Fleabag’s Season One Finale Took a Darker Turn

[TMC]

https://popculturereferences.com/fle...a-darker-turn/

Today, we look at the finale of the first season of Fleabag, which marked a major change in the series.



Today, we look at the finale of the first season of Fleabag, which marked a major change in the series.

This is a delayed Year of Great TV Episodes, where every day from March 2nd on this year (plus January 1st-March 1st of 2024), we’ll take a look at great TV episodes. Note that I’m not talking about “Very Special Episodes” or episodes built around gimmicks, but just “normal” episodes of TV shows that are notable only because of how good they are.

All this month, I’ll be spotlighting great women-centric TV episodes.

Fleabag was a brilliant comedy series written and starring Phoebe Waller-Bridge that was originally a one-woman stage show.

The main character, who we know only as “Fleabag” (the TV show never actually calls her that, but the stage show did, and since the show is still called Fleabag, I think it’s fair to still call her Fleabag) is struggling with life following the death of her best friend (who she opened a small struggling cafe with), and her rough relationship with her family members, including her Type A sister Claire (Sian Clifford) and Claire’s alcoholic American husband (Brett Gelman), who made a pass at Fleabag earlier in the first season.

Fleabag’s father (Bill Paterson) is dating their Godmother (Olivia Colman) after their mother’s death. Fleabag hates Godmother, who is doing a “Sexhibition,” with art based on sex. The finale has the “Sexhibition” finally occur, and Fleabag discovers that she was intended to work as a waitress for the show.

It does not go well.

Fleabag meets her ex-boyfriend, Harry, with his new girlfriend, and it is clear that their relationship is truly over. She also loses her current hookup partner, ******* Guy, who she invited to the Sexhibition just because Godmother finds him attractive.

Meanwhile, Claire has a possible job opening in another country that would be huge for her career, but her husband doesn’t want her to go. Fleabag decides to tell her about the pass the husband made on her, but in the end, Claire decides to believe her husband when he says that Fleabag came on to HIM (she obviously knows the truth deep down, but doesn’t want to admit it), and that’s when we learn the truth about Fleabag’s best friend, Boo.

We know that she effectively killed herself (by mistake. She was only trying to injure herself for attention, but she was accidentally killed instead) when she found out her boyfriend cheated on her, and now we learn for the first time that it was FLEABAG who her boyfriend cheated with (even though, again, deep down Claire knows her husband is the type of scumbag who probably DID make a pass at her sister).

After making a big mess at Godmother’s show, Fleabag is shocked when her father effectively chooses Godmother over her, asking for some distance from his daughter.

Her cafe is failing, and now all of her family is cutting her off (and all of her possible romantic partners are done with her).

Throughout the first season, Fleabag is a total trainwreck, but she’s very much a COMEDIC trainwreck. You can imagine it as an entertaining piece of plate spinning, and now, all of the plates are coming down crashing over her, and all of the comedy is taking a backseat to how DARK her life is.

There is a BRIEF respite from the darkness at the end of the episode. Fleabag had tried to get a loan for the cafe from a Bank Manager early in the season, and it failed. She kept running into the Bank Manager at weird places all throughout the season, and at the end of the season, he visits her at her cafe, and he surprises her by offering her a loan, so there’s SOME light at the end of the tunnel, but things still generally look BLEAK.

This leads to the second season’s premiere, which I wrote about in the past (it’s one of the best half hours in sitcom history).