Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
By now, savvy TV watchers have gotten a read on Phoebe Waller-Bridge‘s comedic sensibility. Between Fleabag and Killing Eve, she’s shown she enjoys wry and self-aware characters that are sexually charged. She’s an executive producer of the new HBO series Run, which is created and written by Vicky Jones, who worked with Waller-Bridge on both series, and some of her signatures are front and center. Read on for more…
RUN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: An overview of a massive parking lot, a sad Elvis song playing. Then we see a shot of a woman sitting in her car looking pretty damn sad.
The Gist: Ruby Richardson (Merritt Wever) is contemplating her unsatisfying life in that parking lot, when she gets a text from her husband that she needs to be home for a speaker delivery. Then she gets a text from a guy named Billy that simply says “RUN”.
She’s seen this text before, but this time she wants to respond. Very tentatively she types her response: “RUN”. Then she hits “Send”, goes to leave her car… and it’s blocked by the car next to her. She contemplates what she’s about to do, then peels out of the lot. She goes to LAX, lets her hair down and buys an expensive ticket to New York.
In New York, she dashes across Grand Central Terminal and boards an Amtrak train. She encounters someone who seems familiar to her, but the two of them pretend to be strangers in front of another passenger. However, when the male passenger, Billy Johnson (Domhnall Gleeson), does a “palm reading,” it’s pretty obvious that the two are old friends.
Ruby and Billy were in a relationship in college, and despite moving on in life, they think about each other all the time. It appears they had a pact: If one of them texts “RUN” and the other responds likewise, they agree to meet at Grand Central and rekindle their relationship on a cross-country trip. That pact was made 17 years ago. Now Jimmy is a life coach with a book that Ruby doesn’t really love, and Billy remembers how Ruby digs and digs until she can get the info she needs out of him.
The two of them still have that spark between each other, no doubt; when they go to the dining car, they are each so turned on that they retire to the tiny bathroom to pleasure themselves. When Billy leaves, though, he doesn’t see Ruby; she pranks him by having an attendant send paper towels his way because he supposedly shit his pants.
They each try to figure out why the other texted RUN this time around. Ruby is an architect in “the city where I live,” she tells him, and it seems like her marriage is solid, but she ran anyway. Billy is in communication with a woman named Fiona (who we’ll see later is played by Archie Panjabi), telling her he’s in Scotland, and Ruby wants to know who she is. He finally tells Ruby that Fiona is his PA. Still, the mysteries of why each is on the train abound.
When the train stops in Pittsburgh, Ruby gets off in an attempt to call her husband Laurence (Rich Sommer), and Billy panics when he doesn’t see her on the train as it leaves. But she’s there, panting away from running to catch it, and the adventure is off to a rousing start.
Our Take: Run is created and written by Vicky Jones, who has worked with Phoebe Waller-Bridge on both Fleabag and Killing Eve, so it makes sense that Waller-Bridge is an executive producer of the series. The first episode has a bit of Waller-Bridge’s sensibility baked in, but people should really think of this as Jones’ show. And, while things in the first episode are a bit bumpy, there’s great potential for a fun road-trip comedy here.
We’re really not given any clue into the lives of Ruby and Billy before they decide to run. We know that the whip-smart Ruby uses a baby voice to talk to her husband, for some reason, and wears a kerchief around her neck, which she promptly tears off when she gets to the airport. It’s as if she’s living a different life with her husband than she ever intended to live when she was with Billy in college. Billy, on the other hand, seems to be a success, but some event or humiliation has prompted him to run. The fun of the series will be the two of them trying to figure out why the other ran while trying to work through their attraction to each other, and that’s where the fun of the show is going to be.
It goes without saying that Wever is the highlight of the pair here, but not for the reasons she’s usually a highlight. In this episode she’s sexy and very, very horny, and Wever, never known for sexy roles in the past, pulls both off without breaking a sweat (even when she masturbates in the restroom). But she’s sexy in her own way: Fiercely intelligent, and looking to take the wheel and drive this situation wherever it goes. Gleeson is a little harder to read as Billy, but he seems to be able to keep up with Wever move for move.
The first episode plays out more slowly than we expected, and the chemistry between Ruby and Billy isn’t readily apparent until the end of the episode, but as the trip across the country, and the cat-and-mouse game unfolds — including the inevitable episodes where Laurence and Fiona show up — we’re hoping that the tension and energy increases.
Sex and Skin: Besides each of them pounding one out in the bathroom, the rest of the sex is mostly via looks and innuendo.
Parting Shot: After Ruby comes back to the train and jokes about how Billy’s poops flush themselves, she falls to the floor. As he helps her clean up her purse, Billy sees the wallpaper on her phone, showing Ruby, Laurence and their two sons. He starts to wonder if this was worth it to break up Ruby’s family. Then there’s a PA announcement for “Ruby Dixie” (the name she used for the attendant) that their “roomette” is ready.
Sleeper Star: Considering this is more or less a two-hander, there really isn’t anyone we can deem a sleeper. We do know that Sommer, Panjabi and Waller-Bridge will show up as guest stars along the way, which will be fun to watch.
Most Pilot-y Line: Billy tearing off the handle of the stuck bathroom door while he was looking to see if Ruby was back on the train was a bit overly dramatic.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The first episode of Run sets up an adventure full of secrets and sexual tension, even if its pacing is slower than you might think. But there’s more than enough there — including a surprisingly sexy performance by Wever — to keep us interested.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.
