I watched Fleabag
[Originally finished April 6th, 2023. Rating: 8/10]
Well, this is a bit of a sudden shift, but I’ve decided to start posting media thoughts on this site instead of Twitter. I was pretty happy updating my media thread there, but seeing as that site is increasingly going down the drain, I decided it’d be better to switch to one that I could feel better about continuing to post on. Plus, Medium is a lot less restrictive on giving more elaborate thoughts, so hopefully talking about the stories I’ve experienced will be even more rewarding when I don’t feel compelled to hold back the length of my posts.
Anyways.
Fleabag is a wildly entertaining show that takes advantage of its comedic structure brilliantly to get across its ideas and character writing in pretty inventive ways. The center of this is obviously Fleabag herself, a fantastic protagonist with a uniquely captivating screen presence. Her central character gimmick of ‘talking to the audience’ is so loaded in what it represents: dissociation from the ugly realities of her life, glamorizing herself for an omnipresent observer that she feels her every action must appeal to, trying to force her life into a predictable and clichéd narrative so she can be in perfect control of everyone acting the exact ways they need to for it, and probably even more that I’m forgetting to mention.
It’s kind of ridiculous how well this is integrated into what the show is actually about, that being a hypersexual woman struggling with grief and guilt while navigating a misogynist society, a family comprised pretty much entirely of people who neglect her if they don’t already actively hate her, and an assortment of relationships in which she consistently struggles with forming genuine emotional connections as opposed to just performing her way through them. The absurdly upbeat mood Fleabag frames her life with completely clashes with how depressing it actually is. But of course, this is exactly what makes the writing work so well.
Speaking of her family, another character who’s notably good is her sister Claire. I’d say everyone in Fleabag’s family is well executed to some extent in terms of what they add to the show, but Claire stands out in her own right for being a really good foil to her sister in many ways — where Fleabag glorifies her own emotional repression by presenting the image of someone who’s sexy, funny, and interesting, Claire glorifies her emotional repression by presenting the image of someone who’s dignified, professional, and successful. These opposing reactions to a lot of shared struggles gives them a great dynamic where they both understand each other really well while also kind of resenting each other for having what the other doesn’t. Alongside Fleabag’s own adventures in trying to find a fulfilling relationship, this dynamic is the other main thing that held up most of the show’s quality for me.
I wouldn’t want to leave out Fleabag’s relationship with the priest from the second season though. While I don’t think it’s quite as strong of a plotline as a lot of other fans of the show seem to think it is and prefer multiple of the other parts, I do think it’s a solid addition to the story. Having a conflicted dynamic with someone else who also struggles with processing their humanity in relation to constantly appealing to a higher audience is definitely an interesting way to wrap up her character. I guess the thing that vaguely dissatisfies me about it is that the priest doesn’t feel like he gets an especially satisfying character resolution for as much as he’s built up as a major character in the season. Which isn’t terrible I guess, since Fleabag’s struggles are supposed to be the main point of interest here with the other characters just contextualizing them, but at some point when a cast member becomes a major enough part of a show, I start wanting to see more of their own story as opposed to them just being there to prop up the writing of someone else. Like, for all the religious imagery and motifs associated with the second season, I would never recommend it to someone as an exploration of religion, because it’s mostly using religion as a framing device for its main character whose story doesn’t actually have all that much to do with it.
All in all though, Fleabag is a really great show that absolutely deserves its popularity. It’s got extremely good humor, loaded and complex portrayals of its subject matter, lots of engaging character dynamics, very clever (if a bit overused near the end) framing techniques, and it’s just a great time I could recommend to pretty much anyone especially with how short and easy to binge it is. While I haven’t been experiencing too much media recently, this is definitely something I’m glad I found the time for.
