Fleabag: This is a Love Story. Kneel.

Fleabag. I owe you Fleabag. If you read my last post about Killing Eve, I promised to write about Fleabag next. Prepare. This is going to be one of those situations. You’ll postpone watching it, despite me telling you it's the best thing on television right now. You’ll reject it until you run out of the shows you like, only to watch it with the fuck it disposition. The fuck it will slowly merge into — how could I live without this, within a few minutes of the show.

By the end of season 2, you’ll be weeping gin & tonic tears.

Fleabag is dubbed by many as the best TV Show on television right now. It was written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, prior to Killing Eve. To encourage you, I need to tell you this show consists of 2 Seasons. Each Season has 6 episodes that are 22 minutes long. You can totally take this on. In one day. I’ve recommended lots of movies/shows to you in the past decade, but never with such conviction as Fleabag.

It’s almost like I can’t talk to you or be your friend, until and unless you see this. It’s like a right of passage, a secret that bonds us, the point of existence we finally figured out. (Thanks Sam!)

But seriously, now. You have to watch this. Every woman simply has to watch this show, given the climate. Lots of people placed a feminist prefix to this brilliant work, only to take away from such a quality character development. Stories about women told by women are just stories, and the feminism prefix, I feel, doesn’t elevate the story.

Fleabag simply shows the narrative told from a female perspective. A strong individual who happens to be female. Nothing different than Judd Apatow’s moves and TV shows like ‘40 Year Old Virgin’, ‘Superbad’ and so on, charged with male experiences, told from a man’s perspective.

Fleabag is revolutionary. The heroine, also the writer of the show, lives and observes the often strange world around herself, savage wit and humor in tow, talking to you, the audience, breaking the 4th wall, even for the darkest bits that will crush you.

She’s flawed, unapologetically herself, while simultaneously insecure. Like we all are. What surprised me the most was how well the show was received among men. So many of them gave it unbelievable praise on Twitter. If we’re reaching a shift in society, where men are not threatened by women having a strong point of view while exploring and owning their sexuality — universal love for Fleabag gave me tremendous hope.

Why is Fleabag revolutionary? Because a woman wrote a woman. She’s not cautionary. She isn’t defined by men. She is not devastated by men. She chooses her scenarios. She’s inspired by cynicism. She’s not objectified. And for the first time in my life, I can’t go further with words. There’s nothing I can write here, even remotely, to transfer the feeling of the show onto you. It's a piece of work that permits your emotions to go to 5 million places. It just has to be experienced.

The Season 2 storyline killed me. The way Phoebe Waller-Bridge wrote it, destroyed me. Writers are usually slightly lazy, at least in my taste, when it comes to love stories. The storylines are either too banal, undeveloped with characters, or have long obstacles but a short and unsatisfactory conclusion. Or the chemistry is off between characters, but they are trying to convince us with words about the connection we just don’t see on screen.

Rarely you can find a precisely written emotional connection between two people. The way she mastered this concept in Season 2, is chilling.

In Season 1, our heroine Fleabag suffers from having lost people in her life. Some by death, some by distance. She deals with her emotional turmoils by sleeping with people. Her character development from Season 1 to Season 2, is a masterclass in writing. Fleabag is the character that breaks the 4th wall. She talks to us, her audience, all the time. It's like we’re in on it, with her, and by her side.

Season 2 starts with her face covered in blood, proclaiming to us — “This is a love story”. I knew right then and there this was going to be the one I’ll be rewatching for decades to come.

Fleabag meets a Catholic Priest, tempestuously played by the legend Andrew Scott. This role is written specifically for him. The chemistry they share is to be studied in class. I have never seen anything like it. The little nuances, the looks, words, and emotions seen on the face without uttering one word. The way Phoebe Waller-Bridge builds this connection between them, so slowly; I beg you to see it. It’s a blueprint for what to strive for in a partner.

You know those rare connections when someone truly sees you? When you spend all your life with just wrong, wrong, wronger? When you lose all your energy and will for life by constantly having to translate your heart to the people in your life who just can’t feel you, can’t understand you, can’t communicate with you? Those moments, or rather, one moment, if you’re even lucky — when you meet someone and he sees every look, hears every word, reads every emotion? When you feel like you’re always in on some joke together, while everyone around you just is just noise.

Yes.

That.

And if you never experienced it, watch this show to recognize how it feels.

It’s about being both aroused and terrified by being so understood. Phoebe showcases this connection not just with words, but with the brilliant decision to let The Priest hear her when she talks to the 4th wall, us. Just two of them.

Fleabag and The Priest, naturally, can’t happen. He’s a Catholic Priest. An emotional dance between them in Episode 6 murdered me. The absolute brilliance of Phoebe’s writing and the lines like — “Fuck you calling me Father like it doesn’t turn you on just to say it!” — before he finally surrenders to her, and the fact they finally hooked up, not when they were cornered or horny, but when she revealed her fears and vulnerability to him.

It happened when she broke down to him. When she absolutely just crashed, burned, let everything out; all the pain. This is what made him want her. The pain. Remember that moment. And now go watch it.

This is the moment that will change things for you — the confession booth. The word — “kneel” — one single word uttered that created the most erotic, richest, most powerful scene on television.

Cancel everything else.

“Just kneel.”