Fleabag is a television series created by and starring Phoebe Waller-Bridge. It was released in 2016, and the two-season show wrapped up in 2019. The series is about a woman whose name we never get to know but is referred to as Fleabag in the credits.
We see her dealing with the loss of her mother a few years prior to the events of the series and also that of her best friend due to accidental suicide. Fleabag is chaotic and disorganized and a loose cannon. At times, she is downright unlikeable. That’s the thing about Fleabag: none of the characters we meet is likable. They’re rude and cruel, yet the series gives us this choice of getting to know them despite all that. After all, they are humans with intricate inner lives and reasons for being the way they are.
Two people in her life, her mother and her best friend, were actually close to her and liked her, and she lost them both. Your whole world changes when such a substantial thing is taken away from you. You lose your person and the entire world feels empty. A void comes into being within you. Besides this, Fleabag has to deal with her emotionally absent father and manipulative stepmother. All these factors contribute to Fleabag’s current self-destructive state.
Fleabag uses sex as a way to cope with her feelings of worthlessness and also as a way to get attention. This is evident in her on-again-off-again relationship with Harry. It is clear that she has no feelings for Harry. The only reason she was with Harry was due to the undivided attention he gave her. He was at her complete mercy, so she felt powerful. Whenever Harry broke up with her, she would go and have multiple one-night stands with men who gave her the slightest bit of attention, even if she disliked them intensely.
The most noticeable thing about the series is the constant fourth wall breaks. Fleabag talks to the camera in the middle of any possible thing happening at that moment. In the midst of sexual encounters or heartfelt confessions, she has this pathological need to break away and talk to the camera. This could be seen as a dissociation from her surroundings and withdrawal into herself during moments when she is most in touch with herself to protect herself from genuinely feeling anything.
Another thing about Fleabag is that she is very rarely not performing, as in not being her genuine self. Even when talking to the camera, she still shows an uncaring side of herself, which is fake. Although she tries to act callous about it all, she is hurt when Harry doesn’t come crawling back to her or when Arsehole Guy tells her he is in love with someone else.
Fleabag carries around the overwhelming guilt of inadvertently causing the death of her best friend, Boo. When they were alone with each other, Fleabag ended up having sex with Boo’s boyfriend as he gave her what she craved most: attention. Boo found out that her boyfriend cheated on her, although she did not know with whom, so she devised a plan to attempt suicide but did not actually go through with it to make her boyfriend feel bad for what he did. She went ahead but accidentally got herself killed. Fleabag’s lack of impulse control and her morally bankrupt sexuality led to the loss of the one person who understood her and liked her for who she was.
If you look for a moral of the story, it is this: the most horrible of people can improve. There is always room for personal growth. Fleabag goes from using sex as an unhealthy coping mechanism, kleptomania, self-destructive behavior, and a plethora of other things to working on building better relationships, becoming financially stable, and understanding people in similar situations to her. Not only Fleabag, but her sister, Claire, and their father also experience some extent of improvement. Ultimately most characters are still unlikeable douchebags, but they’re douchebags you care about.
[I know I’ve left out the whole part about the Hot Priest, but I think that deserves a post of its own. I will keep that for another day.]
- Rudraksh Dange
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