Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
As Amazon roles out a slew of their originals this month, starting with One Mississippi last week, Fleabag this week, and season 3 of Transparent next week, everything looks amazing. But if you haven’t learned it yet, I gotta tell you, sometimes looks can be deceiving.
I know, it’s tough news to hear, but it’s true. Even though Amazon has a fantastic track record when it comes to their original shows, could the luck run out soon? If so, please don’t let it be Fleabag.
I was about 10 seconds into the Fleabag trailer when I got a big wave of excitement. What can I say, I love a story about a modern, single woman (Phoebe-Waller-Bridge) navigating her romantic, family, and work lives, and that dependably awkward point where they intersect. I’ll watch pretty much any variation on this, and I’m incredibly excited to watch this show in particular.
Except I’m scared. This show looks TOO good! I laughed several times from this trailer; at the sexy hookups, the dating disasters, the friend fails, and definitely at her spot-on reactions to it all. Could it really be this good, that so many of our all-too-common inside thoughts are being said on the outside — and they’re this funny!?
The trailer confronts, head-on, the stress that comes from money, technology, and cringey family time, with silly stares, awkward laughs, and even a shouting match in a room drenched in drama: the fitting room. It’s clear that this show is commenting on the banalities of everyday life by flipping them into something uniquely funny-because-it’s-so-so-true.
From Carrie Bradshaw to Hannah Horvath to Abbi & Ilana, and even last year’s darling, Rachel Bloom, we’re lucky to have such a variety of women to watch and relate to. The daunting part is that Fleabag managed to do that in a quick 2 minute trailer! She’s nailed the straight-to-camera commentary way more successfully than Miss Bradshaw could, with Jim Halpert-esque faces and Zack Morris-like quips, and thank goodness, because clearly we need more women to master that story-telling device.
Fleabag appears to depict a woman yet again jumping through the hurdles of life, but this time, with a more balanced amount of self-awareness, self-deprecation, and self-confidence, than many of our favorite femmes before her. It should be noted that this also applies to HBO’s upcoming Insecure.
It’s probably no accident that Fleabag hits the small screen on the same weekend that Bridget Jones’s Baby hits the big screen. Single lady stories aren’t going anywhere, but they are evolving! They’ve gotten ride of Carrie’s not even close to believable shoe display, and replaced the Manolos with text fails. Now, there’s something we all have a collection of.
I’m going to tough this one out; I’ll be brave and settle in for a binge of Fleabag, probably with a glass of wine…or two. I have hope, and honestly, much faith, that there is plenty more comedy and truth in store, beyond what is presented in the teaser. Because once in a while, life manages to exceed our expectations.
