In the days since an unexpected friend threw her a lifeline and enabled her to save her café, she’s taken care of her body, broken some bad habits, and tried to maneuver herself toward a healthier, more stable place. You look at the arrow, in the center of the tiniest of circles, and can do nothing but wonder.įleabag (Waller-Bridge, as good an actor as she is a writer and that's saying something) has come a long way in the time since we’ve seen her-371 days, a card helpfully reminds us. In under three hours, Phoebe Waller-Bridge tells a story with that kind of poignancy, a portrait of grief, fear, and love that’s startling, painful, achingly funny, unbearably sexy, pretty much perfect, and somehow better than the first season. It is a marvel. Yes, I am comparing the six-episode second season of Amazon/BBC television's exquisite "Fleabag" to Samuel Beckett I am also comparing it to the work of writers like Elizabeth Bishop and Dorothy Parker, writers whose economy increased the potency of every word, every joke, every thought and feeling. But hitting a perfect shot at a tiny target is a staggering achievement something like “Waiting For Godot” doesn’t come around every day.
A shot that comes close is still impressive the room for error is massive and the risk of failure great. A professor once told me that all art has a target, and the more complex and challenging the art, the smaller the target.