The Beauty Of Contradictions In “Fleabag”
Written by Josie Brandmeier, Arts Staff Writer
***** Disclaimer: This piece contains spoilers for the TV series “Fleabag.”
If I told you that the most magical TV show I’ve watched this year was a show following the narrative of a cynical, thirty-something year old, sexually promiscuous British woman who owns a café, accompanied by a dead best friend, a bad relationship with her family, and a pet hamster, I would not sound very convincing. “But she looks into the camera!” I would say. Well, so does Jim from “The Office,” and so do the characters in “House of Cards” and every historical Adam McKay movie, you could argue.
The premise of “Fleabag,” the brief two-season British comedy written by and starring Phoebe Waller-Bridge, doesn’t seem like the most exciting or original thing on paper. But the magic of “Fleabag” is in the ordinary, as it plays on the dramatic irony that occurs in regular life.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who wrote and starred in the show as the titular character (she’s not given a name besides “Fleabag”) packs a punch in only a dozen twenty-minute episodes. The story is told in a first-person narrative from Fleabag, who cheats to the camera as if we are part of an audience watching her performance. A lot of the story is implied, giving us a feeling that we are on a need-to-know basis. This is all the more powerful.
Though Fleabag forms a close relationship with the audience, you get the sense that she is always performing for the viewer, sharing everything but never revealing vulnerabilities. We learn of her troubles through moments of ridiculousness. Her mother’s death is explained through the story of when she looked too good at her mother’s funeral and couldn’t stop getting compliments. Her uncertain relationship with faith is tested at a Quaker meeting where one is expected to sit in silence until they are moved by the spirit. She is unconvinced until she is moved by a seemingly-magic force to stand up and speak. Her profound truth is this: “Sometimes I think I wouldn’t be such a feminist if I had bigger tits.”
This is what Fleabag excels in, reveling in those uncomfortable and kind of embarrassing truths. No one wants to admit that they spent their mother’s funeral thinking about how glowing their skin was, or that “hair is everything” and the things we spend a lot of our energy thinking about are not really that profound. People want to be seen as enticing and brilliant, not regular and superficial. Fleabag’s character explores how we change our behavior based on how we want to be seen with the very literal plot device of her performing to an ever-present imaginary audience.
Fleabag’s performance is broken down in one of the most meta moments of television I’ve ever watched. In season two, Fleabag is romantically involved with a priest (dubbed “Hot Priest” by the internet) who notices that she disappears to talk to someone “off-camera.” The priest looks into the camera himself, breaking the mirage of the fourth wall, and therefore breaking the wall that Fleabag has put up herself. The moment is hilarious, shocking and proves that the “cheating to the camera” thing is more than a gimmick.
“Fleabag” seems to break every rule of television. Most of the characters are unlikeable and don’t have names. The “will-they-won’t-they” couple doesn’t end up together because the priest chooses Jesus, and the series ends with a CGI animated fox running across the screen. A major rule it seemed to break is that it ended right when it was in its stride. Waller-Bridge announced that she did not intend to make any more episodes of “Fleabag,” even though the show has blown up in popularity this year, endorsed by even Barack Obama.
But that follows the ironic contradictions of life that “Fleabag” best demonstrates. A show can have a strong ending even if the story could have gone on; life can be disappointing yet magical; what you care about can be frivolous but important; a person can be faithless but hopeful; grief can be painful but hilarious. I only wish Waller-Bridge had graced us with more episodes, even though I know the show did not need to continue. That’s the cognitive dissonance that “Fleabag” is all about.