Mix Tape Episodes 1-3 Recap: Why Did Daniel Block Sheila?

When I first saw Jim Sturgess in the 2011 film One Day, it was his striking prettiness that left the strongest impression. Now, nearly a decade and a half later, watching him in the Binge miniseries, Mix Tape, I find myself far more drawn to his nuanced ability to convey longing for lost love and the weight of unresolved feelings beneath a carefully maintained facade. Starting out as a story about two young lovers, the show weaves between two timelines, building an almost anxious tension as we watch these adults, who once parted ways abruptly, now trapped in marriages and parenthood, trying to find their way back to each other. Between the fiery teenage romance and the aching longing years later, the show also treats us to a killer nostalgic soundtrack that spans decades, from the late ’70s to now. Think The Cure, Nick Drake, David Bowie, Cabaret Voltaire, The Velvet Underground, The Psychedelic Furs, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and even Arctic Monkeys—they’ve got it all.

Spoilers Ahead

What happens in the show?

Sheffield, 1989. Amid smoky house parties and cassette tapes, a boy named Daniel finds himself captivated by Alison. Though other girls vie for his attention, Daniel only has eyes for her and goes straight to Alison to ask for a dance. Daniel makes her a mixtape compiling songs that remind him of her. Alison likes the gesture and makes one for him too, and that’s how their romance starts. Even though Alison clearly likes Daniel back, she keeps her guard up whenever he offers to walk her home. And it’s hard to blame her; no one wants their high school crush to see a junkie mother waiting at the gate, strung out and surrounded by men even worse than she is. Her brother, Peter, is a hardworking young lad who works full-time to support the family and his sister. Skip to decades later, and both Alison and Daniel are living completely different lives. Alison now lives in Sydney with her husband, Michael, a successful surgeon. She’s become a bestselling author, celebrated for her novel, and they have a teenage daughter, Stella. Daniel still lives in Sheffield, where he’s built a life as a freelance music journalist. Though his work can be unpredictable, he’s supported by his wife, Katja, who’s the family’s main breadwinner. Their son has just left for college, and you can see Daniel is unhappy at his core. When Daniel’s friend Duncan, who works in publishing, sends him an article about Alison’s new book launch, it rekindles the spark of a long-lost romance, and suddenly, Daniel finds a sense of purpose he hadn’t even realized he was missing. 

Daniel and Alison’s time at Sheffield, 90s 

Ever since Daniel made her a mixtape, Alison has started falling for him. She starts to hang out in Daniel’s house and even befriends his dad, Bill, who introduces Alison to his pet pigeons. The romance blooms, and they can’t get enough of each other. But like all good love stories, this one had its troubles too. Daniel’s mother, Marian, starts voicing her doubts about Alison’s background, questioning what kind of family she really comes from. As Marian confides her suspicions to Bill, Alison happens to overhear everything she says. Alison simply leaves, against Daniel’s wishes and without telling him anything. This is a recurring issue; Alison would never let Daniel in, no matter how big a crisis she’s going through. 

What are Daniel and Alison going through in their marriages?

Despite having teenage kids and after almost two decades of marriage, both Daniel and Alison are stuck in unhappy marriages. Alison is married to Michael, a big shot surgeon who looks like a happy, cheery weatherman, but he’s just a typical man-child. He somehow pretends to be joyful about his wife’s huge literary success, but he can’t get more than three sentences out of his mouth when toasting her for it. Michael’s too stuck up and proud for his own good, and he has beef with Alison’s PR person,  and their daughter, and everyone who doesn’t agree with him. He’s dreadful in bed too, and his sole redeeming trait is his possessiveness, but it only loops back to become another flaw, which is normal in such toxic relationships. When their daughter, Stella, confesses she’s pregnant and unsure whether to keep the baby, Michael completely loses his composure. He insists she get an abortion and focus on building a life of her own. 

As for Daniel, his treatment of Katja makes it painfully clear he can’t even pretend to care about her. The fact that Katja runs the finances of the family probably makes Daniel feel emasculated, but he doesn’t try to better himself for her, and that’s kind of sad. Katja is a serious career woman, and she genuinely seems to be doing her best to keep her life together, but she’s stuck with a man who is sending his high school ex a Facebook friend request. She wants to wind down for a bit since their son has left for college, and she wants to go on a road trip across the US, a fair ask, right? But Daniel has changed a lot in twenty years, and the boy who wanted to go on a US trip and catch the concerts of his favorite musicians barely wants to leave Sheffield anymore. Daniel gets an offer from one of the publications Duncan works for, to write a book on an old musician, Jack Leonard, who was once huge in the US, before he disappeared from the public eye at the peak of his popularity. So Daniel would have to live in New Zealand for six months with Leonard, recording the whole story of his life. Kat is not at all happy with the idea, as the last time Daniel worked to write a novel, he isolated himself from the family for months. Katja even tries to be more soft and convenient for him and asks very sweetly to delay the book idea for a bit, until they can have some time alone on the trip she’s planning. But Daniel only resents her more for it, and he sends Alison a Spotify link to The Jesus and Mary Chain’s ‘Some Candy Talking.’ The mode of listening to music has changed over the years, but Daniel and Alison both know the songs they listened to together are the most significant form of communication for them. 

How do Alison and Daniel meet each other again?

Katja goes to the US for her work, and Duncan rushes Daniel into accepting the book deal. Meanwhile, Daniel and Alison have been speaking only through songs, not a single word exchanged between them yet. Daniel’s actions can’t be romanticized; even when Katja comes  to him for comfort, all he does is pretend to be there for her while sending music to Alison as soon as his wife is out of his sight. Alison’s circumstances are quite different; her marriage, coupled with the situation with Stella, makes her life unbearable at this point. So Alison finally texts Daniel, asking if they’re ever going to talk, and the next time she hears back from him, Daniel is already in Sydney. They decide to catch up in a cafe, and before seeing each other, both of them groom themselves quite intensely, and that’s sweet. After talking for a while, Daniel finally asks the question we’ve been waiting for her to answer: why did Alison leave Sheffield? Alison still behaves the same way, and leaves urgently without any explanation. 

Why did Alison leave Sheffield?

Alison’s mother, Catherine, is probably the biggest reason her teenage years were destroyed. While outside of her house, she had a boyfriend she couldn’t stop kissing, but back home, it was nothing but a mess. Catherine seemed to change her way of life when she dumped Baxter and stopped using, but that was just a hoax Peter and Alison so desperately wanted to believe. Baxter tells everyone at the factory Peter worked in that he’s gay, and he makes people put up posters of Peter with a gay slur written on them. Peter gets fired and starts to cope by drinking. Catherine makes up with Baxter, and Alison’s apartment once again turns into a nightmarish hellhole she doesn’t want to be in. When Peter tries to hang himself, Alison somehow makes it on time to scream  for help, and Baxter helps them. When Catherine discovers Baxter’s role in the suicide attempt, she dumps him on the spot, humiliating him in front of a crowd. The fallout from this moment takes a darker turn for Alison, who, tragically, had nothing to do with it.

What happens at Sheila’s doesn’t stay at Sheila’s 

Michael’s behavior only starts to irritate Alison more and more, and when she comes home to find Michael screaming at her PR manager, she leaves the house at once. She looks for Daniel and finds him on his way to the airport. They decide to spend some more time together, and Alison takes him to Sheila’s farmhouse. Sheila used to be Alison’s next-door neighbor, and Alison and Sheila stayed friends all their lives. The two old lovers finally get some time alone, and even with Sheila, they get to have a lot of fun. Alison finally gathers the courage to explain why she left. After Catherine ended things with him, Baxter came over one night when Catherine wasn’t home and Peter was asleep upstairs. Convinced that Alison and her family somehow owed him for saving Peter, Baxter forced himself on her while Alison lay powerless to stop him. Alison left that very night, starting a whole new life, and that explains how she decided to stick with Michael, someone stable who, despite his problems, was the best bet for her back then. Alison comes to sleep in Daniel’s arms that night, but it’s the next morning where things take a weirder turn. 

Due to a miscommunication at their meeting in the pub, Alison thought that Daniel was separated, while he meant that his wife had gone to America for work. Alison feels guilty for holding onto a man who’s already married, but Daniel quietly reminds her that she’s married too. Still, the guilt presses down on her, and she admits to him that, deep down, she’d hoped she might have a chance to start over with him. Daniel doesn’t know how to answer that because he knows he has been unfaithful to Katja, and he’s only led her on into believing their marriage is just fine. To make the situation worse, Michael shows up at Sheila’s to take Alison home. He believes that she slept with Daniel, and on the ride back home, Alison gets him to admit that he was tracking her phone. 

Why Did Daniel Block Sheila?

Daniel flies back to Sheffield and finds Katja has returned home too. Katja holds him tight, and that makes him feel even more guilty for pursuing another woman while he’s neglecting his own wife. At a pub with Duncan, he tries to act righteous when Duncan checks out other girls, but Duncan reminds him that he’s in denial about his terrible dynamic with Katja, and he shouldn’t forget that. At the end of episode three, Daniel receives a voicemail from Alison, saying she wants to talk more. He doesn’t know how to respond to that, and he decides to block her contact. Maybe Daniel has realized that he’s been cheating on his wife with a woman who hasn’t been in his life ever since he became an adult, and maybe the guilt is too much for him to pursue further connection with Alison. But the fact that his presence put Alison in an even tougher position in her marriage is bound to hit him soon. While New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle” plays to take us to the credits, all of us know this isn’t the end for these two. Maybe it’ll turn into an affair, but let’s be real, at its heart, it’s just two people chasing a messy, half-finished kind of love that never quite fits anywhere else. 

...