The sex scene that follows is not erotic. It is raw, clinical, and comedic. She asks him to "do the thing where you slap me in the face during." He obliges. She stares at the camera, bored. When he rolls off and says, "I love you," she replies, "That’s great." She then steals a statue of a woman with a helmet (the first of many petty thefts) and leaves.
By the end of the episode, you know everything you need to know: She lost her mother. She lost her best friend. She runs a failing café. She uses sex to punish herself. And she is desperate for someone—anyone—to see her pain without running away. Fleabag 1x1
That is the first line audiences hear in Fleabag 1x1 , the series premiere of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s now-legendary BBC/Amazon comedy-drama. On the surface, it is a lie. Episode one, titled simply Episode 1 , is not a romance. It is a trainwreck. It is a grief-stricken, sex-fueled, fourth-wall-shattering introduction to a woman who has lost her best friend, her mother, her business, and seemingly her moral compass. The sex scene that follows is not erotic
The show popularized the "sad-comic anti-heroine" genre (see: Barry , Insecure , Russian Doll ). But more importantly, Fleabag 1x1 taught audiences that you can laugh and cry in the same breath. Waller-Bridge’s ability to pivot from a joke about anal sex to a meditation on maternal loss is not tonal whiplash—it is tonal accuracy. That is what depression feels like. That is what grief feels like. She stares at the camera, bored
The first hint comes during a forced “birthday dinner” at a terrible restaurant. Dad asks Fleabag how the café—her café—is doing. She lies: “Brilliantly.” We later see it is a failing pit of despair.
She tells a story about a hamster she had as a child. It died. Her mother (before she died, too) replaced it with an identical hamster. Fleabag knew. But she never said anything because “I wanted to see how long it would take for her to crack.”
But the real gut punch comes via a memory. Fleabag retreats to the bathroom and has a flashback: her best friend, Boo (Jenny Rainsford), laughing, with a guinea pig on her head. Boo says, “Hair is everything, Fleabag.”