Fleabag

Fleabag Season 1

Created, Written by, and Starring: Phoebe Waller-Bridge
Streaming on Prime Video.

Fleabag has the obscurity of a French New Wave film - both in terms of style and substance. I've seen an episode a few years, but I wanted to revisit this and finish the first season for some reason. Here, the style almost disrupts the storytelling and me being a big sucker for style - I was enjoying it. But after a point, her looking into the camera and predicting what the other characters would do wasn't as much fun. Because we know that the writer can make the character know what the others would do. So the intelligence of the character felt a bit convenient. But apart from this, I liked the general observations she was making about what'd usually happen after a fling. It's very interesting how this was adapted from a play. I'm curious to know how the 4th wall thing was done in the play. I'm sure it'd have been an interactive play. 

I liked how her character was unfolding throughout the show. The stuff that they show in the last episode, added a beautiful layer to her character, which was pretty consistent throughout the show. Even in the humor, there is a sense of detachment in the character - which is what the stuff in the last episode explained. I like the complicated relationship with her sister, and with her father. I loved how even I took her side, and started hating the step-mother till the father comes to her and says, I deserve to move on and be happy. With that one line, my perspective flipped. I was like, yeah, why am I too judging the step mother? That's when I realized how beautiful the writing was - it took us inside her head and made us empathize with her so much that we lose objectivity for a while. I don't want to urgently watch the 2nd season, because I don't know what's in store. But I'll definitely watch it sometime later.