Fleabag S1:E2 Write That Down Recap

Fleabag Cover

We met Fleabag last recap, getting her backstory and far too many details of an unlikely hookup; she also returned her sister’s sweater, met and stole from a Bus Rodent AND her father and godmother; I can’t think of anything else SFW to put above the jump, so let’s roll E2 after the break!

So! Last time Flea and her massive arsehole were looking for money for her failing café; is that why she stole the bronze statuette or was that just a giant eff you to her godmother (who is the fantastic Olivia Colman)? I took it as the two fingers up, but maybe Flea was thinking ahead.

We open on the bus and OMIGOD!!!!! “Sail” by awolnation is playing!!! I love this song; Sonic 102.9 plays the SHITE out of it!! Must post

Sorry, sorry, she’s scoping out another dude on mass transit, but she can see his whole face, so.  Oh. And then everyone starts grasping their sides in pain in time with the music while she watches. Pain cramp then deadpan then pain cramp then “I think my period is coming.”

Flea shows up at her sister’s house unannounced; do people really stand in the doorway of their own homes and tell visitors that they should have texted first? I’m not saying I wouldn’t want to, I’m just saying it seems like the sort of thing you mutter to a spouse after while getting some jerk tea instead of reading the book you were halfway through.

Flea doesn’t wanna see perfect Claire with her new haircut anyway; she’s here to see Martin (Martin gets a deep voiced frowny-face intonation for us – man I need gifs), Claire’s hubs. Martin takes a moment to shut down his computer (Flea has a tenner on Asian gang-bangs and that reminds me SO MUCH of a homestay situation I roomed with briefly in Vancouver. Has anyone, ever, since the history of time: NOT checked an internet search history when warned to not click?)

I don’t like Martin (Brett Gelman) already; five words in

Flea gets rid of Claire; she and Martin need to discuss Claire’s surprise party and Claire makes me laugh: but I don’t like *er* surp*gah* but *argh* okay! Gone

He deals in art pieces, though, so she wants him to sell the statuette (done by a…market artist…that she picked up…in the market) but without telling Claire. He says: or what? So she threatens to tell Claire about him watching gang-bangs. Don’t do that. Again. He stomps out to photograph the piece while I rush with Flea to his computer. He was making a name necklace like Carrie from SATC. We are disappoint.

Flea takes her leave with a roll of stolen toilet paper; it’s pathological, the stealing, yeah? It reminds me of Libby in Dark Places except funnier. Claire asks about Harry, and Flea says they’re doing great, engaged even! She can’t seem to stop herself from lying either; seems reflexive. Harry is at the flat packing up the rest of his stuff, really, and he used to say awesome things like “You’re not like other girls. You can keep up *head tap*” Oy vey

She’s back at her flat now, it looks sparkling! He always does a great job cleaning up the apartment when they break up; as though it was a “crime scene.” She admires his commitment to their breakups, she’s toying with the idea of timing them to coincide with when the flat gets a bit dirty.

He always leaves one thing behind to come back for, however, a toy dinosaur that she takes with her to pee while making lists in her head of all the people she can have sex with now. She’s not obsessed, exactly, she just can’t stop thinking about it. “The performance of it, the awkwardness of it, the drama of it, the moment you realize someone wants YOUR.BODY” but not so much the feeling of it. Oh Flea.

She’s got 48 hours until Harry comes back, better get on it*standing up to wipe herself*AND WHY IS THIS A THING???

Flea’s feeling foxy; walking down the street, she can’t BELIEVE how attractive she is! She spies a man walking towards her and makes some unkind observations about his size and boy she sure hopes she doesn’t make a sex offender out of him *AGAGHDSKBVDVSDJBVDFVDSSSSSSSSF SJVH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!DHJBHBVSVHJBSFVC AKHJ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!*, oh sorry, I mean, rape jokes are just so edgy and funny. It’s awesome women have loosened up and jumped into that ring too. He passes saying something derogatory I diiiiidn’t quite catch and then she almost gets ridden down by a bike messenger, which conjures up the memory of poor miserable Boo about to walk to her death.

It’s still very quiet in the café, so Flea amuses herself by flirtatiously fetching cucumber from the floor in front of her sole customer (who looks like Hot Balki), I get it. I used to get frisky at work while bored, too, but there were never any cucumbers about ;(. Hot Balki buys a cheese sandwich to go (12 pounds 55???????? London) and then asks who Boo is; he recognizes her, is she famous?

Boo’s death hit the papers, after she hit a bike, then a car, then another bike. He leaves (sorry, I haven’t any change *sad face* him: *incredulous face*) and please, don’t show us what happens to Boo. They keep showing us little flashes and it’s all about shock, this show…

Speaking of shock; “the next man who walks in here is getting ridden to death. Dad!” He asks her the same way she was going to ask Claire for money: did you take the sculpture? Did you take it? Did you take the sculpture? No, no, so now he can go, just in time for some actual customers to come in! They’re just in from yoga and want “hot, organic-y food” type things, like risotto. Can she do that? Sure

She’s at the grocery store, picking up risotto and tampons (Regular or…Super? Super!) dropping the corks when she spies Arsehole Guy leaning fetchingly against a stack of processed cereals. They joke about her “tight bleeding vagina” “hot” for a bit and whether her flow is light as he hopes “never, ever is” and he’ll be calling her later. I love that we just had a full conversation about periods on TV because the Internets tells me that never happens. I will say I’ve never discussed my period before setting up a booty call, but you know, some of those could have probably used that foresight.

Flea microwaves risotto while the yoga customers are completely misunderstanding themselves; how can they claim to not be defining themselves by how they look when they’re describing themselves as having a “great fucking body”? Flea and I roll our eyes simultaneously. There’s a bit about one of the women not “blowing this body on a baby” but to be honest, I couldn’t sort out what they were saying, but it ended with her deciding to leave her husband and the two of them freaking out over a guinea pig.

I mean. It’s a guinea pig, not a rat, come on ladies! This is Henry!! I love that name. 2 years ago she gave Henry to Boo for a birthday present (the most important thing is that if you don’t like it, we can’t take it back. I’m sorry, I panicked) and he has the coolest cage inside the café! Which he keeps getting out of, damnit.

Okay, now the name sounds like Hillary, and while I like that name, it’s not Henry, izzit? I would murder for some subtitles. Boo got very attached to guinea pigs in general, and the café is covered with pics of them and it clearly still hurts our Flea. A brittle “drink?”

And we’re at Arsehole Guy’s place, where he’s feeding her prosciutto off his finger in the grossest way possible. He’s just waiting to get her in the bath so he can ask existential questions and I would not be single again for all the tea in Newfoundland.

HAHAHHAHA some of their questions are hilarious though:

AG: what are you afraid of?

F: losing the currency of youth

F: when did you realize you were so good looking?

AG: 9, but shit got real around 11. You know. Aunts got weird.

HAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHA Er

They’re at it! He spends the first five minutes exclaiming about how small her bewbs are (literally never happened to me. Ever) before rolling her onto her side to make a move on to her other orifices while her ovaries are making her scream for

Harry! Safe place Harry agreed to meet her for a drink and it’s pretty ridiculous that he broke up with her for masturbating to the POTUS, isn’t it? He’s crying over Cats, though, so. Who was he with at Cats? A female work friend…and she pulls out the toy dinosaur. Now he really means it this time; he does NOT want to get back together and

Cut to her second bounce of the evening and I totally understand why she doesn’t like sex, really, just the parts around it. Harry only wants to make love and “he’s wasting” her. There was an old guy that used to breathe out and shout “you’re so young” on every thrust and she masturbates to that. To everything and all the time, really. Harry finishes and she waits until he gets off her and then gets herself off while he watches in mounting dismay before kissing her on the cheek.

The next morning; he’s been thinking, maybe she shouldn’t masturbate so much. He’s hidden all their (“our” vibrators? Flea eyebrow arch), and not so they can find them *sad face*, but so they can be more in touch with each other as a couple! And on that note, let’s try to surprise each other every day! He says to not eat too much before dinner then says goodbye to her and her vagina separately

Claire’s into see Flea for lunch, she wants a tomato sandwich (on rye, but she’ll have to throw up regular bread instead today *sad face*) and about this surprise party…she’d like to suggest maybe Friday at 7:30 and look, why doesn’t she do it and save all the trouble, she can do it and act surprised and it’s all done. 7:30 at her house. She rifles through a stack of “OVERDUE” “FINAL NOTICE” bills on the counter, does Flea need money? No, and that will be 25 pounds for the tomato sandwich. “London”

It’s surprise time at home, guess who forgot?? She comes up with a great idea while he’s in the shower: a ninja surprise! With a balaclava and a giant butcher knife.

He screams and he cries and screams and clutches his chest and he’s terrified and Flea and I feel terrible for laughing while he’s asking about her day while naked and crying but. There it is. She’ll go get some wine!

By that she means steal wine, of course, again, and arrives back at the flat to find a very disappointed Harry sitting at his Surprise table in a green towel and a disproving manner. It seems he checked his search history. You can probably guess the rest.

She asks why he’s being so sexy and he says as straight as possible: don’t make me hate you. Loving you is painful enough.

She suggests he write that down? That was really good, for your work, for music

He writes it down

There’s someone at work who loves him, he told her they couldn’t be together because he just had to know: does she want to be alone? He doesn’t hate her, he’s scared for her. *pause*

He’s going to write that down, she tells us

He writes that down

He’ll pack, but he isn’t going to clean again (still looks good), but we saw that he left the dinosaur, so

Oh and then he comes back for the dinosaur and Flea gives us a terrified smile. We’re oot