'The Sinner' Season 3 Episode 6 sees Jamie try to get Ambrose to understand him by forcing him to face death
Spoilers ahead for 'The Sinner' Season 3 Episode 6
In 'The Sinner' Season 3 Episode 7, Jamie Burns (Matt Bomer) tries to reconcile with his wife Leela (Parisa Fitz-Henley) after he was kicked out when she learned the truth about why Jamie and his dead friend Nick, drove to Sonya Barzel's (Jessica Hecht) farm. As a part of this reconciliation, Leela reaches out to Detective Harry Ambrose (Bill Pullman) and explains how she finds it all hard to believe because the Jamie that she knows is someone who hardly loses his temper.
She even recalls the incident that occurred two years ago and says that even then, Jamie hadn't gotten angry. At that time, Jamie and Leela's marriage had gone through a rough patch and Leela had had an affair. Instead of getting mad at her, he internalized the entire incident and asked her what he had done for her to have had an affair.
Detective Ambrose is trying to find the one constant trigger that changed Jamie into being capable of killing someone. It is then that we a little bit of the past that Jamie and Nick shared when they were in college together. The first time that Jamie met Nick, the two were in class and Nick stood up for Jamie. They began to bond over their belief in the idea of ubermensch. It is Nick who inscribes the word on Jamie's bed, "so that you don't forget" he tells Jamie.
Nick has always pushed Jamie's boundaries. Nick had always pushed Jamie to do things that he was not ready to do, he pushed Jamie to stare straight at fear and stand up to it. Nick also chooses extreme methods to introduce Jamie to the idea of Ubermensch. Nick and Jaime's game where choices are made without an idea of what is in store for them started when they were in college and the thrill of doing something that would have otherwise seemed scary is what drives the toxic relationship between Jaime and Nick.
In the present, Sonya, who happens to be an artist seems to be intrigued by the idea of Jamie. She is sleeping with Detective Ambrose and when the two spend time otherwise, she tries to talk to him about Jamie. She wants to know about his life, how his wife would react to learning the truth about him after all those years and her interest is, in many ways, creepy. Why? Because Sonya had an idea that Nick and Jaime had come to her farm with intentions of hurting her. Jamie, who learns from Leela that it was Sonya who told her the truth decides to visit her and finds her with Ambrose. He confronts her and finds out that she had been stalking him in an attempt to learn more about him.
She wants to paint Jaime but she can't. Jamie believes that it is because she is not in control and he is right. She has no control over Jamie's actions, but she cannot help herself. She tries to capture him at close proximity, she picks up her camera and begins to click his pictures and at one point, even asks him if he would strip his clothes away. He does! He allows her to come close enough to stare into his eyes and the shot of Jamie's eye staring into the camera drives the point of his vulnerability home. He is a killer, but he is also wounded and the one person who finds this is Sonya.
His failing relationship with Leela and his frustration over not having someone who could help him, someone who understands him just as Nick did in the past, is pulling Jaime down. He also finally understands what Nick meant when he said that one must let the fear in and not stop it because only in facing it would something new open up. Jaime wants to go back to the moment when Nick managed to push him beyond the fear and encouraged him to stare into the abyss because he feels free at this point and now, with Nick gone, he wants to experience this with Ambrose.
Jaime even takes Ambrose with him to the spot where Nick and Jaime had dug a grave when they were in college. Not to kill anybody else, but to bury themselves in the grave and stay buried until the other person dug them out. This was their metaphorical abyss. It was their way of touching, and feeling this abyss that others have only read about, and now Jamie wants to flip the coin with Ambrose. He convinces him by handing him a confession note, tells Ambrose that when he is dug back out if he agrees with Jaime; he can burn the confession instead of taking him in. Ambrose agrees, gets buried, but what next? This could all be Jaime's plan to stop the detective from interfering.
To know what happens next, tune into 'The Sinner' Episode 7 on Thursday night at 10 pm ET on USA Network.