By Jenna Massey | Staff Writer
If Valentine’s Day is really supposed to be a holiday about love, I believe we’ve wasted most of its potential on vapid romantic gestures and desperate endeavors to avoid the shame of being single on the 14th. I’m not a devotee of February’s “Hallmark Holiday” by any means, but I love celebrations of love, and I have a soft spot for media that takes unconventional routes to demonstrate the subtler roles that love plays in our lives.
Love - for the world, for ourselves, for each other - is so much more than what our Valentine’s traditions have led us to believe. Love is all we really have, and there is no piece of television that understands this sentiment better than Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag.
Fleabag is not a typical love story. Its nameless protagonist is a sex addict struggling with monumental grief and guilt. She is bold and shameless, opening season one with a mid-sex monologue that concludes with anxious contemplation over the size of her anus. Her relationship with her family is tumultuous, her best friend has recently died, her cafe is failing, and her only brushes with intimacy come from sexual encounters with such men as “Arsehole Guy,” “Bus Rodent,” and “Hot Misogynist.” Frequent fourth wall breaks in which Fleabag voices her thoughts to the audience in medias res are the only times she’s truly vulnerable.
Season one of Fleabag is about a woman living in angry rebuke of the cards she’s been dealt and the feelings those cards have forced upon her. Season two is about that woman learning to accept her emotions, and finding a way to heal “the screaming void inside [her] empty heart.” The show is extremely clear about its intentions to mend its protagonist’s spirit in the opening line of S2E1, which is stated by Fleabag in direct addressal of the audience: “This is a love story.”
Until encountering romantic love for the first time on-screen in season 2, Fleabag’s fourth wall breaks go unnoticed by the supporting characters. But when she turns to the camera in front of “Hot Priest,” played by Andrew Scott (ex-Sherlock stans, I know you’re out there,) he’s puzzled by her distraction. “Where’d you just go?” he asks her. “What is that? That thing that you’re doing. It’s like you disappear.” The audience can see Fleabag’s heart shoot to her throat in these moments; we share her shock that something usually so private is being noticed. In the case of the relationship between Fleabag and the Priest, being loved is being seen.
Fleabag’s connection with Hot Priest is the central love story of season 2, but the show understands that significant, “running through the airport kind of love” isn’t just limited to romantic partners. Fleabag’s second greatest love story is the one that settles between Fleabag and her sister, Claire, as they try to repair a relationship that is strained by mistrust, infidelity, and the death of their mother. The love between Claire and Fleabag is just as, if not more, complicated as the love between Fleabag and Hot Priest. It’s shadowed by the confusing mixture of admiration and envy the sisters have for each other, and it’s a love that requires more care than most other TV siblings ever exhibit.
And then there’s the love story between Fleabag and her dead best friend, Boo, except this love can’t be acted on; without Boo alive to receive it, Fleabag has to find a way to cope with holding onto an affection that can’t be given away. And then there’s the love story between Fleabag and the spirit of her mother. And the one between Hot Priest and his view of the world. And the one between the audience and Fleabag. And the remnants of Fleabag’s parents’ romance. And ultimately, there’s a critical love story between Fleabag and herself, in which she has to rediscover that she’s worthy of intimacy and kindness, and deserving of feeling, and that being alone doesn’t necessarily mean that she is unloved.
“This is a love story.”
I’ve kept this piece as brief as possible in the hopes that you’ll be curious enough after reading it to immediately rush to Amazon Prime (or your pirating site of choice) to add Fleabag to your watchlist. I guarantee that you’ll laugh! You’ll cry! You’ll bear witness to dozens of plaster model penises! You might even learn something new about love. :)
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