My priest is here and he really needs some guidance.
This episode is a bit of a step down after the stellar fourth episode, which is right up there with the first episode of this season as being something like television’s gold standard. This second season is interesting; the first season had what felt like a really solid arc where every episode was genuinely better than the previous one. This one jumps around a bit, but the quality stays high enough that I don’t have a problem with it. For instance, I would say this is one of the weaker episodes of the show, but it also has what is maybe the single funniest cut in the entire series, maybe the funniest moment of the entire series, now that I think about it. Going from Claire hysterically calling Fleabag because of a crisis to just a hard cut to what the crisis is was a moment of pure comedy, but it’s also so character based. Like I literally set up straight in the bed and leaned forward at that cut because I was so shocked. And this is the weakest episode of this season. You get what I’m saying. The final conversation between the Priest and Fleabag is great and the final bit of dialogue they exchange here is just delivered so perfectly. Like I can’t even express how good Andrew Scott is in this scene. His delivery of the words “Yeah. Okay.” I mean, that’s ******* acting. I guess I’ve talked myself into this being a really good episode after all; it probably only suffers because of how intensely great the previous episode was. As it is, we’re careening toward the season (and, at this point, the series) finale and this show is just still amazing. 4 stars.
tl;dr – while it may suffer a bit from coming after the amazing fourth episode, this episode is a great lead-in to the season/series finale and features maybe the single biggest laugh of the series. 4 stars.