Revisiting the Religion of Messiness in Fleabag
Last Sunday after a particularly demoralizing night out, I took a turn too early down George Street, wandering between the “Ratty” and the Episcopal Church I had never given much thought to. It was early enough that no one would see me outside the building’s narthex, stopping under its awning in wait of a reason to go inside. Maybe it was the thick, running remnants of eye makeup, a headache pulsing with the force of a premonition, or that weird sudden urge to–I don’t know–repent? Either way, I opened my phone to text my friend from home: “When’s the last time you watched Fleabag?”
Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s television series enraptured, stunned, and sanctified audiences alike upon its 2016 release, chronicling the inner and outer dialogues of a woman—Fleabag— navigating grief, trauma, sex, and friendship in contemporary London. Lauded for its humor, unconventional approaches to character study (name a better breakage of the fourth wall), and sensitivity to the awkward, fragile, disgusting bits of being human, Fleabag revolutionized the messy genre. It’s Sex and the City for women who see every man who’s ever wronged them in the face of God, not Mr. Big. And then you watch the second season, which is all the same stuff except with the advent of a confusingly hot Priest and the sacrilegious affair he incites (it hasn’t passed for me, if you’re wondering), and see that the show is bisected into two love stories.
The second one makes itself known immediately with a bloodied, albeit sharply-dressed Fleabag addressing the lens during Season 2’s opening to declare to the audience “this is a love story.” The intimacy between her and her chosen man of God is nothing short of masterful, but I find it is the first season’s love story that truly woos me nowadays. It is the love Fleabag looks for, hoards, and eventually begrudgingly keeps for herself that redefined for me the reality of growing up and not always doing it well. I devoured all 6 episodes in one feverish sitting this past week, feeling that each laugh, every quiet understanding of both her intended and unintended failures, was an admission to a newfound adulthood—specifically the ugly, the uglier, and the ugliest.
Fleabag—not entirely unlike the epithet that brands her— is a reflection of the world she inhabits: perverted, amusing, irreverent, and complex. She bypasses the likable-unlikable debate we so often impose on protagonists, rendering a character who makes herself vulnerable to those living within and outside of the screen. Personally, I can’t think of a fictional character easier to root for. Her dysfunction is a deeply comforting one. Anything a friend or I have done to warrant embarrassment–and yes maybe even a little shame–can easily be put into perspective by her antics; every episode is a web of cautionary tales.
She lies, she drinks, she hurts other people, she hurts herself, yet without fail, emerges as someone you instinctively find yourself wanting to brush off and set upright again. For many of the show’s enjoyers, and presumably Waller-Bridge, Fleabag is an extension of the self, even if it is the parts we avoid taking credit for. It is hard to look at her without a compassion you want to extend to not only yourself, but anyone wandering around an empty campus before waking hours in last night’s makeup. Watching the show is a sacrament to be taken when growing pains are at their most pointed, or for whenever I am reminded of Andrew Scott’s existence and Irish accent. Either way, Fleabag achieves its own small rebirth on every rewatch.