EB suggested BBC3’s Fleabag on the Twitter; I need a laugh break after all the carnage nearing the end of Wentworth S1, so I’m finally onnit! Rolling the pilot after the break!
One second: the language and content are…slightly more adult than usual on the site, awright, as you were, carry on! We’re all adults with varying orifice sizes!
We open with Fleabag (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) explaining how to handle a booty call at 2 am on a Tuesday night, she’s WAAYYY more into managing expectations that I am. I mean, in my day, sure I’d get up but I wouldn’t dress or wait by the door and try any subterfuge: they’d be lucky if I brushed my teeth. I can’t THINK why I was single so long.
She’s been waiting for her crush Arsehole Guy (Ben Aldridge, who Renoblondee may know from Reign!!) and they immediately jump to it. She keeps trying to tell us stuff (very fourth wall), but he wants alllls her wobbly bits pointed in her direction. Somewhere in the middle, he goes for anal and she’s thinking, he’ll be thrilled, I’m drunk and he came all the way here…yeah OUCH.
She narrates the rest of the “date” during, she wakes to find him staring at her; he’s just so happy he was able to pull anal off, he’s never been able to before. She blames it on his large penis, but then he thanks her (sincerely and earnestly: if you ever thank a woman for sex, FECK OFF) and she spends the rest of the day wondering if she has a massive arsehole. I’m going to say yes, because unplanned anal NEVER happens like that with normal sized arseholes. Even 50 Shades of Grey understood about acclimation.
She makes eyes at a fella on the bus until she notices his giant rabbit overbite; she still plays along because apparently English is like Canadian: far too polite. She begs off based on a recent breakup, how did that end?
It seems she was caught masturbating watching a Barack Obama speech, while next to her boyfriend Harry (Hugh Skinner) who doesn’t understand the smoldering hotness of the POTUS. He packs and leaves and er. He’s really tried to help her through this tough time (what tough time?), but don’t try to talk him out of leaving, or say anything or show up drunk in her underwear at his house (again), it won’t work (she assures us it will) and he’s taking the posh shampoo.
She runs through everything for the stranger, sort of; great guy, very affectionate, blah blah great with her family blah laughed at all her jokes blah BOOOOO “sounds like a dickhead.” She gives the bus guy her number, with his assurance that he’ll treat her like a “nasty little b*tch” *he has her attention*, heh that was a joke *sad disappointed face*. This must be Bus Rodent (Jamie Demetriou) and one look at the time sends her running.
She has a meeting at the bank with the Manager (Hugh Dennis); he thinks her small business loan application was hilarious! Er that wasn’t the point, but he’s just happy to be considered since the…”sexual harassment case” she finishes for him.
She’s smoking hot, though, having run from the bus so she asks for water and then inexplicably lifts her sweater. He thinks she’s baiting him re: the aforementioned sexual harassment case and asks her to leave (hilariously) which she bollixes up with “I’m not trying to shag you! Look at yourself.” The meeting is over with three words “Perv” “Slut” “WOW”
Flea’s meeting her “beautiful, uptight and probably anorexic” sister; she’s almost late! Almost late is not late, CTFU, Claire (Sian Clifford) and we get a little family history. They grew up motherless, so their dad coped by fcking their godmother and sending them to feminist lectures. Seems solid, yeah?
These…are grown women, but they’re about to have an argument about the top Flea is wearing, as Claire “lost” it years ago. But first a flatout fight about the café, Flea figures the only thing worse about having a rich, high powered anorexic sister is having to ask one to bail you out. I’d say having to repeatedly bail out your profane, sticky-fingered angry sister is right up there as well, but I’m not sure. I think I’m the former. Flea’s just going to ask her. She’s really really just going to ask her but then Claire asks first so NO, she’s doing great and business is really really good and NO she doesn’t need money.
We get a full two minute scene of a customer setting up shop in her café, not buying anything but plugging in multiple devices and is he sure she can’t get him anything at all?
Claire shat in a sink
There is nothing that will ever be better in the sister-knocking-off-petard stakes than Claire, with her two degrees, husband and Burberry coat shitting in a sink and she knows it. Check and mate.
Flea’s concerned about her pants; can you actually get thrush from clothing? Where did she get these pants from anyway? Flash back to shopping with Boo (Jenny Rainsford) who er, doesn’t appreciate Flea’s clothing choices. And then had to buy her cheap pants because she’d so thoroughly offended Flea.
The WomenSpeak lecture starts, the speaker (Tree Waller-Smith – that’s a NAME!) tells of “opening women’s mouths since 1998” um. First, let’s do a group reassurance! Who in the audience would trade 5 years of their lives for the “perfect body”? Our sisters’ arms fly up so fast they almost take each other out; they’re “bad feminists” and that’s a hellz yeah. Claire wants her top back.
Won’t she get cold without a top? Nah, Flea’s got really hairy nipples and Claire tries to hug her but Flea misinterprets and they end up in a slapfight; never do that again! It was terrifying!
Claire asks if she wants to go for a drink? Nah, plans, then she asks the very next person who walks by. Then answers her phone, it’s Bus Rodent. They’re out for a drink and ooh. Those teeth. And he has a wardrobe palette that he’s explaining in great detail. So. He gets up to go for a drink and she takes money out of his wallet just before he turns around and catches her. She offers her place? Then his place? He doesn’t want to, he likes her and wants to date her, not get to know her huge arsehole, so she calls him pathetic and leaves. See guys? Sometimes it’s not you, it’s her. Timing. He hands her the money (that she stole) she dropped as she’s going, nice touch that.
She’s waiting for the bus when an extremely drunk woman with her breast out falls over; there’s nuzzling and she thinks Flea is “such a lovely man.” Flea tries to take her home, but the woman is NOT down, calling Flea a “naughty boy.” This is a woman who does not want to be alone, but does not want to be ‘round anyone who knows her either.
Flashback to drinking in the café with Boo (singing “another lunch break, another abortion…Modern Women”) so that’s it, she’s off to holler through a letterbox. I thought it was Harry’s place, since she is in her underwear and drunk, but no, she’s to see her dad (Bill Paterson). She waffles, but then spills; she’s worried she’s a “greedy, perverted, selfish, apathetic, cynical, depraved, morally bankrupt woman” who can’t even call herself a feminist, which he thinks she gets from her mother. He’s calling her a cab, don’t go upstairs.
What’s upstairs??!! Go there! It’s her godmother (Olivia Colman) who Flea thinks is a c*nt. Oh the awkwardness of the conversation is EVERYTHING. I’ve never seen a smile-off before! Cab’s here!
Oh and she tells the cab driver what’s going on; she opened the café with Boo (cute name!), but she’s dead now. Boo was trying to teach her boyfriend a lesson by walking into a bike lane but turns out those bikes move pretty fast and Boo got flipped into traffic and three people died. He doesn’t know what to say, so she takes off her jacket to show off her boobs and the expensive bronze statuette worth thousands she stole from her godmother and with that visual, we’re out.
Juuuust gonna swing up and put a language and content advisory up top, be right back. Okay! Well, that was…fun! I’m not usually one for shows that are primarily for shock value, but I LURVE Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s facial expressions, she’s hilarious, so I’m in for a few more. Cheers, thanks again EB for the suggestion!
