Let me be the first to say that I’m appalled at how late I am to the game on Phoebe Waller-Bridge. If you don’t know who I’m talking about, she’s the showrunner and executive producer for the first season of Killing Eve, is the co-writer of the upcoming Bond film No Time To Die, and has won three Emmy awards for her show Fleabag which she wrote and starred in. Yeah, she’s kind of a big deal.
It doesn’t stop there: the British comedy-drama Fleabag is based on Waller-Bridge’s one-woman show of the same name that debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. If you weren’t already impressed by this woman’s talent, you seriously should be now. I will warn that Fleabag is filled to the brim with awkward, sometimes cringe-worthy humour (one that British television tends to utilize quite a bit), so if you suffer from secondhand embarrassment, it may take you a couple episodes to get past it. Stick with it, though: I firmly believe that all viewers will, at a certain point, begin to recognize those awkward and mortifying moments as unapologetic candidness. It’s precisely this candidness that Waller-Bridge applies not just to the surface-level aesthetic of Fleabag, but to its core themes. She is simply not afraid: not afraid to show the moments of artless oddness in sex, the inelegance in relationships, the messiness in family or the profound agony in grief and shame. No, Waller-Bridge doesn’t shy away from any of it – she dives headfirst and revels in it.
See the trailer for Season 1 of Fleabag below:
Fleabag, who is not given an actual name, is a Londoner who struggles to deal with a dark event from her past while grappling with her present. She is a self-described pervert and sex addict, the owner of a failing independent bakery, and has an extremely dysfunctional family. She frequently breaks the fourth wall to the point of it becoming one of the main aspects of the series, and does so in an unbelievably sharp, quick-witted way. Every one of Waller-Bridge’s asides are witty, and it’s awe-inspiring to see how she manages to hit comedy gold every single time. Fleabag is so fast-paced in its comedy that it barely gives you the time to blink, let alone breathe, before the next quip comes along.
As the first season unfolds, viewers are fed information bit-by-bit until Fleabag’s story comes together cohesively. The way Waller-Bridge accomplishes this is wickedly brilliant, creating an addictive show that is never hesitant to explore the deep, dark, ugly truths of human nature and the self-destructive tendencies to boot. The second season takes the content of the first and continues in a fresh and even more surprising way, all while maintaining the roots that made the first season so solid.
Going back to the topic of the fourth wall, even this device is subverted in Season 2 when another character notices when she breaks the fourth wall. The only way I can describe this is the breaking-of-the-breaking-of-the fourth wall. This iteration is nothing I have ever seen before, and while it may sound like it’s too odd to work, I assure you that the show ties it together in a way that makes complete sense. And that’s the thing about Fleabag: the show is able to flesh out its concepts in a shockingly short amount of time. There are only 12 episodes in total, which is not a lot of time to tell a complete story, and yet, it is pulled off effortlessly. Themes and plot lines are tied together in the best and often most surprising of ways, and nothing goes unfinished.
It’s also wildly intriguing to really think about the fact that almost nobody is given a real name in the series, save for a handful of characters (Claire, Martin, Boo, etc). Our main character is Fleabag but, since it’s a placeholder name, nobody actually calls her that in the show itself. When you think about this from a script writing perspective, it’s kind of wondrous. I can only imagine how difficult a thing it is to accomplish to create believable dialogue wherein the main character is never addressed by name.
Waller-Bridge as Fleabag is just as magnetic as she is outrageous, and transcends the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope by being utterly her own self. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl has been done to death, and is at its core a problematic and frustrating trope. It’s one that Waller-Bridge subverts entirely, and whether this is intentional or not, her efforts benefit the storytelling world in a massive way. Fleabag may be eccentric and girlish, but she also faces the consequences of her actions. She’s plagued by very real, very tangible traumas. She does not exist simply for the sake of a male character. And ultimately, she is not a fantasy. Fleabag is deeply and inherently flawed, and I say “inherently” because the very title Waller-Bridge has given the character is the most self-deprecating one can get. She is not depicted as a character to aspire to, and she is not a glamorized, fantasy version of a “hot mess”. She is Fleabag: a complex character dealing with many, many problems. She is human.
The visual nature of Fleabag, at times, incorporates elements of the stage (which is apt, given its origins) onto the screen using jarring music, dramatic lighting, and frenzied visuals. This is a hard thing to pull off, and yet, it works. The show is able to hook its viewers so quickly that, in a short 12 episodes, it makes you so invested in its characters lives that you feel you’ve known them your whole life. The show, whose Season 2 finale is also the series finale, ends on perhaps the most heartbreaking yet simultaneously uplifting note. The story of Fleabag concludes on the highest note possible, bringing life to the clichéd idiom of “going out with a bang” without making it feel cliché .
Fleabag is prodigious, shocking, artful television. It will make you laugh, and at the most unexpected of times, it will hit you hard. Phoebe Waller-Bridge couples her expert comedic timing with some of the most anticipatory drama I’ve ever seen. Stage acting comes together with the visuals of television and creates Fleabag, a show that makes an unparalleled mark on the film and TV world. It defies expectations, conventions, and at the best of times, its own self. If you haven’t yet seen Fleabag, go and ask your friends with Amazon Prime or BBC iPlayer for their login information and load it up.
Immediately.
~ Z ~
Photo by David Dibert on Unsplash
