It'll pass

This week's Marginalia: mostly an ode to "Fleabag."

NOW PLAYING
Brief notes on what's in theaters now. We're getting into that weird late summer period of post-blockbusters, pre-Oscar season, but there's still plenty of time to catch up on summer movies.

"One Child Nation" 
One of the most acclaimed documentaries of the year so far, this is out in more cities this weekend, including here in D.C. I talked to co-director Jialing Zhang about making such a wide-ranging, yet personal re-examination of China's one-child policy. 

"Blinded by the Light"
My colleague Melissa talked to director Gurinder Chadha about this sweet but not cloying homage to Bruce Springsteen. It's obviously a must-see for any fans of The Boss. For me, it was also gratifying to see Chadha transform the very white genre of high school movies by centering a British Pakistani kid facing racism and Islamophobia, in addition to your usual teenage angst and rebellion. At my screening, she told us that there's one scene that's a direct homage to "The Breakfast Club," which is so fitting because many of the 1980s/1990s high school movies never appealed to me because I rarely, if ever, saw myself in them.

NOW STREAMING
"Fleabag" (BBC and Amazon Prime) 

Finally watched this (woefully late to the party), thus completing the Phoebe Waller-Bridge TV trifecta ("Crashing" and "Killing Eve"). I joked on Twitter that yes, the Hot Priest is hot and The Jumpsuit is indeed a fantastic jumpsuit — referring to the two most meme-able, most buzzed-about parts of the show's second season.

In all seriousness, it's a show which I can't even wrap my head around exactly how it manages to achieve what it achieves. (Because I am a writer, this is how my brain works. I get the urge to deconstruct whatever I am watching or reading.) It's a show that effortlessly blends comedy with pathos, at turns wickedly funny and devastatingly sad. At its core, it's a meditation on grief, loneliness, and uncertainty, featuring characters that form a tapestry of broken people. It's a show with such a unique formula that on paper, sounds wacky and impossible. But then, not only does it end up working, it nails it completely. 

My mind immediately skips to "Russian Doll," a similarly mind-blowing, swing for the fences, go big or go home, masterful show. Also, in both cases, I watched everything over a single weekend, which raises an interesting streaming era problem. They are so good that you want to keep watching — and why the hell not, since all the episodes are there, right at your fingertips? But inevitably, you miss certain details and sparks of brilliance. And they're meant to be savored morsel by morsel, not scarfed down.

I think season two of Fleabag has dethroned (by a hair) "Russian Doll" as my favorite show of the year, potentially on the basis of the emotionally crushing final scene of the final episode, which contains some of the best acting, writing, and editing I have ever seen. I've rewatched it so many times that I can break down every beat. It's perfection. (Also, given how much the Emmys loved "Fleabag" otherwise, how the hell did Andrew Scott, aforementioned Hot Priest, not get an Emmy nomination for that scene alone?!)

It’s also a good example of a show that didn’t need a second season, yet season two was somehow even better than season one. The obvious counterexample: "Big Little Lies," whose second season effectively proved that it did not need a season two. I am hopeful that the forthcoming season two of "Russian Doll" could go the "Fleabag" route.

Another streaming era problem: two months isn't even that long, and yet I feel like I've already missed the conversation about the show. That feeling is probably compounded by the fact that I think and write about these things for a living, and there's usually only a brief window in which we're talking and writing about something, before we move on to the next thing. If you're a fellow "Fleabag" obsessive, let us discuss all of the things.