Stylist contributor Colin Crummy runs us through his internal monologue as he watched the most recent episode of Fleabag. Warning: spoilers ahead.
Everything comes to a head in episode four of Fleabag’s second season. Because this is the episode that the sexy priest asks Fleabag to “kneel”.
Granted, it’s during the context of confession. But the power of that word, and the frisson rippling within it, was enough to power countless gifs and endless screeds of thinkpieces about whether or not it’s OK to have a crush on the hot priest played by Andrew Scott. But, because this is Fleabag, this episode isn’t just about whiskey-fuelled confessional flirtation. It’s also about death, and grief, and Fleabag’s relationship with her father.
This is the BBC’s official plot synopsis for episode four: “the priest takes Fleabag for some quiet reflection leading to an unexpected revelation. After a day spent looking back on painful memories, Fleabag searches for solace, only to find more trouble.”
What did Stylist’s writer Colin Crummy think about the fourth episode of Fleabag’s second season? Here are his thoughts:
1. Say what you will about it (go on then), but the Catholic Church gives good wardrobe.
2. They appear to have stumbled across the only bit of London left with red telephone boxes.
3. I love that the priest has cottoned on to Fleabag’s ‘to camera’ bits.
4. A Quaker Meeting House: for fans of a more aesthetically minimalist religious experience.
5. You are invited to speak aloud your inner thoughts at a Quaker Meeting. I dread to think.
6. But at least Fleabag remains resolutely on brand, whatever the public occasion.
7. We’re back at the guinea pig café. It is not somewhere I would want to visit, I must admit.
8. Unsurprisingly, it is not exactly teeming with customers. Toast is £5 and they have that enforced conversation on Chatty Wednesdays. To be avoided.
9. This fourth wall-breaking, asides-to-camera stuff is genius. So difficult to pull off. What other show could feasibly do it? So good.
10. And not just a gimmick either. The priest is on to her and her gin in a tin business.
11. Anyway, he’s broken her. We’re getting to the nub of the matter with Fleabag. We’re talking death.
12. We’re back at Fleabag’s mother’s funeral with the soon-to-be-dead best friend. This is about to get too much.
13. “God, grief clearly agrees with you.” Quite an original thought at a funeral, that.
14. That stepmother is such a menace.
15. And that hair! So sinister.
16. OK, so I feel like the whole of Fleabag has been leading to this conversation with Fleabag and her dad on the day of the funeral. And it does not disappoint.
17. The way her dad says his line… “Buck up. Smile. Charm. Off we go…” I am broken.
18. Then the chat with the friend who is about to die too. I die.
19. And then we get a blast of Jenny from the Block. That’s confident writing.
20. Fleabag and The Priest have moved on to whiskey. Whiskey is trouble. I smell trouble…
21. Confession. You know they used to make seven-year-old kids do their first confession on the church altar in front of everyone? As I said, the Catholic church gives good costume.
22. I see, so it’s not really sex that Fleabag is after. It’s guidance.
23. But she’s going to get sex. With the priest. If they can work out how to undo his skirt and trousers combo. God’s got fashion smarts, it turns out.
24. Sex interrupted by falling iconography! God’s a clever, all-seeing bastard. That, or the priest really needs to go to IKEA and sort out some proper wall hangings.
Fleabag is on Mondays at 10.35pm on BBC One and on iPlayer. The second series is available on Amazon Prime Video in the US from 17 May.
Images: BBC
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