On IMDB, you can see the viewer ratings assigned to the episodes of basically any series ever aired. For the Dekalog, episode three ranks the lowest of all 10 episodes. I don’t think that’s due to its quality, rather it’s a commentary on its subject matter.

First of all, people hate cheaters, and the viral sensation of the Coldplay kiss cam disaster provides all the proof you need of that. It was an amusing one day story, but several days later, it is still an endless topic of conversation, if for no reason other than it’s such a simple story with the types of people seemingly everyone wants to judge and scorn.

In the case of Dekalog 3, these are technically former cheaters, their affair is several years in the past by now. But the fact that Janusz tells his wife a lie to cover up the fact that he is spending the early hours of Christmas with his former paramore turns it into a renewed form of cheating, even if there is no new sex.

And that brings me to the second reason why, I assume, some people do not like this episode — it’s basically a subversion of the Christmas episode, that TV tradition, most widely celebrated in Britain, where something different and Christmas-related happens with characters everyone knows and loves. Here, we don’t know the characters, so that part isn’t true, it’s happening in the third episode, so we don’t even have a good sense of rhythm for the show yet and … well … it’s just about the most anti Christmas message imaginable on a TV show.

Janusz finds Ewa with the taxi a couple of blocks away. They are off to find Ewa’s missing husband Edward. But first, there’s some catching up to do for these characters. Janusz is bathed in red, menacing light and he tells Ewa that she was at Midnight Mass. She denies it, but he says that he saw her. But instead of continuing that line of discussion, Janusz says he will drop it. Ewa says she has tried to find Edward everywhere. She has checked with friends and the police.

Janusz asks, where to? She asks him what he would do if his wife disappeared. They agree to go to an Emergency Room on Banacha Street, one that is on call for Christmas. They arrive at the hospital and meet an orderly, who is asleep. Janusz asks if they are on call for the night, but the orderly says no, that was last night. When asked what hospital is on duty, the orderly picks up the phone and calls the hospital on call — one in Praga.

At this other hospital, there is a man there who lost both legs, but the timeline of when he was brought in do not match the timeline Ewa gave about when Edward left home. But they decide to follow this lead anyway. On the way, they go past Ewa’s car, the one parked on the thoroughfare. They pull the cab onto the thoroughfare, Ewa gets out and says “Edward’s car.”. Hmm … so something’s not right here. We, the viewing audience, know that she parked the car herself, so why is she making up this detail? She adds another by saying the scarf in the car, the one she took off as she parked it, is also Edward's.

This is probably a good time to note that this episode, not episode 2, is the one most thoroughly about false witness.

Janusz says they should leave the scarf ... if he wanders back to the car, he might be cold. This leads Ewa to sarcastically say that maybe they should leave him a sandwich too in case he gets hungry. Then she says that maybe Janusz and she should get a hotel room to make love, but then leaave the room number for Edward. This is apparently part of their affair lore, that Edward found out about them and confronted them at the hotel ... Ewa has now twice accused Janusz of giving Edward the room number. He denies it again ... she accuses him of wanting to end the affair, go back to his wife and lead a "nice quiet life." If this were his aim, he's certainly disruping it this night.

The fight continues, one Ewa is clearly instigating, and when she claims Edward told her that Janusz gave him the information, he gets angry and grabs her by her coat lapels. She backs away from this claim and then says they should drop it, moving on to Praga hospital. The episode makes viewers feel uncomfortable -- and does a very good job of making Ewa the villain of the piece. My one complaint about it is the way it seems to always hold her accountable, but lets Janusz off the hook all the way.