Revisiting Fleabag’s heartbreakingly honest confession with Phoebe Waller-Bridge: ‘Damage is attractive…’| Scene Stealer

But in the fourth episode of the first season, when Fleabag and her sister Claire are out for sort of a meditation camp, and where she crosses paths with the banker who refused her loan for the cafe, that is where we see Fleabag shed a little of that exuberant, sexy persona to let us know about the immeasurable pain she’s been carrying since her friend’s tragic death.

The banker and Fleabag are sitting in an open green space and sharing a cigarette. The banker has been accused of sexual harassment previously, and so he was in the area to work on himself through a training camp. Fleabag, as cited, was there with her sibling. Sitting down in that serene environment, where they both had turned up for refuge from the world’s noise, the unlikely pair form a strange bond, built on vulnerabilities and desire. The banker wants nothing more than to ‘move on,’ and then as if someone somewhere had left a tap open in his chest, he spills his innermost thoughts in the most poetic but simple lines: “I want to take clean cups out of the dishwasher and put them in the cupboard. And the next day, I want to watch my wife drink from them.”

Fleabag, who has been drawing on her cigarette and been silently listening to the man all this while, suddenly says only one dialogue, and that’s enough to let us know her state of mind. “I just want to cry, all the time,” she says, and a shadow of sadness passes quickly on her face. Fleabag, though never addressed, might have been clinically depressed since her close friend’s passing. Going about her life with an armour of courage and confidence she did not really feel in her soul. This makes her less despicable, more humane, more one with her audience.

Speaking about the sequence, and of how damaged characters are attractive, Phoebe had earlier told The Guardian, “Damage is indicative of vulnerability, which I think always feels a little dangerous. It is evidence that a person can feel deeply, that they can be open … then that delicious wall goes up and we just want to scramble over it and save (and feel) the person. It’s irresistible. I also think damage is a glimpse of something honest, and that’s always attractive…Fleabag was always performing for the camera to distract both herself and the audience from her misery. Her drive was to entertain you, so she could never allow herself to be a victim for fear of boring you.”

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And that is one thing Fleabag has never been. Even from the deepest pit of her misery, she made sure to engage and entertain us, mainly because that was how it made sense for her to go on in a world without her cafe partner, her best buddy, her Boo.

Fleabag is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.