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For "Fleabag" Fans (II)

1. What a major coup at the Emmy Awards. Nominations not just for the four actresses we would expect--but a fifth nomination, for Fiona Shaw, as well!

2. The second season establishes three love triangles and resolves them all in the final episode.

Dad: torn between family and crazed girlfriend. Claire: torn between husband and Finnish lover. Hot Priest: torn between Fleabag and God.

NPR--often irksome in its hyper-sensitivity w/r/t political correctness--*is* correct in its response to the Hot Priest subplot. Hot Priest abuses his power and then prances off scot-free--and this is especially galling given the many evils the Catholic Church has been responsible for. It's also frustrating to see Fleabag in such a passive role in the final episode. I think Andrew Scott--overlooked by the Emmys, despite giving a performance that surely surpasses Fiona Shaw's--has been weirdly punished for the writing. I think if the Hot Priest plot had been handled more confidently--in the revisions room--Scott would take home some awards this year.

3. What I loved throughout this show: the touches of absurdity. The lustful stepson with the bassoon (who seems to come from Sondheim's "A Little Night Music"). The glamorous friends Olivia Colman has collected, as if they were trophies: "She is a surrogate! He is Iranian AND deaf!" The twisty history of the tiny chesty sculpture. The trajectory of Claire's hairstyles.

4. What a treat--as well--to discover that Olivia Colman doesn't know Dad's name, and that Dad copes with his marital ambivalence by means of a mouse: "I set up this friendly trap in the attic and I had to check to see if a mouse had been detained here. I didn't want a mouse slowly dying, because then the friendly trap isn't so friendly..." Of course, Dad is speaking both about the mouse *and* about his marital situation. A little detail so odd and surprising that it seems to have been taken directly from life.

5. You can't expect perfection at all times, but "Fleabag" came close. How exciting it is to imagine what Phoebe Waller-Bridge might do next in the world!
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