This isn’t quite like Abed on Community understanding that he’s a character on a show, his fate at the whims of whoever’s writing his story. So at minimum, she’s compartmentalizing her feelings about her late friend. But thoughts of Boo always make Fleabag sad, where she is utterly at ease with the person on the other side of the camera. (*) I’ve seen it suggested that the direct addresses are to Boo, especially since they don’t exist in flashbacks to when Boo was still alive. A few moments later, she insists that she does have friends, and when the shrink asks if she has someone to talk to, Fleabag winks at us(*). She flashes on Boo, looks uncomfortable and tries to change the subject with her trademark self-deprecating humor. It’s unclear whether Boo knew that last part, but the point is that Fleabag’s best friend is gone and she rightly blames herself for it.
Worse, she stepped into a bike lane - in what Fleabag insists wasn’t a suicide attempt, but could have easily been - after learning that her boyfriend cheated on her… with Fleabag herself. This is a painful subject, because one of the show’s most important bits of backstory is that Fleabag’s best friend Boo (Jenny Rainsford) has recently died. As Fleabag runs through her many personal problems, the doctor asks if she has any friends. In the second episode, she attends a session with a therapist (Fiona Shaw, who worked with Waller-Bridge on Killing Eve). As Fleabag’s lawyer, for instance, tells her over and over how good he is at sex, she in turn tells us over and over that he won’t be, followed by a quick cut to the pair mid-coitus, where she admits with pleasant surprise, “He’s really good at it.” But as the season goes on, those turns to the camera begin to signify something sadder: Fleabag talks to us because she has no one else who will listen. Season Two continues to deploy the direct address as the perfect comic button to a scene. But the most important one may be the evolution of how Waller-Bridge uses the direct address. And it took great advantage of Waller-Bridge’s expressive, exaggerated features, where a mere pop of the eyes could be as hilarious as a sharply-written punchline.įleabag‘s belated Season Two is even funnier and more emotional than the first for a variety of reasons.
When Fleabag‘s title character, played by Waller-Bridge, turned to talk to us, or simply rolled her eyes at us, it was an added comic treat to an already wickedly funny show.
Utterly stuck in wall 2 series#
This has been going on since the medium’s early days in sitcoms like The Jack Benny Program, and has continued over the decades in series as wildly different from one another as Saved By the Bell and House of Cards.
Utterly stuck in wall 2 tv#
When the first season of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag debuted back in 2016, it seemed to fit into a long tradition of TV shows where characters break the fourth wall and address the audience directly.
This post contains spoilers for all of Fleabag Season Two, now available on Amazon Prime Video.
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