Hi! Welcome back to Mrs. Fletcher where we are just getting started! We set the table last week, finding out who everyone is and how nice and/or jerky they are *coughBrendancough*, let’s find out what we’re gonna be served tonight! Rolling into Mrs. Fletcher S1:E02 Free Sample from HBO after the break.
Mrs. Eve Fletcher (Kathryn Hahn) and her friends Jane Rosen (Casey Wilson) and Emily (Sheila Tapia) dine, discussing the difference between when they left home and now when their kids have gone to college. Eve’s pretty sure her parents just rolled on through, but all three women are devastated by the loss of their offspring’s physical presence.
*I have no idea what Eve was agreeing with about how close they/she is with her kid, Brendan Fletcher (Jackson White) can barely stand to be with her for five minutes in a row.
Turns out Eve’s not that disturbed by the quiet, she’s using that time to rub one out watching girl on girl educational movies while sprawled on the couch. And maybe that’s why she’s not really interested in dating Emily’s divorced boss? Coz he’s a dude?
Although, there are no straight lines from interests to actions in the world of the lizard brain, are there? It’s not like because we enjoy thinking about and erm, relieving tension to some stuff, necessarily means we wanna swing from that particular chandelier in real life, amirite? Or is that too much defensive explanation about the freaky deaky I enjoy? Hit me back in comments.
We met Roy Rafferty (Bill Raymond) last time when he opened the pilot episode watching adult educational movies at high volume in the nursing home Eve works at. Today he’s wandering around in swim trunks looking lost. She leads him over to the pool for water aerobics (I LOVE water aerobics! I go at least once a week!) which we watch for an oddly extended period of time.
Eve’s son Brendan is not doing great at college, he’s already been called in for a conference with advisor Devin (Neil Casey) about what he wants to get out of his undergraduate experience. A job! A six-figure job, specifically but no.actual.topic is in sight. Eve keeps texting during the meeting, turn your phone off, Brendan!
Brendan’s not given his schooling a lot of thought just yet, clearly, but he knows he wants to join a frat!
Of course he wants to join a frat.
*I canea stand Brendan, he’s every entitled, lazy and jerky bully I ever knew from school. The type that may or may not have played a popular sport in Canada.
Does Brendan understand that every moment of his college experience is up to him? That he has to fill it with what’s important? “Mommy isn’t going to be around to tell you what to do.” Brendan responds with “Sooooo, we done?”
Brendan meets another student in the waiting room; Sanjay (Cheech Manohar) is totally friendly and a wee bit nerdy so that will probably be who Brendan bullies next.
Eve grocery shops, stocking up on chips and accepting a food sample from a beautiful woman (Tania Khalill) with painfully erect nipples. This segues into an imagined encounter that freaks Eve out enough to offer to date Emily’s boss. Ahhh Eve. I can’t tell if she’s experimenting or closeted yet but I’m pretty sure you can’t smother same-sex attraction with a heterosexual cloak. Not for long, anyway.
We’re in Eve’s Personal Essay class with Eve and the kid her son used to bully: Julian (Owen Teague), talking about getting to the root of what they really want and what scares them.
I love that the teacher Margo Fairchild (Jen Richards) takes Curtis’s (Rashad Demond Edwards) fear of black holes seriously. Julian is afraid of his anti-depressants not working any more. Barry (Josh Pais from so.many.things!) doesn’t love a nuclear Iran. Eve has trouble expressing her fears, she’s having that left-the-oven-on feeling a lot but doesn’t know what it means.
*I feel a little bad because I came down on the choice the show made to have Eve interested in Julian sexually. I was weirded out because Julian is literally the exact same age as Eve’s son (and her son bullied Julian) who she was far too emotionally dependent upon and who had just left. I though that was a weird choice. HOWEVER, as stated above, lizard brains are rarely connected to a straight line and I shouldn’t be so judgy.
Eve gets a call from Emily’s boss Peter (Chris Henry Coffey), she tries to Google him while they’re talking but unfortunately her laptop is on one of those explicit porn sites with autoplay ads so it gets…uncomfy. A quick review of his picture and daughter’s poetry degree (she lies that Brendan is pre-med) and they agree to meet in real life.
Back at school, Brendan and his roommate Zack (Cameron Boyce – he died earlier this year during an epileptic seizure, so damn tragic) cruise the quad looking at all the clubs boostering.
*By the way, I’ve never gone to college (although I have done stuff!!), so I have no idea what most of this is. I am totally cool with people providing corrections.
Zack is a much, much better person than Brendan. He heads off to check out the Robotics Club and Brendan is shut down HARD by a pretty girl at the Vegan Life table.
Chloe (Jasmine Cephas Jones from Hamilton!!! She plays the part of Maria Reynolds!!! I’ve listened to her one thousand and four times, how is she on here? She’s, she’s 30! And looking totally not out of place playing a college student, so let me shut up. She’s just so accomplished!!) takes pity on him, so she offers him information on an Autism support group.
She reads this look like a book.
“Don’t worry, you can stop by without knowing yet if I’m hot enough to f***”
HAHAHAHAHA
Let’s just say that Brendan is not used to women speaking so forthrightly to him.
Ahhhh now I know why we were staring at the water aerobics instructor! Eve thinks Amanda Olney (Katie Kershaw) is hot! She did have a cute tankini on earlier. There’s a bit of tension (all tension is sexual tension, according to Brittany Runs A Marathon!) and then Eve talks about her date for the weekend and shows Amanda a picture of Peter. Amanda thinks Peter looks like a wedding cake topper, which is…faint praise at best.
*HBO has used “weekend plans” as an intro for sex in their show Divorce before, I’m guessing that’s why Amanda asked Eve if she had any. It’s a very HBO-specific code for wanting to bang!
**I have yet to have anyone in life ask about weekend plans.
Brendan and Zack sit through a totally cheesy presentation about Consent, Brendan being an asshole and forcing Zack’s hand up to volunteer leads him to be called instead.
*Seriously, in a presentation about consent, he raised his friend’s hand. It’s not rocket science.
Brendan and another student named Sam act out a scenario, but Brendan doesn’t seem to understand the basic concept. The facilitator (Carmen M. Herlihy) tries to help.
Amanda and Eve spot Roy masturbating during a movie with the group in the nursing home; he is sent home with his angry son George (Domenick Lombardozzi). Roy is depressed.
Eve dresses for her dinner while Brendan attends a mixer and avoids his roommate and the nerdy Sanjay. He allllllllmost texts his mother but is distracted by Sam from the roleplay who has forgotten to button most of her shirt.
Super explicit sex follows with more chitchat than I want to hear. Brendan and the girls he has sex with seem like they’re all getting their cues from porn movies.
Eve meets Peter for dinner, he really does look like a wedding cake topper! Peter makes small talk while Eve scans the room, looking at the women particularly. She doesn’t even get past drinks before she bolts, she left something on at home!
Something on like her laptop full of girl on girl movies, maybe.
I am super duper wondering if Eve is not experimenting but full on gay at this point. HOWEVER. One of my dear friends and reader mentioned something I can’t believe I missed. What if Eve is discovering a bisexual identity? That fact that I failed to point that out is incredible to me, since that would be like me also missing a redhead from Canada.
She doesn’t go home, she goes to work where she takes off all her fancy clothes and dives into the pool naked. Eve! You’re at work! She looks so scared. Also full-on naked, and at WORK, but she’s not alone in the pool.
Roy is there at the end of the pool, he likes it here. She stops covering herself and hugs him, again: fully naked.
We’re out.
So we have issues of all kinds of complexity here. We’ve got a woman steeping herself up to her eyeballs in sex, a young man who treats women like adult actresses, an older man unable to control his sexual urges and somehow this is who Eve connects with. It sure seems like Eve’s fear is her sexual attraction to women, is that what she’s having trouble articulating? It’s almost 2020 but I don’t know if people feel like those stigmas are as gone as they appear to be. I may be overstating, maybe she’s experimenting, you know, the kind of thing I hear happens at college. Or bi! Let’s keep watching and find out! Cheers
