Fleabag Sea­son 2, Episode 1 review – A pas­sive aggres­sive party

It took a while for the steadi­ly welling tears to final­ly shed in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s inti­mate­ly craft­ed first sea­son of Fleabag. It is all the more sur­pris­ing, then, to see the series’ long-await­ed sea­son two pre­mière open on a dra­mat­ic image of the tit­u­lar char­ac­ter dab­bing at her blood­ied face in the mir­ror of what is clear­ly a classy restaurant’s bath­room. Wip­ing the blood from under her nose, she stares her reflec­tion down with a mix of defeat and deter­mi­na­tion before turn­ing to the equal­ly punched-up face of a young woman reach­ing her hand out from the bath­room floor.

Yes, Waller-Bridge, the queen of pen­ning excru­ci­at­ing­ly intense, pas­sive aggres­sive fam­i­ly din­ner sit­u­a­tions, is back – and with a delight­ful vengeance. While every­one is sit­ting around the restau­rant table in a des­per­ate attempt to demon­strate their per­son­al growth, it is more than appar­ent that the only per­son who has gen­uine­ly matured since we last caught up with this dys­func­tion­al fam­i­ly is, in fact, Fleabag.

She qui­et­ly sits through this pathet­ic spiel of com­pet­i­tive enlight­en­ment, allows the bel­li­cose dag­gers thrown at her from all angles to bounce off her – despite some of them pen­e­trat­ing deep – and keeps a rel­a­tive­ly neu­tral smile on her face while the fam­i­ly bla­tant­ly ignores her. If it weren’t for the sev­er­al cig­a­rette breaks she uses as an escape to breathe, we may have actu­al­ly bought her non­cha­lant stance.

On one such break, her innate­ly awk­ward and for­ev­er blun­der­ing Dad (Bill Pater­son) acknowl­edges the lack of naugh­ti­ness she has dis­played through­out the din­ner and pre­vi­ous months. And while he seems some­what proud of her hav­ing grown out of her con­fronta­tion­al self, it doesn’t quite seem as though he believes her to be in a good place either – per­haps sub­con­scious­ly he realis­es she is at risk of loos­ing her­self by try­ing to be some­one she is clear­ly not. Hence the belat­ed birth­day present: a coupon for a coun­selling ses­sion. Then again, it could have been just anoth­er side­ways attack on her, cour­tesy of the God­moth­er (Olivia Colman).

It is the rev­e­la­tion of this gift – one that, accord­ing to Dad, was meant as a ​“bed­room present” and is not one you open in front of every­one – that caus­es the evening to final­ly take a chal­leng­ing turn when Claire (Sian Clif­ford), out of all peo­ple, insists that the only way to live is to, ​“face who you are and suf­fer the con­se­quences”. All this com­ing from a woman who, just moments ago, admit­ted to her approach to pos­i­tiv­i­ty being the act of bot­tling every­thing up and bury­ing it deep nev­er to resur­face again.

It is at this point that Claire can no longer believe her own lies, lead­ing to a mis­car­riage in the bath­room. Upon find­ing her in this vul­ner­a­ble posi­tion, Fleabag is imme­di­ate­ly accused of being res­olute to find a way to make it about her­self – not the only time this evening some­one chal­lenges her on this. The real­i­ty, how­ev­er, is that while she may have done so in the past, her behav­iour points at noth­ing more than a young woman in search of mean­ing­ful con­nec­tions, not competition.

For a moment we are fooled into believ­ing that this inti­mate moment in the bath­room could reignite the strange bond between Claire and Fleabag. Instead, the mount­ing pres­sure of the atmos­phere breaks and sud­den­ly the fam­i­ly is caught in a hail of truths, lies and manip­u­la­tions that erupts into a storm of punch­es – lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly. And that is ulti­mate­ly what this life – and this won­der­ful show – is all about: read­ing between the lines and catch­ing the punch­es as they come.