Kneel. Just kneel.
Man oh man, what an episode of television. This episode of the show has two very big things on its mind, namely the trauma of Fleabag losing her mother and the emotional tailspin Fleabag and the Priest have put each other in. Any other series would take a full episode for each of those, but the writing and acting on Fleabag is so airtight that they get them both done in less than thirty minutes and it feels like they’ve been given a good treatment. The flashbacks to Fleabag’s mother’s funeral are really well done; Jenny Rainsford, consistently underused in both seasons, but particularly this one, gets a couple of really good scenes and Olivia Colman is particularly wonderful. There’s this moment when Godmother is intruding on a private moment between Fleabag and her Dad and she’s obviously hoping to be told that she doesn’t have to leave; Colman just does this amazing bit of hovering at the door awkwardly and then executes one of the finest heel-turns I’ve ever seen. This is a strong contender for like the funniest moment of the entire series in my opinion. But Andrew Scott gets plenty to do as the Priest. I really liked the way the show has been deepening his character ever episode without ever seeming to really go out of its way to do it. The show has not been trumpeting at all that he has a problem with alcohol, for instance, but when you see him at the end of this episode and he’s quite obviously drunk, it just all kind of clicks and it makes sense and you see a lot of other scenes leading up to this one differently. But, man, oh, man, that final scene in the confessional in this episode is just amazing. It’s some of Waller-Bridge’s finest acting in the series so far and then that climactic moment is jaw dropping. This is a good time to bring up Isobel Waller-Bridge’s great musical score for this season, which features a lot of really great choral music and it really lands in this scene. But then the acting in those last few wordless seconds of the episode are just a masterclass from both Scott and Waller-Bridge. Immediately after this episode wrapped, a friend and I began listing all the different emotions we felt they’d each expressed, again completely wordlessly, in just the last thirty seconds or so of this episode. This show is really excellent on a regular basis; even by those standards, this episode is a ******* masterpiece. 4 stars.
tl;dr – a masterfully written & performed episode covers more ground than some shows could in an hour; an example of a consistently great show being exceptional even by its own standards. 4 stars.