the other psychologist has only been in three times, as opposed to her five. She asks him not to tell her anymore about what the other psychologist is doing.

The officer then takes her through, but before she'll go, she says she needs to get a hot chocolate first and then pulls a box of marshmallows out of her bag and adds them. She then meets Jamie and hands him over the hot chocolate. They smile at each other. She also offers half her sandwich. After this, they make small talk and Jamie tells her she sounds like a granny. They laugh. Then, she asks about his grandparents and he explains that they’re his dad’s parents as his mum didn’t get on with hers. But, his grandad is a lot like his dad - stuck in their ways. He describes his dad and grandad as men.

The psychologist begins to discuss what being masculine means. But Jamie stops her and says it’s only because he called her a granny that she’s turned it into talking about masculine stuff. He appears angry, saying that when she first visited him she had actual questions and now it feels like she’s trying to trick him. He says he doesn’t want to talk about his dad.

He then asks to see her notes and what she’s written about him. She says she can’t show him and he knows that, but that while she’s been employed by his team, she doesn’t work for him, even though he tells her she does. She tells him instead that she’s writing an independent pre-sentence offense report, which the judge reads to get an understanding of Jamie and his understanding of the charges. He starts to yawn and when she asks if she’s boring him, he says no and smiles. He’s still standoffish, but she says she needs to talk to him about a lot of things to understand him better.

She offers instead to tell him the questions she's written down to speak with him about that day. She starts off by asking about the fight he had. He says it was nothing, but she wants to know why he got in the fight. He says the other boy hit him first because they had beef, but it doesn’t matter.

She says she also wrote down that she wanted to talk about what being a man feels like for him. When he can’t answer, she says the question is too big and the question about the fight is too small, so that’s why she talks more naturally and steers the conversation instead. She explains it’s not a trick, but again he asks to see her notes. She tells him he’s not that in charge.

Instead, she asks if his dad likes his work and they start talking again. He talks about what his dad is like when Briony asks him questions. When asked if his dad gets angry, Jamie again gets defensive. This time, he carries on talking though and explains that once his dad pulled down a shed when he was really angry. Jamie still thinks Briony is testing him, but she says she’s just interested in Jamie’s view of his dad. He says his dad doesn’t judge and is kind. He says while his dad is into all sport, he doesn’t like any of it and would skip PE. When he talks about how his dad used to take him to football on Saturdays, he starts to get upset. He explains when he wasn’t good at football, his dad would just look away, ashamed. When she asks him how that shame made him feel, again he gets angry because he expected her to say his dad wasn’t ashamed. She says wouldn’t she be lying if she said that and he says he doesn’t like lying.

They talk a bit more about his family and he says it’s wrong that he’s in there and wants to ask Briony a question. He asks, “Can you get me out of this place?” To which she replies, she can’t. He asks why they couldn’t put him in a proper prison, instead of the “madhouse”. She calls it a secure training centre. He’s angry and says that the other boys rock backwards and forwards and scream all the time. He gets up and he demands to know where he’ll be going next, where his trial will be held, why Ryan gets to stay at home while he waits for his trial. She tries to explain and tells him he needs to sit down or they’ll have to end their discussion. At this point, he smacks his hot chocolate across the room and starts yelling. He tells her she doesn’t tell him when to sit down. He shouts, “You do not control what I do in my life.”

An officer comes in and Jamie apologizes. He asks Briony if she wants Jamie taken out of the room. She says no, but she’ll go and get a cup of tea. To this, Jamie asks for another hot chocolate. When she leaves the room, she’s clearly upset.

The officer that greeted her comes out and she asks to look in the room where Jamie is via the cameras. As she’s watching, the officer explains there’s no audio, but then he talks to her about body language and how people hide so much but they might tell the truth with their bodies. She goes back in.

Inside the room, she tells him that she’s just there to get an understanding of his understanding. He tells her he understands and that she can ask her questions now. She goes back to masculinity and how masculine men feel about women. She gets up and says she’s forgotten his hot chocolate, but he says it’s fine, he doesn’t deserve it for shouting. Jamie explains his dad is nice to his mum. He doesn’t have female friends and neither does Jamie. She asks him what he thinks about women. He says he likes them and that, when she asks if he would, he’d like a girlfriend.

He says he’d take her to the cinema, but not straight home afterwards. Briony asks, "Would you want to kiss her?" He asks her if she’s allowed to ask that. Then, she asks, "What do you think the normal amount is that someone your age would do sexually with a boy or girl?" He answers touching and kissing. She asks for more details and he explains that touching chest and backside, mainly above clothes is normal. He also says he’s done all of that.

He tells Briony that two girls have shown him their chests and he touched them and that one of them touched him through his trousers. When asked if he liked it, he said not really. When asked more about it, he admits that he actually just lied and that it didn’t happen - none of it. He said instead that he’d seen photos of these two girls and everyone else did, too. She asks if one of those two girls was Katie. He gets angry and asks how she’d know that, how did she guess. She said she didn’t guess, she just asked. When asked if he was attracted to Katie, he says she wasn’t his type. He said she was flat. He then says that she sent the photo to a boy and he sent it on to everyone else - it wasn't him.

Briony asks if Jamie thinks women are attracted to him. He says “No. Of course not.” He then calls himself ugly. When she tries to ask him how being ugly makes him feel, he starts to get angry again. He says she’s putting words in his mouth and throws his chair across the room. The officer calls to him from the door and as Briony signals him away, Jamie stands over her asking what she’s doing. Again, she asks him to sit down, but he marches angrily around the room swearing. She says she’ll go if he wants her to. He doesn’t answer.

Briony talks about how Jamie had previously said he has his friends, Tommy and Ryan, but he’s not popular. He said that all three of them were bullied. That they’d been pushed, spat on and tripped up. She asks him why he has an Instagram account and he explains he needs one to look at other people’s accounts. She says he follows lots of women, models. She asks him why he posts photos of himself and asks about how Katie commenting on his photos.

She gets her bag out and shows him screenshots. She shows him a comment Katie wrote on his Facebook. He says Facebook? She corrects herself, Instagram. He starts to goad her saying she’s red and asks her if she was scared when he shouted. She tries to ask about the emojis Katie sent, and Jamie carries on saying she’s scared of a 13-year-old.

She persists and asks him what the kidney bean emojis mean. He says Katie was pretending that Jamie is part of a truth group, the group that say women don’t want us and don’t care. He says everyone kept going on about incels, but he looked into it and didn’t like it. He explains more of what each emoji message meant, “Want love, won’t get it.” And 80/20 - 80% of women are attracted to 20% of men. But he doesn’t think incels are right about that. When Briony asks why Katie did it to Jamie, he says because he’s ugly. He then begins to insist that he didn’t kill her and you can’t trust videos. He says he should’ve killed her, but he didn’t.

He said he asked Katie out after the photo got sent round. He went and apologised about the photo and asked her to the fair. He thought she might be weak, so then she’d like him. Briony says she thought he didn’t like her and he says she is flat, but he didn’t mind that. He says when he asked Katie to the fair, she just laughed and said “Oh, I’m not that desperate.” And that’s when she started sending the emojis. He says that night when he had the knife, she was scared, but he didn’t touch her. He says he could’ve touched any part of her body and he really wanted to, but he didn’t, and most boys would’ve. He says that makes him better.

After this, he suddenly starts to say he didn’t mean any of what he just said and he’s just tired. To this, Briony asks “Do you understand what death is?” She explains that Katie is now gone forever, no matter what claims he makes about her. He says he didn’t mean to be mean about her.

She then abruptly tells him it’s their last session and that he should take advantage of any mental health services offered to him. He starts to get upset, but she explains she now needs to take her understanding to the judge. The officer comes in to take him away, but he insists on asking Briony something. He says, “Do you like me?” And when she doesn’t answer, he gets more fretful telling her to decide. The officer has to restrain him to take him away, yet he still keeps asking whether Briony likes him. Before he’s dragged out of the room he tells her to tell his dad he’s alright. And when he goes, she cries, but then steadies herself and leaves the room.

All episodes of Adolescence are available to stream on Netflix now.