#bbc fleabag

What makes Fleabag special is that her hyper-s*xuality is something we see quite openly. She is not trying to steer clear of that as many female artists try to do because it might cheapen their work or get them sl*t-shamed. Waller-Bridge’s protagonist “stoops” to that level and lives there. Even the name of the protagonist, which is never revealed, is similar to p*rnography where women are “barely-l*gal teen”, “busty m*lf”, and many other things, but rarely a person with a name.

When will I face reality instead of watching my silly little tv shows and reading cute little things about them to distract myself from the impending doom that it about to come upon me in a few years. (the impending doom being adulthood)

So season one pretty much establishes that her talking to us while going about her life is a coping mechanism, a metaphor for dissociation. It was a really great season, but the finale, instead of showing her actually begin to heal, showed shit hitting the fan, and then towards the very end kind of sort of depicted her turning toward the general direction of getting her life on track. At the end of this season, I was like. Wait. That's it? That's the end? Aren't we going to see her actually get better? Well thank god there's season two left still because I want to see her try to get her life back together.

But then season two began with '371 days later' and that really threw me off. Apparently she had managed to get her life a fair bit together by then, but why didn't we get to see that?

Something shifted in episode two, when the counselor asked Fleabag if she had friends and she winked at us. To me, it felt almost like another layer of the fourth wall removed: she isn't just saying stuff to herself and it's being shown as her talking to the camera: she's actually speaking to us. This isn't her only being self aware from the third person's perspective as a way to block out her real life, it's a back and forth. A conversation. It was at this moment that I very distinctly wished someone would notice it within the show.

And then came episode three and the Priest did. It's significant that this happened in the same conversation as when he confessed to liking her, because now he's starting to actually see her. And we all know what happens next— they fall further in love, Fleabag starts messing up who she's talking to, and the Priest–fouth wall relationship concludes with her physically pushing us away when they're having sex because for once, she wants to be present in her own life.

I think it was after this really that it really started to hit home for me: there's a reason we don't ever see her heal. We see her start to heal and get better, but we never could have seen her simply running the café, or petting Hillary and Stephanie just because, or spending time with Claire, or simply being. There's a reason we don't see those 371 days when she started to get better. There's a reason why we left Fleabag's life the last time she saw her family, and returned to it the first time she saw them again after a year. Because we're who she turns to when she's sad, afraid. Lonely.

This is the genius thing for me: we're part of the story. Not only as a coping mechanism, but as a plot device. As something that influences the story simply by watching it unfold.

This story would simply not have the same impact if it existed in a vacuum. It would have been a story about a fucked up woman doing fucked up things and trying her best not to, and it would be good, but it would not have been the same. Actually, this particular story would just would not have existed if we weren't watching it. If she wanted to say what she wanted to and we weren't there to listen, where would she have put her grief? We are integral to this story. This back and forth between Fleabag and us, this communication, this awareness of each other is what makes this story alive.

No, she said to us when we tried to follow her after the guy she loved told her he loved god more. We care about her, and we started to follow her to make sure she's okay. But she shook her head. Not tonight.