Notes

100 Lieblingssendungen:
billige rolex

“Here’s to peace and those who get in the way of it.”
In 2013, Phoebe Waller-Bridge first originated Fleabag, a one-woman play that debuted at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Coming off the smashing, award-winning success of the performance, Waller-Bridge brought Fleabag to the small screen. A fourth-wall-breaking narrative centered around the titular (perhaps) Fleabag (portrayed by Waller-Bridge) and her troubles with friendships, family, romances, and her café, Fleabag aired from the end of July 2016 to the end of August 2016. After a three year absence (and plenty of bouncing around three different BBC networks in the U.K. and Amazon Prime in the U.S.), Fleabag returned for a universally-acclaimed and Emmy-winning second season that put a more definitive conclusion on the story. And yes, Waller-Bridge wrote all twelve episodes.
(This essay contains spoilers for Fleabag and the follies of foxes.)
“This is a love story,” Fleabag tells the audience near the outset of Fleabag’s second season premiere, “Episode 1.” On the one hand, nothing about the romances in the first season of Fleabag suggested that the show was a true love story. Rather, it seemed more like a meandering meditation piece, allowing the talented Waller-Bridge to work through her own emotions in a program built around her own sensibility. Yes, there were romances and no, not every love story has to end on a boat in Alaska or in an airport on Christmas. But still, there were hardly any people in Fleabag’s life that would be considered for some grand romance (Harry (Hugh Skinner), Arsehole Guy (Ben Aldridge), and Bus Rodent (Jamie Demetriou) came closet, but even then. Yuck.)
By the return of Fleabag for its second season, it seemed unlikely that Fleabag even had her own family in her life. The only one to show her much empathy or kindness in season one’s “Episode 6” was the bank manager (Hugh Dennis), after Fleabag’s family chose their own selfish interests over remaining loyal to their daughter and sister.
However, the second “Episode 1” serves as a vehicle for getting caught up in the world of Fleabag. By this point, about one year has passed and Fleabag’s family have only just begun to speak with her again. One meal ahead of her father’s (Bill Paterson) marriage to her godmother (Olivia Colman) served to reorient us in the world of Fleabag. We returned to the brief flashbacks that were stylized differently than many other series’ looks back on the past, recalling that Fleabag’s affair over her best friend, Boo (Jenny Rainsford), had led her to a near-suicidal place when we last saw her. Beyond this own reckoning, Fleabag also worried about being a bad feminist, was intrigued by being treated like a “nasty, little bitch,” masturbated to a speech delivered by Barack Obama, and endured the endless cavalcade of suitors proclaiming her to be “not like other girls.” The first season of Fleabag is certainly a tragicomedy. With massive laughs and a dour backdrop, it’s a particularly heightened reality on Fleabag. We needed this one meal episode in season two to remind us how Fleabag operates and how carefully she had to act when hoping that her family would accept her again. (Not that the onus should have ever been on her in the first place.)
Don’t get me wrong, I loved the first season of Fleabag. But the premiere of season two was so fantastically written and executed that, when I witnessed it for the first time, I instantly felt that it was a half-hour improvement on a series I didn’t even know could be improved. The “passive aggressive party” is attended by a needy waitress (Maddie Rice), Fleabag’s sister, Claire (Sian Clifford), and her brother-in-law, Martin (Brett Gelman). For the majority of the dinner, Martin taunts Fleabag and Claire convinces herself that bottling her negative energy has led to happiness. But it takes a turn when the dinner is also attended by a smiling priest (Andrew Scott).
Considering the mutual contempt between Fleabag and her godmother, the arrogant misogyny from Martin, and the feeling of betrayal from Claire not trusting Fleabag’s claim that Martin tried to kiss her, it’s a miracle the meal lasted as long as it did. Characters volley their “callings” back and forth, constantly overlapping their own chatter in an effort to loudly convince the table that they’re happy and superior because of it. It’s beyond uncomfortable, but as a method of catching the audience up and establishing threads for the rest of season two, it’s an expertly efficient episode. Hot Priest alone works to elevate the engagement of the episode (he’s basically an audience surrogate at the table, uninvolved with the familial drama) but it’s so strongly written that it would have been a fantastic installment even if it didn’t organically introduce one of the show’s best characters.
The brilliant writing is grounded in the shocking cruelty and physicality of the episode. After Claire suffers a miscarriage in the restaurant bathroom, Fleabag demands she accompany her to the hospital. When she refuses, Fleabag instead explains the bewilderment on her face to the rest of the table by claiming that she was the one with the miscarriage. From this, Martin and the godmother unleash some of the most viscous comments in the history of television. (Honestly, if anyone ever spoke this way to someone who had just suffered a miscarriage in person, I would see no need to ever associate with that person again.)
Mostly, however, Fleabag’s confusion comes from her inability to understand why Claire is acting the way she is (later, we learn it’s relief). Between trusting Martin’s story of the kiss over Fleabag’s and then refusing to go to the hospital, Fleabag can’t contain her frustration with Claire and it bubbles over into an argument (and subsequent punch) with Martin. “Happiness is in who you believe,” Fleabag pointedly directs to Claire before the altercation breaks out at the table. It’s one of the only times during the meal when she speaks up to the table (she has plenty of snide comments for those of us behind the fourth wall) because her bond with Claire goes beyond conversational norms.
Everyone in her family seems so convinced that Fleabag only ever wants to be the center of attention, but in reality, it’s just that her personality doesn’t mesh with the passive-aggression that percolates at every dinner table the godmother and Martin sit at. It’s Fleabag’s sense of humor and off-the-well-trod-paths persona (which she got from her late mother) that isolate her, ultimately. Claire took the more conventional road to success (becoming addicted to her work, rather than dedicated to it, as Fleabag observes) and silently resents Fleabag for finding success in a café because her sister is “always interesting,” while Claire considers herself to be the boring one. When it seemed earlier that to be interesting was to be condemned, this moment inverts the familial stereotyping.
Compounding this resentment with the unfeeling nature of Claire that prevents her from hugging Fleabag or considering her a friend and a sister, it’s no wonder their relationship is so icy and only worsened by Martin’s brash arrogance. While Fleabag undergoes her own development throughout the series — becoming more thoughtful and caring of others — Claire has a journey of her own. For Claire, she has to become better at trusting herself. Trivial mishaps (like haircuts) and wrongful decision-making (like committing to Martin for so long) can be dealt with if only she finds the courage to do so. By the second “Episode 6,” Claire is willing to devour her own pride to be rid of Martin, which in turn opens her up to mocking “running through the airport” love with Fleabag. In an unexpectedly touching moment, Claire remarks that the only person she’d race through terminals for is Fleabag. The look between them and the gripping of one another’s palms show that Claire is ready for a new, happier future that is more in tune with her own desires as a human being.
The series finale of Fleabag also manages to heal the relationship between Fleabag and her father. It’s not that love was lost between them before, but rather that Fleabag’s way of life didn’t always make sense to her father; they struggled to connect. In season one’s “Episode 5,” Fleabag finds humor in the fact that her father struggles to hold a conversation whenever they are alone together. Seven episodes later, though, she’s the one who calms his nerves ahead of his wedding. They sit alone while her father voices his concerns for a mouse, suffocating in the attic. Fleabag laughs with a drink in hand. She’s smart enough to understand what he means when he says he doesn’t “like her all the time,” but even if she took offense to it, it wouldn’t change Fleabag’s major takeaway from the moment. Her father was able to hold an important discussion — just the two of them. In a dynamic that felt at least a little broken in the wake of her mother’s death, Fleabag and her father were able to find a common ground. After the loss of Boo, it was refreshing to see Fleabag take initiative as the colloquial “bigger person,” as she grew willing to look past slights and affronts in the name of healing her familial bonds.
For Fleabag, it’s critical to repair the ties she possesses with her family because she doesn’t really have friends outside of them. It’s a detraction posed to her by Claire and a thought that pervades Fleabag’s thought processes. What does it mean to live a life with close romantic and familial bonds, but to not have any close friends?
It’s the thought on Fleabag’s mind in season two’s “Episode 3” when she ends up grabbing a drink with Claire’s award-winning colleague, Belinda (Kristin Scott Thomas). At first, it’s a showcase of Fleabag building a bond with another woman as Belinda laments the female body. Belinda remarks about the juxtaposed horrors and glories of menopause. She emphasizes that women are born with pain that men don’t experience. She makes a connection with Fleabag, showing that the concerns plaguing her in her thirties are not unique to her.
An enigma of sexuality, the initially platonic discussion turns into Fleabag leaning in to kiss Belinda, who rebuffs her, simply because she lacks the energy. Instead, Belinda reassures Fleabag’s current life juncture (thirty-three years old, specifically) and encourages to follow her heart and flirt while she can (before she runs out of energy sooner, just like Belinda).
In that moment, Fleabag wanted to take Belinda to the nearest bed (she always notices attractive people on the street and wants to “fuck everything”), but it’s a connection as impermanent as the myriad character names ascribed to the men in her life as if they are nothing more than contacts in her phone. Ultimately, Fleabag channels her attraction to Belinda back onto Hot Priest, refusing to believe that his vow of celibacy will deter their potential relationship.
Earlier in this episode, Claire used the word “cockwork” instead of “clockwork” after growing flustered by Klare (Christian Hillborg), her business partner. Most of the time, this sexual slip of the Freudian variety would be reserved for Fleabag’s perpetually perverted state of mind. Instead, it’s ascribed to Claire while Fleabag’s mind is preoccupied with notions of sex juxtaposed against religion. The names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are evoked before Belinda wins her trophy because Claire’s brain is not the only one that is “somewhere else” at the moment.
Fleabag’s brain, instead, pushes her to go further than just flirting with Hot Priest. At the end of “Episode 3,” they sit outside the church while Hot Priest shrieks and jumps away from the bench, detailing his fear of foxes (a species he believes is coordinating efforts to attack him). When he sits again, he’s just a few inches closer to Fleabag, suggesting celibacy is about to be broken in favor of intimacy. Instead, he rejects her interest and counters that celibacy is actually easier for him than romance. But we know it’s only the halfway point of the season and the chemistry between Waller-Bridge and Scott is too scorching hot to be ignored for three entire episodes.
It takes just one more episode to shatter the barrier between celibacy and a passionate kiss shared between Fleabag and Hot Priest. Furthermore, the fourth wall is shattered along with it when Hot Priest notices Fleabag’s gestures and winks to us. It’s one of the most glorious meta moments I’ve ever seen (rewatching it still left me walloped) and I possessed no explanation for it for over a year. I wondered if they were just so intimate that the quality-elevating good listener that is Hot Priest was allowed in to a part of Fleabag’s heart that no one else had ever gained access to. Instead, a recent interview from Waller-Bridge suggests that Fleabag’s audience is a bouncing-off point for her conscience to engage with on the interior, just as God is for Hot Priest. God doesn’t answer Hot Priest anymore than we answer Fleabag, but both vessels are means for the characters to work through their innermost feelings and doubts.
After all, doubt is a crucial aspect of being a priest. Religion-centric storytelling will always be a favorite of mine, but few shows have interrogated it as thought-provokingly as Fleabag managed to. Hot Priest is hardly a conventional priest (no more than Jude Law is your average Pope). He swears, he wears button-downs, he drinks, he doubts. Hot Priest is always in a state of flux regarding his relationship with God. To Fleabag, his eventual arrival at her apartment is treated identically to that of Arsehole Guy. But to Hot Priest, who is as moved by A.A. Milne quotes (“Fuck… Piglet”) as he is by the teachings of God (“It’s not fact. It’s poetry. It’s moral code”), Fleabag is a source of temptation, against whom God clatters framed pieces of art to warn.
Initially, they try to simply be each other’s friend. Friendships, like relationships, have their honeymoon phases and are fun at first, but sooner or later, if a friend’s worth holding onto, they’ll be exposed to intense emotional confessionals. It just so happened that, on Fleabag, the confession happened in an actual confession booth. In an immaculately sexually-charged follow-up to Fleabag’s tearful admission of her sins, Hot Priest directs her to “kneel.” He enters into her booth and they kiss. In just one episode, they’d do a lot more than that. But sadly, in just two episodes, Hot Priest makes his decision regarding a relationship with Fleabag clear.
At the wedding between her father and godmother that he’s officiating, he proclaims, “It’s quite hard to come up with something original to say about love,” before launching into a speech that knocks each character’s personal foibles and eventually proclaims love as a feeling of hope. This scene and the earlier one when Fleabag snuck up on him (he thought she was a fox) work to give us the feeling of dread that they’re not actually going to make it together. His shift in tone is one that is felt before it’s even stated in a bus stop conversation that leaves more unsaid than said (but “I love you” is a big thing to say all the same).
When a fox approaches Fleabag, now alone and teary-eyed on the bus stop bench, she directs it to Hot Priest’s path. Then, she rises and departs, but for the first time, her observations are not for the camera to follow. We stay behind, knowing that Fleabag’s off on her own now (no third season here). She’ll carry us with her, just as she will Hot Priest, because we can never let go of what haunts us and what keeps us up at night and what we dwell on when we’re alone.
Throughout Fleabag, a miniature sculpture of a headless naked woman appears in numerous installments to the point where Fleabag’s ability to be rid of it is just as impossible as her ability to stop herself from stealing it whenever she spots it. In the second “Episode 6,” it serves as her wedding gift to her godmother, who confesses that it’s sculpted after her mother. (The look on Fleabag’s face suggests she’ll steal it back, but we already knew that.) In a single moment, the sculpture that follows Fleabag around throughout all twelve episodes becomes a symbol of her mother, following Fleabag every day of her life and guiding her through the uncertainty she, too, once endured.
The influence of one’s mother, a golden sculpture. An ongoing conversation with God. The memory of a friend’s suicide. The entire unit of foxes plotting the destruction of a single, pseudo-celibate josser. No matter what we consider our plagues to be, they’ll be with us whether we want to or not. It’s up to us to determine if we want to follow our faith, follow our love, follow both. The only mistake we can make is to act in a way that doesn’t account for the concerns of others. Fleabag’s kindness is most vividly felt with Claire, but it’s present with Hot Priest, too. Her sins might have brought about a sin for Hot Priest, but they also led her the learning moment of redemption. For any Bible, personal or moral, redemption has to matter more than sin. The beauty of Fleabag is that she’s capable of both.

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