Stu: Are you telling me if you watch Xena, you, uh...
Mel: If you have an unbreakable television date with Xena, I'm sorry to tell you, you're queer.
Stu: Hi, I'm Stu Willis.
Chas: And I'm Chas Fisher.
Mel: And I'm Mel Killingsworth.
Stu: And welcome to Drive Zero, a podcast where three emerging-ish filmmakers-ish
Stu: try to work out what makes great screenplays work.
Chas: And today we are continuing with our series that we've done about different
Chas: ways that the filmmakers or storytellers can talk directly to the audience.
Chas: And this one is on breaking the fourth wall, or for people who may have been
Chas: confused by some of our other terminology in previous episodes,
Chas: barreling, which is to refer to looking straight down the barrel of the camera.
Chas: And we're predominantly referring to when
Chas: characters basically look at
Chas: the camera and by extension are looking at us as the audience and how we're
Chas: hoping to distinguish that from in the previous episodes we looked at like a
Chas: taxonomy of different ways that storytellers can talk directly to the audience
Chas: but I feel like this one's going to be the biggest contrast to voiceover.
Chas: I mean, that's for me at least.
Chas: Why would you choose voiceover or to break the fourth wall?
Stu: Because you're doing a video on YouTube and you want to make sure that you don't
Stu: get copyright struck, so you put your face there instead of pausing on the video
Stu: and talking over it, as I've been learning from recent experience.
Mel: And some do both, which is a lot of fun, but some choose one or the other and
Mel: some vary back and forth.
Chas: Just jumping in quick to note that this episode, as all our episodes are,
Chas: is brought to you by our amazing Patreons.
Chas: If you want more Draft Zero more often, check out the Patreon link in our show notes.
Chas: And one thing that you'll find there for free is our response to this question
Chas: by top tier patron Alexandra, which as you'll hear, strongly relates to this episode.
Mel: Hi Chas, hi Stu, hi Mel. I've been very much enjoying your deep dive into all
Mel: the various facets of talking directly to the audience.
Mel: And it's got me pondering, namely, I wonder if direct address and voiceover
Mel: aren't distinctly separate mechanisms, but lie more on a continuum.
Mel: For example, the address to the reader-slash-audience is an old literary trope
Mel: that stretches back to the invention of the modern novel in the 18th century.
Mel: Lawrence Stern's Tristam Shandy from 1759 is a celebrated example.
Mel: And of course, addressing the audience directly in the theatre dates way further
Mel: back to Aristophanes in ancient Athens.
Mel: All of which is to say that the so-called neutral third-person narrator,
Mel: be it in a novel, theatre, or film, and who doesn't directly
Mel: address the audience is actually more the exception rather than
Mel: the norm and it's quite a recent norm at
Mel: that so one of the things that's notable about a
Mel: fleabag or ferris bueller's day off or wayne's world especially funny games
Mel: is that the character addressing the audience knows not only that they're in
Mel: a work of fiction but more specifically that they're in a film or a tv show
Mel: which is an even more direct form of address than the more literary narrator
Mel: like in Barry Lyndon or True Grit,
Mel: who's using that sort of 19th century dear reader mechanism rather than a dear film viewer mechanism.
Mel: All of which suggests a further question. Is the viewer being addressed a communal
Mel: one, as in all you viewers at home, or is it a specific one,
Mel: as in you Chaz, or you Stu, or you Mel, the individual?
Mel: So what's so chillingly effective about the direct address in Funny Games is
Mel: that the viewer can't hide in the crowd and the cinema audience,
Mel: but is accused individually of being complicit in the violence portrayed on
Mel: screen, which is, it seems, rather rare in either film or literature.
Chas: If you want to hear our answer to that amazing question, please go to our Patreon link in the show notes.
Chas: All right, Patreon plug over, back to the topic at hand.
Stu: So Mel, what have we chosen?
Chas: Yes.
Mel: So we've got the pilot episode of High Fidelity, the TV show.
Mel: And then we've got a season two episode of Abbott Elementary.
Mel: And then we've got an episode from Fleabag, also season two, episode four.
Mel: And so the High Fidelity, essentially, because it's the pilot,
Mel: it's setting up how it does its fourth wall break conceit is sort of establishing the rules.
Mel: Abbott Elementary is playing with the rules that it's already established.
Mel: And it's, you know, maybe 30 episodes before this.
Mel: And Fleabag is actually smashing all of its rules that it's established up into this point.
Chas: Yeah. It is interesting to me that we picked three TV examples,
Chas: although it is well worth listeners going back to the previous episode on which
Chas: I did not appear on how this technique was used in Fight Club.
Stu: For specific scenes. And it'll be interesting for us to unpack the idea of why
Stu: TV particularly has done it.
Stu: And if you haven't seen Abbott Elementary, documentary, I think because it's
Stu: so episodic, you'll get a lot out of this discussion anyway,
Stu: and equally true of High Fidelity, because we're talking about the pilot.
Stu: They're all worth watching, but I think you can listen to this episode and yeah,
Stu: you might get mild spoilers, but I don't think it's going to emotionally spoil you.
Mel: And in terms of Abbott, Abbott is very close to something like Parks and Recreation
Mel: and The Office and a lot of these mockumentary, long-running TV sitcoms.
Mel: The biggest difference is that Abbott does play with it a little bit more,
Mel: and that's particularly the episodes we picked up on.
Chas: Yeah.
Mel: It's a bit more meta.
Stu: So before we dive in particular, my big learning that I'm carrying over from
Stu: our episode on Fight Club, which actually was prompted by Mel and then I kind
Stu: of summarized it and took credit for it, as I do.
Stu: Which is that what's interesting about barreling the camera,
Stu: unlike voiceover, is it tends to imply that the character has a degree of the
Stu: control of how the story is being told. hold.
Stu: And so I think all these three shows explore that spectrum of the control of
Stu: the character in terms of how they present the information.
Stu: And as I kind of then talked about, that control of the story is a bit of a
Stu: resource to use a kind of technical term, but it's something that a character
Stu: can choose to use as part of their tactics of getting what they want from the audience.
Stu: And so that control kind of informs that. And what's really interesting is Avid
Stu: Elementary, as we will talk about, is a mockumentary.
Stu: So there's a diegetic reason for them to be talking at the camera,
Stu: but it also affects the degree of control that they have.
Stu: That's kind of my key learning that I'm going to bring in. And one of the questions
Stu: I'm going to be asking is like, are they in control of the narrative?
Stu: How much control do they have of the narrative and how that then connects to
Stu: what they want from the audience?
Chas: And I would also add kind of separately what the effect is, I guess,
Chas: for lack of a better word, the narrative effect.
Chas: So what does the character who is talking directly to us want?
Chas: What are they achieving differently by breaking the fourth wall as opposed to
Chas: voiceover or just you know acting respecting the
Chas: fourth wall and then as against what is
Chas: the effect on us of this technique and it's interesting so in our in our previous
Chas: episodes on you know how filmmakers can talk more directly interact more directly
Chas: with the audience we identified a number of levers and none of them are really
Chas: it's not that they're not relevant they've all just been pulled very
Chas: firmly in one direction when you break the fourth wall.
Chas: So, the levers we talked about in relation to voiceover were,
Chas: is it diegetic or non-diegetic?
Chas: And that one will still apply here because we've got in-world breaking the fourth
Chas: wall or in-world talking to an audience versus, I guess, it's still in the world,
Chas: but I guess we'll talk about that.
Chas: That's still an important lever that can be pulled.
Chas: We had a different lever of a spectrum of who is talking from From an omniscient unidentified...
Chas: Narrator or you know title cards from the filmmakers themselves right the way
Chas: through to a character and whenever you got breaking the fourth wall it's always a character in.
Stu: The examples that we have chosen because there are examples which we have done
Stu: including f is for fake and sans soleil but also examples like annie hall which
Stu: is woody allen where it's like an actor writer and it's kind of them breaking
Stu: character breaking character fleabag doesn't break character I mean,
Stu: maybe Woody Allen doesn't really play a character in Annie Hall,
Stu: but he certainly brings in, there's that great scene where he brings in the
Stu: film critic, you know, to talk to the character and stuff like that.
Stu: So he's definitely playing himself.
Stu: I mean, that's the interesting question, actually, now that I've raised it. I've gone, yeah.
Stu: To what extent is Fleabag riffing on, how much is it riffing on Phoebe Waller-Bridge's
Stu: personality and her life experience, and how much is that informing the text in a way?
Stu: Because I do think that is, it is seemingly a technique used by,
Stu: you know, writer actors or people that are kind of positioning themselves as
Stu: that. And I'm sure there are other examples as well.
Mel: Well, in Fleabag in particular, it came out of a theater show,
Mel: a one woman theater show, where the entire time she's essentially speaking directly
Mel: to the audience only without, you know, a camera in between her and them.
Mel: So I think that it really sort of makes a direct line from one to the other.
Mel: Obviously, not all theater shows that go on to be TV shows do that,
Mel: but it is a very sort of, I'm going to sit and tell you a story if you've seen
Mel: the theater show, which I have.
Mel: And then obviously she's not doing that in Fleabag, but she's still taking bits
Mel: of that from the theater show.
Chas: Yeah. So, all right. So, who is talking is still a relevant lever.
Chas: And we know that it is a character in the three examples that we picked,
Chas: but you're right, Stuart.
Chas: It's not, you can break the fourth wall without necessarily it always being a character.
Stu: And I think we'll see that to a smaller extent in Abadie Elementary, but I'll get to that.
Chas: Whom are they talking to? And this is when I'm like, well, they're always talking to the audience.
Chas: And then yet in this very three examples, we've got, I think,
Chas: three subtle variations on whom the characters are talking to.
Stu: I mean, I think who does the audience represent is actually the interesting
Stu: question. Is it the audience of a film show?
Stu: Is it the audience in their mind? Who is this audience?
Chas: Yeah. From when in time is the communication coming?
Chas: Now that is firmly locked because we're seeing the character talk although it
Chas: could be interesting i'd none of the examples that we're looking at do this
Chas: but it could be interesting if a character were to break the fourth wall and
Chas: leave the narrative time wise that they might know more about the story that.
Stu: Happens in high fidelity there is a moment in high fidelity where there's a
Stu: flashback and there's a piece to camera there's also uh not in these examples
Stu: but in fight club one of the fourth fourth wall break is in a flashback where
Stu: you kind of actually go jack the edward norton character is not present in the scene but he's.
Chas: Physically standing.
Stu: There like a tv presenter and.
Chas: Talking about.
Stu: It as if he is so i do think it's something that you can use.
Chas: And what does the communication want from the audience and we've already discussed
Chas: that it might be the character talking to us as the audience might want something
Chas: and separately the filmmakers might want something else so So,
Chas: actually, these levers still are relevant,
Chas: hazzah, and possibly applying them to the three examples will bring value.
Chas: So, shall we jump into High Fidelity?
Excerpts: I ran into my ex last night. So, how was it, you know, seeing him?
Excerpts: You know that scene at the end of Braveheart where they rip all his entrails
Excerpts: out and he's like freedom, but it's like a positive thing, you know,
Excerpts: because he like inspired his people or whatever?
Excerpts: Yeah. Like that, but without the silver lining.
Excerpts: Pretentious location, owner's a little rude, two and a half stars.
Excerpts: You guys have a bathroom?
Excerpts: If I let you go, I gotta let everybody else go to the bathroom,
Excerpts: and I can't do that. But I'm the only one here.
Excerpts: I'm just too adored to have it come to pass You know that you do this after
Excerpts: every relationship? Do what? No offense, but you tend to overthink things a little.
Excerpts: Your ex went back to New York. It's cool he's back in town. We were both so
Excerpts: whatever about that lily girl.
Excerpts: What lily girl? I think I tend to think about things the exact right amount. Thank you.
Chas: It's not the most straightforward of the examples, but at least it's one single
Chas: character and whom they are talking to does not change.
Mel: Yeah. And High Fidelity opens on Rob breaking the fourth wall.
Mel: Like it opens very quickly into Rob talking to us. And then it interrupts it
Mel: as Mac finishes breaking up with Rob.
Excerpts: I think it's best if I do, sir. Just stay for tonight. No.
Excerpts: Okay, just stay for a drink then. I don't think a drink's gonna do it, Rob.
Excerpts: How about two drinks? Jesus Christ, can we just make this just a little bit
Excerpts: easy, please? Oh, I'm sorry, is this inconvenient for you?
Mel: And then Rob, like, returns to break the fourth wall to finish explaining.
Excerpts: I see you.
Excerpts: Congratulations,
Excerpts: you've made it to the top five mac number five with a bullet.
Mel: Welcome and mac is unaware of to whom rob is talking so it sets those two things
Mel: up very quickly rob is breaking the fourth wall talking to us and other people
Mel: within the world seem unaware that this is happening.
Mel: And it's very much...
Mel: Not explained within the film what rob is
Mel: doing it feels almost though like an internal monologue the
Mel: way that rob is talking how things are phrased talking about
Mel: her process the way that she likes to list things both in
Mel: her quote-unquote normal life and as well as that carries over quite readily
Mel: if you've seen the movie then the first two maybe three episodes of the tv series
Mel: basically cover the same sort of ground and a lot of very similar things and
Mel: then it sort of breaks away but if If you've seen the movie, it's quite similar.
Stu: Should we actually summarize the series rather than just diving straight into a scene?
Mel: It's how it opens.
Stu: It is how it opens. Absolutely. And I'm going to be like, you may be wondering
Stu: how we got here. And then I'm going to explain the context for it.
Mel: Really?
Stu: Which is, it's based on a 1995 novel by Nick Hornby.
Stu: And what's interesting is I do think the novel has that kind of like quasi,
Stu: maybe semi-autobiographical quality, which is
Stu: kind of why the internal narration kind of has that feeling and it's
Stu: basically about a character rob uh who
Stu: owns a record store and it's her kind of revisiting her past relationships right
Stu: and the kind of the connection of her relationships between music and
Stu: popular culture that's kind of the overall show right it's
Stu: not quote-unquote plot heavy the first episode she
Stu: starts with this breakup as you just talked about with mac
Stu: right then it kind of goes to explain her her breakup with simon who
Stu: turns out he realized this is he's a gay man and
Stu: he starts working at her record shot she has a
Stu: date with the character that took me a long time to realize
Stu: was from white lotus because he's less of
Stu: a jerk so he this character is clive they go on a date at the beginning she
Stu: thinks he's ghosted him and then he kind of comes back at the end and turns
Stu: out he's actually kind of a nice guy and then so you get these senses like she's
Stu: like oh maybe i can explore this and then she runs into her ex mac and then
Stu: we set up what i presume i've only watched the The first episode is going to be the conflict,
Stu: the central conflict of at least a few episodes, which is her trying to decide
Stu: between getting back together with Mac, her ex, or exploring a relationship with Clyde.
Mel: As an aside, it's very funny to me that you think that Jake Lacey is an asshole
Mel: because in every other thing he plays, he's the nicest person,
Mel: like lots of rom-coms, really lovely guy.
Mel: And so White Lotus was casting very much against type because I'd seen him in
Mel: a bunch of rom-coms and a bunch of other things. So it's pretty great.
Chas: He was in Girls as well, wasn't he?
Stu: I forgot that he was in Girls. Yeah.
Chas: What I would say as well is the framework of the book, the movie,
Chas: and this pilot, and as well as throughout the episode, and Mel,
Chas: you've already mentioned it, is Rob likes to make lists.
Chas: It's also, everything is kind of tied to music.
Chas: Rob owns a record store, the characters work in a record store,
Chas: they're often making playlists or mixtapes or writing lists of whatever they're
Chas: going through at the time and linking it back to music.
Chas: And the list for this episode was her top five breakups.
Chas: And for me, the reason why I'm going to state it up front is that all the different
Chas: iterations of this story is about Rob trying to overcome their very internal barriers.
Chas: So, in this version, the TV version, Rob states that the breakup with Mac was
Chas: so painful that she will never swim in deep waters again.
Excerpts: Truth is, I've been completely out of my depth.
Excerpts: And after that, I was determined to never get out of my depth again.
Excerpts: So, for the last year, I've basically just been,
Excerpts: Paddling around in the shallow end.
Chas: So she's deliberately made herself emotionally unavailable for fear of being hurt.
Stu: And importantly, she actually, in her list, she flashes back to her as a young
Stu: kid and the breakup that she had when she was like nine years old.
Stu: Private is like, you're meant to be like, you're not, you're still not over that.
Stu: Your relationship that lasted six hours. and importantly the kid at the very
Stu: end the button of that flashback is the kid looking at the camera and saying what also.
Mel: Very importantly which i think is funny because the voiceover essentially of
Mel: the flashback is coming from the present and she's telling us that the reason
Mel: she remembers the specific time of their date is because she had an unbreakable
Mel: date with xena airing so she's She's also very clearly telling us that she's bisexual,
Mel: which comes up more clearly in a couple of episodes, but she absolutely is.
Stu: Are you telling me if you watch Xena, you...
Mel: If you have an unbreakable television date with Xena, I'm sorry to tell you, you're queer.
Mel: I don't know how it manifests exactly, but that's just a fact. Science.
Chas: But wasn't breakup number three with Kat?
Mel: Comes up soon, yes.
Chas: So, the main reason why I'm talking about that, and I actually love,
Chas: Sue, that you brought up the kid, because it shows the rules in which they're
Chas: breaking the fourth wall.
Chas: Because when in flashback, that's the only flashback where Rob is not playing herself.
Chas: But from memory, Rob doesn't break the fourth wall in any of the flashbacks
Chas: except that one. When they're in the flashbacks, they're generally in voiceover,
Chas: her relaying what has happened.
Chas: And the point I'm making here is, for the most part, it feels like that breaking
Chas: the fourth wall is coming from the narrative present.
Chas: But the kid...
Chas: Breaks the fourth wall separately and.
Stu: That's the the joke yeah right i think is
Stu: the kid as you say it's kind of her internal narrative and
Stu: i think that's important to compare to uh fleabags at least in the fleabag episode
Stu: we re-watched for this the flashback that's at that does not have fleabag looking
Stu: at the camera at all right it's completely with there is no fourth wall break
Stu: right which i think is kind of connects to the idea of what fleabag is doing
Stu: so i think what you talked about,
Stu: what are the rules around the fourth wall breaking is something that you can ask themselves,
Stu: what is breaking the fourth wall meant to be representing or who is the audience representing?
Stu: And I do think, I'm going to dive into it now, even though we're still just
Stu: on high fidelity, there is a difference between how they shoot the talking to
Stu: the camera and the barrelling in high fidelity and in fleabag.
Stu: In fleabag, the camera is often at her side and she's glancing over her shoulder
Stu: behind or glancing to the side, et cetera, et cetera.
Stu: In High Fidelity, it's largely kind of shot front on,
Stu: like broadly speaking, it's not meant to be like quick asides,
Stu: because I think the big difference between High Fidelity and Fleabag in terms
Stu: of their intentionality around the talking to camera is that Fleabag has effectively
Stu: got like intrusive thoughts.
Stu: She's speaking just her mind in the moment, right? In High Fidelity,
Stu: it's Rob kind of trying to understand her story.
Stu: And so she's kind of telling the story as a bit of a process.
Stu: She is thinking with her mouth open, right?
Stu: It's kind of like how she would do it to a therapist, I guess.
Chas: Yeah, absolutely. And the one thing, the reason why I bang on about it a bit
Chas: is they have picked a point in time when the fourth wall breaks open.
Chas: Are coming from. They are immediate, right? When Rob breaks the fourth wall,
Chas: she's very much in the moment that we are seeing narratively as well.
Chas: So, you're talking about that very opening one, she is crying.
Chas: She's in the middle of a breakup and she's listing her breakups.
Chas: She finishes the breakup with Mac and then says, all right, the list has changed.
Chas: Well done Mac, you've made it to number one, right? You've made my top five
Chas: breakups. It's in that instant.
Chas: And that's why I'm kind of banging on about the flashbacks a little bit,
Chas: because I think it would be very different if, you know, like Woody Allen in
Chas: Annie Hall, those breaking the fourth walls,
Chas: who Woody Allen is when he's breaking the fourth wall is not necessarily the
Chas: character he is in that very instant.
Chas: Whereas in both High Fidelity and all three of the examples and in Fleabag and
Chas: in Abbott Elementary, whenever a character is talking directly to camera or
Chas: looking at camera, they are in that narrative moment.
Mel: Their present tense, I guess. Yeah.
Chas: And the immediacy of it is, I think, the big difference I've taken out of this from voiceover.
Stu: Yeah. And I think High Fidelity in particular uses voiceover in those flashbacks,
Stu: right and so then it will kind of have her in the
Stu: moment and i think we're kind of assuming that the voiceover is it
Stu: starting with a piece to camera we go to the flashback we now
Stu: hearing the voiceover we're still assuming it's coming from that
Stu: singular moment in the present tense it's not coming from her
Stu: from episode eight right yeah it's coming from this specific scene so the piece
Stu: to camera helps us understand from when in time the voiceover is coming right
Stu: and it does give them the option i haven't watched the whole show yet and i
Stu: think i probably will now but it wouldn't surprise me if If there is just another
Stu: piece to camera or two in future flashbacks, it wouldn't surprise me.
Stu: Like, it doesn't feel completely unchararistic, right? Because,
Stu: I mean, they've set up that contrivance right in that first flashback to her as a child.
Chas: But I imagine even if there was a breaking the fourth wall in a flashback-
Chas: It would be Rob from the narrative present, not Rob from the,
Chas: in the time of the flashback.
Stu: I don't know. I haven't seen the whole show, so I can't speculate other than
Stu: what I say, what I've seen, which is that she does it as a child, right?
Stu: Yeah. Because it's the child using adult language. It does feel like this is
Stu: her from the present putting words into the mouth of her as a kid, as a teenager. Yeah.
Mel: There's one other moment, which I do think if we're talking about the levers
Mel: that it pulls, that is, it's kind of a clever bit.
Mel: I don't think it has a huge meaning to it, but there's a use of the diegetic
Mel: music, which sounds like a soundtrack, because obviously there's a lot of music
Mel: that's played on records and played within the show. But then there's also a soundtrack.
Mel: And then there's a moment where Rob sees Mac and there's a song playing and
Mel: then she takes her headphones out and suddenly the music gets quite tinny.
Excerpts: Mac.
Excerpts: What are you doing here?
Mel: So it's almost that we are within her headspace
Mel: there and um it's this diegetic non-diegetic music
Mel: it's the filmmakers playing with what we're
Mel: hearing and then she's hearing as well and that because that is our point of
Mel: view character and the only one who breaks the fourth wall which i just thought
Mel: was a bit of fun and it's something that shows do even if there are no fourth
Mel: wall breaks but it feels like an extra little punchy bit of you know if we're
Mel: hearing her constant and she's constantly talking to us,
Mel: it's like, oh, we're with her in that as well.
Mel: And then she sees Robin takes them out and it's breaking that moment as she starts talking to Mac.
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: So to come to my...
Stu: Controlling question um literally about
Stu: control how much control do we think rob has over the
Stu: telling of this story and what do you think is
Stu: the emotional effect of that i think she's got quite a lot of control in fact
Stu: i think and and we'll get to it when we finally get to fleabag i actually think
Stu: she's possibly got more control over the telling of the story than fleabag does
Stu: because of what it's trying to represent about her psychology yep right we.
Mel: See everyone from All the flashbacks, like, do we really know that Kat was that much of a dick?
Mel: Maybe Kat was, maybe Kat wasn't. But either way, the only knowledge that we
Mel: have about that breakup and all of the things that led to it is from Rob,
Mel: not just Rob's point of view, but Rob directly telling us this is what happened.
Mel: And so she has essentially all of the control.
Chas: She prompts every flashback. They're not prompted by an omniscient storyteller.
Chas: The flashbacks aren't happening to her. She is taking us to the flashbacks.
Mel: Look at this number in my list. Now I will show it to you. And she's picking
Mel: which ones we see and don't see as well.
Mel: She's picking the moments in time that she shows us.
Mel: So it's all to present herself in a certain way or her experiences in her way.
Chas: Referring back Mel to the moment that you picked up where she takes the headphones
Chas: off and the score becomes diegetic when she bumps into Mac.
Chas: She is deliberately told that moment out of time because we see her go on the
Chas: date with Clyde and all of that's playing out and she's hurt her hand.
Chas: And then we see why she was in such a mood at that point.
Chas: She's told us that she only bumped into Mac shortly before going on the date
Chas: with Clyde, and she tells us that later.
Mel: It supports her story and supports her telling us these things. Yeah, absolutely.
Stu: So I'm going to draw an interesting distinction here because I think you're right.
Stu: I think she is in control of the telling of the narrative, but I don't think
Stu: she is really that in control of the filmmaking per se, right?
Stu: I don't think she's going to do the Fight Club moment where it's like,
Stu: hold up, rewind, and you kind of have that kind of metatextual stuff.
Stu: This is my impression, right?
Stu: That she's in control in the telling of the narrative, and the part of the kind of like-
Stu: more unadorned style and part of that more presentational
Stu: style where the camera's just sitting there and she's looking at more
Stu: directly on is to indicate the fact
Stu: that she's just telling the story that the camera
Stu: isn't something that she has control over she
Stu: doesn't have control of the camera and the editing or the sound
Stu: or any of that stuff her control is limiting to the
Stu: presentation of the information to the audience it's a subtle thing but there
Stu: is like like a Deadpool could have been a film that we did for this and Deadpool
Stu: clearly has control over the kind of filmmaking like the metatextual like the
Stu: textual elements of the story I mean he certainly had in the comics right and
Stu: they translated that to the the film so.
Mel: If you put Deadpool at like a 10 and Fight Club at maybe like a 9 or a 10 would
Mel: you put High Fidelity maybe like a 7 oh.
Stu: In terms of control like.
Mel: Where you know loosely in terms of the levers right that In terms of control.
Mel: Specific lever in terms of control.
Mel: Yeah. I think that's a very fair distinction, a good distinction.
Stu: I think it's useful because I think you'll see there's like a flip side to that
Stu: in kind of like the inverse to that in Abbott Elementary.
Stu: And I think it's kind of interesting because Fleabag kind of plays with that,
Stu: which we've already talked a little bit about in Fight Club,
Stu: but we'll unpack that a little bit more.
Chas: But I think, Stu, your question about whom are they talking to?
Chas: Like, who does the audience, us as the viewer being eyeballed and spoken to
Chas: by Rob, who do we represent?
Chas: Because if we represented the audience of the TV show High Fidelity,
Chas: then she would have the control over those things because she knows she's in a TV show.
Chas: I think because she is not controlling those things, it changes who we are as her audience.
Stu: Yeah, I agree.
Chas: It makes us just an individual person being told her story and she is in control
Chas: of her story and in what order she wants to present it, but she's not aware that she's in a TV show.
Stu: Yeah, I think she's the internal...
Stu: Narrator i have a very strong internal narrator
Stu: very visual i can completely disappear emma notes
Stu: it she'll be like where are you and i will have to moment
Stu: because i my mind i is so vivid that i do not actually recall what i'm saying
Stu: like sometimes it's why i nearly walk into things and stuff like that right
Stu: and so she to me in high fidelity is absolutely representing that moment of
Stu: kind of like drifting off and completely narrating something and the way that that bend bounces to,
Stu: flashbacks etc etc right or you know
Stu: and and that's often why some of those kind of pieces to camera lead into
Stu: little moments of flashback right not always but it
Stu: does seem they set up a little bit of a you know the
Stu: flashback may be very small or it might be you know like we're going to go and
Stu: summarize her relationship with whoever but it does feel like that is what it's
Stu: kind of do and we are the we're inside her mind it's kind of like a a herman's
Stu: head or an inside out without having those characters cutting into that, right?
Chas: Well, there is definitely a different relationship between Rob and us and Rob
Chas: and every other character.
Chas: You know, similarly to what we identified in Veronica Mars, Veronica in the
Chas: voiceover episode, Veronica shares in voiceover things that she would never
Chas: share with other characters in world.
Chas: And Rob here in High Fidelity is doing the
Chas: same thing and it seems so
Chas: obvious to say it's dramatizing the internal but it's
Chas: doing so in a way that I think I'm trying to imagine what this story would look
Chas: like without the breaking the fourth wall and I still think it would be great
Chas: and I still think it would be interesting but we would not get the access to
Chas: Rob's internal journey in anywhere near the same
Chas: way because of this narration and how she's sharing her emotional present and
Chas: her internal narration with us.
Stu: Or the nature of her kind of relationship dysfunction.
Chas: Well, that's, yeah, that's bang on because the best bit of setup that this does
Chas: from a craft perspective.
Chas: So, we've got, Mel, you've already talked about, you know, it opens with her
Chas: breaking the fourth wall in an emotional present and we've got the breakup. up.
Chas: It then cuts to a year later and she has a call with her brother and she lies
Chas: to her brother about going on a date.
Chas: And then she talks to us telling us, I could go on a date.
Chas: And then it immediately cuts. And we now know later at the end of the episode
Chas: that she's actually deliberately not told us what happens in the intervening
Chas: time, which is she bumps into Mac on the street.
Chas: But from us as the audience, it immediately cuts to her going on a date and
Chas: talking to us saying, I'm not ready.
Excerpts: I could have a date if I wanted to.
Excerpts: Because I'm fine.
Excerpts: I'm totally fine.
Excerpts: I'm not fine. I'm not ready. This is fucked.
Chas: So it's so in the emotional present that like it's going back to what you guys
Chas: identified in Fight Club is it's teaching us how reliable Rob is as a narrator.
Chas: And what you guys have talked about in other episodes is how much it's demonstrating
Chas: to us how much Rob is lying to herself. self. She's not lying to us.
Chas: She's not saying I'm okay to go on a date because she wants to mislead us.
Chas: She's lying to herself that I'm okay to go on a date. And then she realizes.
Mel: Oh, oops. Yeah. But I think when we talk about what is the effect on the audience,
Mel: I think that is really a good segue because we've all been there.
Mel: We've all thought that we, oh yeah.
Mel: And it's not just that that we're telling our friends this, or just telling
Mel: someone this. We really think that, okay, sure. And then later we go,
Mel: oh, I was lying to myself.
Mel: Obviously, sometimes when we lie to ourselves, it's to make we know.
Mel: But sometimes we look back and go, no, I was definitely attempting to convince
Mel: myself by just saying I was fine and not actually being fine.
Mel: So I think the identification is twofold. We do identify with Rob because we
Mel: do these things, especially those of us who have like a running internal monologue and or love lists.
Mel: But also it really does help us empathize with her.
Mel: The fact that it's putting us in her point of view so much, including when her
Mel: point of view is in fact mistaken.
Chas: Yeah. And following straight on from that scene, she says she's not ready for
Chas: the date. The date is not going well.
Chas: And she tries to sneak out of the date. And as she's trying to sneak out of
Chas: the date, she's left the bar.
Chas: She's talking to us, acknowledging that it's a dick move.
Chas: And throughout the first episode, So, she often refers to herself disparagingly.
Excerpts: In retrospect, we were both.
Chas: I like that so early on in the episode, within, I don't know,
Chas: five minutes tops, they're using the fourth wall to say, you know,
Chas: we're in an emotional present.
Chas: She's sharing vulnerable things with us. She's lying to herself and then acknowledging
Chas: when she's lying to herself, sharing it with us.
Chas: She's much more closed off, you know, with Clyde and even with Mac and then
Chas: later on with her employees at the record store. than she is with us.
Stu: So question then becomes, if she's not talking to the audience,
Stu: if we're saying that she's kind of talking to a part of herself,
Stu: what does she want from this part of herself, right?
Stu: Fight Club, Jack was absolving himself of responsibility, which is somewhat
Stu: similar to, I think, overall Fleabag, but certainly not the episode we're looking at, right?
Stu: What does she want from, why is she talking?
Stu: What is compelling to her to talk? I mean, I think it's understanding.
Chas: Right?
Mel: I think so. So I think what you said earlier kind of hit on it.
Mel: It almost sounds like she's talking to a therapist.
Chas: Right?
Mel: She's trying to work herself out in some ways.
Mel: Like it's the reason a lot of people write in their diary or self-talk or do
Mel: have a running monologue or encourage that.
Mel: Like she's trying to understand and explain herself and in doing so maybe hopefully help herself.
Stu: And that's kind of why it probably works as a piece to camera in the moment,
Stu: because it's about the emotional presence.
Stu: So it's both what leads her to make the decisions she does in the moment,
Stu: and then also like her reflecting on those decisions after they've happened, right?
Stu: Whereas a voiceover that's coming from the end of the film is usually about
Stu: justifying the decisions of how did I end up here? How did I make up these bad
Stu: decisions, right? Right.
Stu: Not always. Like, I mean, spontaneous isn't as agenda driven with its voiceover,
Stu: but a lot of voiceover can be like that. But it's different.
Chas: Even if it was voiceover-
Chas: in the present tense, like in the moment, like close to thin red line,
Chas: it would still be distancing in a way that this is not.
Chas: Other than the fact that they've got a legacy from how the novel is narrated and how the film worked.
Chas: The reason why breaking the fourth wall for this works differently than voiceover
Chas: is because it is nearly always about informing us to what the emotional present is,
Chas: whether that's a lie or not, you know, it is her emotional present.
Mel: Her current state or current reality. It might be a lie, but that doesn't make it not real.
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: All right. So, speaking of not real.
Mel: Reality.
Stu: Speaking of reality.
Mel: Yeah, yeah.
Stu: Yeah. Should we go to Abbott Elementary?
Chas: Yes.
Mel: Abbott Elementary. Yes.
Excerpts: Okay. Okay, so if the store has ten potatoes, right, and you take away two of
Excerpts: them, how many potatoes would the store have left?
Excerpts: Janine, what did I say about taking my potatoes from the lunchroom?
Excerpts: But visual learning is so much better.
Excerpts: Well, guess what? Now you have zero potatoes.
Excerpts: I'm Janine Teagues. I've been teaching here at Abbott Elementary for a year
Excerpts: now. The staff here is incredible. Finally feeling top of things.
Excerpts: Cheesesteak. Cheesesteak. This is a classroom, not a hoagie stand.
Excerpts: Hoagie. We had it on the board. I know this school is rough, but we make do.
Excerpts: Looking for Ms. Coleman. Hello. What's up? I thought one of my colleagues here
Excerpts: hired a stripper for me. Okay.
Excerpts: I'm teaching a lesson on gravity. There have been three presidents since this
Excerpts: one. Here's where I taped in the others.
Excerpts: Hey, we're gonna have a good day. We do this because we're supposed to.
Excerpts: This show ain't the money.
Excerpts: I can make more work in the street easy.
Excerpts: We're gonna have a good day.
Chas: So in the lead up to the discussions for this series of episodes,
Chas: Sue, you have focused on the lever of diegetic to non-diegetic,
Chas: to in-world to not in-world.
Chas: And we started talking about mockumentaries where there is reasons to talk to
Chas: the camera, but they are not talking to the audience.
Chas: There's a realistic in-world reason why they are eyeballing someone. one.
Chas: And it's not us as the audience of the TV show.
Chas: And I just picked Abbott Elementary out of, you know, we were tossing around,
Chas: you know, The Office and Parks and Rec, and it's just a recency bias.
Chas: And it's my current soul bomb show for when you're like in a dark place and
Chas: you need to be lifted out of that dark place.
Chas: It's Abbott Elementary, which is, it follows the teachers and principal of a
Chas: primary school in Philadelphia,
Chas: a public primary school, which is important for the episode that we've chosen,
Chas: which the episode we've chosen is Ad Attack, which is in season two, is it episode seven?
Stu: Yes.
Chas: And it's the reason why I picked it is because the fact that they are being
Chas: filmed and followed by a camera crew becomes an important plot point in the actual show.
Chas: So, in this particular episode, an attack ad from a charter school comes out
Chas: and they're going, how did they get all this footage of us as teachers in this attack ad?
Chas: And it turns out that they all just assumed that the crew, camera crew for the
Chas: attack ad was the same camera crew as the mockumentary team.
Mel: Including the fact, which of course is amusing to anyone who works in film and
Mel: has worked, that they signed release forms.
Excerpts: To be clear, this camera crew trespassed, right?
Excerpts: Well, actually I let them in. Okay, but they used your likeness without consent.
Excerpts: Yeah, well, we did sign these. But they misrepresented what they were doing?
Excerpts: Well, they did say they were coming to get footage of us, which they did.
Excerpts: Yeah. Okay, so what I'm seeing here is you guys just failed to pay attention to what was happening.
Excerpts: You have absolutely no case. And in fact, according to this,
Excerpts: you might each owe Legendary Charters $200 for crew fees.
Mel: They're like, oh, can't we take that? And they're like, no, I signed the forms.
Mel: We thought, you know, because they thought the producer just asked him to sign more forms.
Mel: You get to a point where you're just like, yeah, you're signing your life away all the time.
Mel: So they're like, oh, we could just have them take the foot. but no,
Mel: they have legal rights to all of this footage in every way. Here's all of the
Mel: paperwork that you signed.
Chas: Yeah. And it has that amazing line from Ava that we'll accept.
Excerpts: How did we even get this footage? Yeah. A camera crew came in.
Excerpts: I thought it was one of them. Oh, like y'all can tell these moderately attractive
Excerpts: white men with beards apart. What's even under there?
Mel: Oh, soundies.
Stu: Damn, I get myself confused with other people all the time.
Chas: Well, didn't we post it on Discord, that picture of Jason Alexander looking
Chas: exactly like you? Hey, hey, hey.
Stu: Not exactly. He's got a little bit more hair on front with that incredible criminal
Stu: minds white hair. anyway.
Chas: So just to add to the summary that the
Chas: the main characters are there's a
Chas: quintet of classroom teachers so
Chas: janine's the lead and she's kind of
Chas: really the point of view character she started teaching with the very beginning
Chas: of the series and so this is her second or third year now and then greg with
Chas: whom there's a unresolved romantic tension barb who is the like very experienced
Chas: kind of super teacher that everyone respects.
Stu: And who.
Chas: Are the other miss shementi the um kind of philadelphia cliche philadelphia.
Mel: And italian cliche bless.
Stu: Melissa and their and their principals ava right whose
Stu: idea is to do the documentary so in the pilot because i
Stu: watched the pilot to hear the setup and then i watched um the
Stu: the attack episode it's ava's idea
Stu: to bring the documentary crew to kind of bring attention to the plights of being
Stu: a inner city public school and it kind of works because ava as we'll see out
Stu: is kind of a tone deaf principal she's very kind of just i mean i'm not even sure she means well um,
Stu: there's kind of like a narcissism to her particularly set up in the pilot about
Stu: it and so that's why she's brought so they've even set up an in-story world
Stu: reason for why the documentary crew is there, right?
Stu: And also why they have so much access.
Chas: And there's three, I guess, styles. I don't know about styles is the right word, but- Modes?
Chas: Yeah. So there's the traditional mockumentary. The bulk of the narrative is
Chas: a camera crew following around and the characters somewhat behaving as if there's
Chas: not a camera there to an extent, as much as they can.
Chas: And then they have pieces deliberately to camera where they've been sat down
Chas: often by themselves to give an interview and Then there are these separate moments where,
Chas: And there's so many laughs in them, but it's definitely going to be something
Chas: that I'll focus on in my key learnings here, where the characters remember that
Chas: they're being filmed, and then they look down the camera.
Chas: And it's often not to say anything at all. It's just this silent acknowledgement
Chas: that, oh, shit, this is being filmed.
Mel: So, like, I think that this episode is a great one to pick because it's got
Mel: four really clear examples of all of those.
Mel: But, Stu, did you have something before that?
Stu: Yeah, I'm leading with my thing about control, right?
Stu: Do they have control over the story or over the narrative? And the answer is neither particularly.
Stu: This is what makes this such an interesting form of, and I think maybe the appeal of it,
Stu: is that the characters can obviously have control over what they say,
Stu: but I get no sense of this feeling that they have control of how their story
Stu: is being represented in terms of the filmmaking or otherwise, okay?
Stu: And so that means like to have a hypothetical moment.
Stu: And I can't remember if it even happens in this episode, but like where a character
Stu: has a breakdown and runs off, the camera is in this story is completely within
Stu: the rules of the world to like, I'm going to be intrusive and following them,
Stu: follow them into the bathroom where they're having a breakdown.
Stu: I don't think this happens in an episode, but it's an example of something.
Stu: Whereas I think in High Fidelity, if she was like, I'm out, nope.
Stu: And doesn't want the camera to follow her, it wouldn't.
Stu: I think Fleabag is interesting because I think there is possibilities it would, right?
Stu: That their camera is a little bit, because I think Fleabag psychology is a little
Stu: bit more intrusive thoughts.
Stu: And so I think the fact that the camera crew here has a degree of autonomy over
Stu: the storytelling just gives us access to the characters more differently.
Stu: And it's an ensemble. That also helps.
Stu: We're getting multiple point of views of the characters, right?
Stu: The whole attack ad metaphor is about the fact that they have no control over
Stu: their representation, right?
Stu: Because these other the crew make you know makes them look worse uh
Stu: than they actually are and i think i'm gonna say it
Stu: now much probably to the embarrassment of my parents both my parents are
Stu: public high school teachers and you know
Stu: teachers work incredibly hard and it's nice to see a show that um recognizes
Stu: that and kind of does it so endearingly as much as it's like oh let's do a mockumentary
Stu: and make laughs of it i don't think it's ever um belittling the profession or
Stu: most of the teachers i think I think it belittles Ava a little bit,
Stu: but even then, not really.
Chas: Yeah, but it's belittling principals. Yes. And as I'm the son of a high school
Chas: principal, and I think that is a-okay to belittle principals.
Stu: Correct.
Chas: So, we've got the different instances of when the character's talking to camera or not.
Chas: What do you think they want? What do you think the characters want?
Chas: Want when they're doing the performance pieces, like the two camera interviews
Chas: and they know they're being interviewed and they're not just in the midst of
Chas: their day-to-day work life as against those moments where they...
Chas: Are kind of drawn to look down the barrel.
Mel: Well i think so i'll give you my four examples because
Mel: i think they all want something slightly different so the
Mel: the episode opens with gregory side-eyeing the camera with a smirk because he's
Mel: he's knows what is going on within the scene and he's like this is philly it
Mel: also ends with him looking at the camera so it opens and closes and And Gregory
Mel: is the character that wants some sympathy.
Mel: And this is interesting, right? Because if we're assuming it's a mockumentary,
Mel: then he wants it from the audience.
Mel: But I think he also, within universe, clearly wants it from the crew.
Mel: Like, you guys have been following me for years now. You see how this is, right?
Mel: Then we've got the testimonial. So Janine wants to put her best foot forward.
Mel: She wants to talk about the school. She's always, always pitching and trying
Mel: to get things for the school and what they need.
Mel: You've got ava's protestation of
Mel: like oh we thought the camera crew was you right like she's trying to
Mel: claim her innocence and and and also it's a little bit of explaining herself
Mel: right like this is this is what happened ah and then the fourth instance which
Mel: i think is hilarious is you've got a student who breaks the fourth wall and
Mel: talks to the cameras like oh i'm leaving i I can do what I want.
Excerpts: Joshua, how could you? I didn't. My mom did, you dork. Damn.
Excerpts: I'm leaving. I can talk all I want now.
Mel: And he is just, I mean, he's clearly the class clown. He's got an audience.
Mel: It's not just us. For him, it's the camera crew, you know? So he's trying to
Mel: get that bit of attention and, you know, I'll be on film.
Mel: I'll be, you know, immortalized forever, you know, the same way that if you're filming outside,
Mel: you have everyone driving down the street, you know, honking or trying to jump in
Mel: front of the camera or annoying news reporters or whatever
Mel: right like let me have my my five seconds notice how
Mel: funny i am and i think so what they want
Mel: is all contextual and i think changes um depending on the character and depending
Mel: on what they're doing but it uses all of these different techniques not just
Mel: different characters and different wants to sort of move that lever depending
Mel: on how they're addressing what they're saying as well.
Stu: I'm just going to insert myself here just because my ADHD brain says go before I've forgotten it.
Stu: I think what's interesting about this is a metaphor which tied,
Stu: like, not a metaphor, but coming to the agenda, what does the person talking?
Stu: The filmmakers have an agenda.
Chas: Right?
Stu: As in the documentary crew, I do think is trying to make this school look good.
Stu: Like, it's trying to be warts and all, but there's a humanist quality to what they're doing.
Stu: And that is shown up in contrast to the Attack ad, where the schools are called
Stu: legendary. I think it's not Tariq. I can't remember the name.
Stu: Draymond, maybe?
Chas: Yeah, Draymond.
Stu: The CEO of the other schools. It reveals that basically he's trying to poach
Stu: Barbara, the best teacher. He's the only one that she looks good.
Stu: And he's trying to, in a way, get her to come to the school.
Stu: So obviously the agenda is don't send your kids to Abbott, send them to us.
Stu: But also I think there's a more subtle thing going on about where he wants Barbara
Stu: to come and work with him.
Stu: And I think if you're doing a mockumentary, thinking about the point of view
Stu: of the camera crew is really useful.
Chas: Yeah. Right?
Stu: Right? I think you kind of got to have a point of view about what is their agenda
Stu: here. What is it that they want?
Chas: You've mentioned the pieces to camera. I mean, Draymond does have his own pieces
Chas: to camera. We've got the class clown.
Chas: We've got the opening where Ava is talking about that interview where she's
Chas: going to get all of her ex's stuff out of her apartment.
Mel: Janine's getting all of her ex's stuff out of the apartment.
Chas: Thank you. Janine is.
Excerpts: Tariq is in town. So I asked him to grab the rest of his stuff.
Excerpts: I decided that when your relationship is 100% over, your ex shouldn't be keeping
Excerpts: like 90% of his things at your place.
Excerpts: His Pokemon plush toy, Charmeleon, he said it was the only thing that understood him.
Excerpts: Dragon Ball Z, Gundam figures, Attack on Titan, a lot of anime.
Excerpts: Wait, I think the last one was manga. He would always get sad when I confused the two.
Chas: And in those pieces
Chas: to camera what i love about them is that
Chas: they allow the characters to say
Chas: things to the camera that they've got a
Chas: different relationship with the camera crew than they have with their workplace
Chas: and that when they're alone they will say things differently to the camera crew
Chas: then they'll say when they're around their colleagues and it's still performative
Chas: but but But that is Janine lying to herself because then the whole episode arc is about her,
Chas: like, potentially slowly getting re-entangled with her ex and everyone trying
Chas: to stop her from doing that.
Chas: But then you've also got those wonderful characters like Ava is part of the
Chas: jokes that she gets is because she says exactly the same thing in her to camera
Chas: pieces as she would around her colleagues.
Chas: She has no filter and acts just as unprofessionally in or just as Ava-ish in all contexts.
Chas: Those beats where they eyeball the camera, I was trying to like group them all
Chas: together. together and they're always, again, like in High Fidelity,
Chas: they're prompting the audience to go, what are they feeling?
Chas: And I could imagine in the screenplay, I haven't read any of the scripts,
Chas: but I could imagine, you know, it would be go answer camera and then just after
Chas: it, you could say whatever the emotion that that character is feeling,
Chas: whether it's embarrassment or regret or Or did you just fucking see that or
Chas: whatever it is, because it's so clearly takes a moment for us to go.
Chas: As soon as they look at us, it makes us go, why are they looking at us?
Chas: What, what do they want from us?
Chas: And it's nearly always a measure of, yeah, it's some kind of emotions that they're different.
Chas: Often it, you know, it's might be embarrassment about Ava or another character,
Chas: or it will be embarrassment about something that they just did or were caught
Chas: doing, but it's about being understood.
Chas: And it allows us access in a professional workplace setting for people who are
Chas: being observed by a camera crew.
Chas: It still gives us access to what's going on inside.
Mel: Yeah, I think that it is. And I think it's about being seen.
Mel: I think it's a big, like, if you had to really boil it down,
Mel: like you have, you know, high fidelity is about understanding and being understood.
Mel: And Abbott Elementary is about being understood and being scene.
Chas: Specifically. There was one line in this particular episode that I enjoyed.
Chas: It was simple punchline humor, but it stood out to me because Miss Chimenti,
Chas: they were asking her, how did she get Draymond's phone number?
Excerpts: I did it.
Excerpts: I found the dirty rat in charge of legendary charters. Melissa Schlemente comes through again.
Excerpts: How'd you do it? Oh, I've got my ways. I Googled it. But I like to maintain
Excerpts: that air of dark mystery.
Chas: She then, I mean, it's a funny joke. It's good for character.
Chas: But I'm interested that they had so many different ways of doing that joke.
Chas: They could have cut to footage that they had where she was unaware that they're watching her Google it.
Chas: That would still give the same joke, but it would be undermining her.
Chas: Whereas her doing it to camera and being proud of it. And she's not proud that
Chas: she found the phone number.
Chas: She's proud of how her colleagues see and fear her and think of her as this
Chas: like underworld mobster kind of character.
Stu: And I'm going to jump to the opening of speaking of other little clever things,
Stu: the opening of episodes one and two of season three, right?
Stu: Because effectively there is a time jump. It basically starts in the present
Stu: and then does it five months earlier.
Stu: And then there is a reveal of an exchange between Jeffrey and Janine,
Stu: where the way they do it is they have Ava lead the camera crew.
Stu: She leads the camera crew into a security closet and loads up security camera
Stu: footage, and they're filming the security camera footage being played back of
Stu: this kind of moment, this confrontation that the camera crew didn't have access to. Janine?
Excerpts: Yeah, no, we're fine. It's just nothing weird.
Excerpts: Oh, hell yeah, something weird is going on between Gregory and Janine.
Excerpts: They ain't tell you. Well, lucky
Excerpts: for y'all, my hidden cameras picked up everything. Y'all gonna love this.
Excerpts: Hey. Hey. That was a fun hang the other night, right? It was.
Excerpts: I really liked that place. Me too.
Stu: And I thought that was just a great found footage solution to the problem of
Stu: we want to have a moment of intimacy between these characters, right?
Stu: Of actual genuine kind of them revealing their private selves,
Stu: which I don't think they would have done, but found a really good way to do
Stu: on camera because there is an awareness of the characters that they are being filmed.
Stu: And I think that moment would have played differently. And by making it a security
Stu: camera footage, and we completely believe that Ava's like, oh yeah,
Stu: of course one, she's got cameras, but two, that she's like held onto this for
Stu: five months that kind of fills us in.
Stu: It's a very clever diegetic solution to the problem, Which I think the show
Stu: navigates very well, which is there's a degree of awareness of the crew with
Stu: the cameras being around,
Stu: right? That there is an element of.
Stu: Not performativeness there's obviously moments that they kind of get relaxed
Stu: and i don't know if the show does it but the idea that maybe from episode one
Stu: in season one to episode 10 the cast seemed to get more and more relaxed but
Stu: i that particular moment between jeffrey and janine i don't think i would have
Stu: bought would have happened as it did if the crew was in that room it was a solution for it yeah.
Mel: I can't wait till you read the thing that i wrote about the season three finale
Mel: i have to watch the season three finale before you i.
Stu: Have to watch three seasons Watch it.
Mel: And there's a whole thing because I love what the season three finale specifically
Mel: does, Stu, with what you're just talking about.
Chas: This show mel you made the comment in uh in our
Chas: pre-chat about like this show doesn't feel
Chas: revolutionary it feels like a sitcom with characters and telling x number of
Chas: jokes and having space for ad breaks and previous two first two seasons had
Chas: 22 episodes and you know the mockumentary format has been done before but it
Chas: does feel i think quite revolutionary in that
Chas: this is one of the first ones where they, it's not every episode,
Chas: but where they are like deliberately talking to the crew.
Chas: So in this episode and in the episode you're talking about, Stu,
Chas: season three, episode one, it starts out with Ava laughing at them because they
Chas: got robbed and then the camera crew asks her to tell them the story.
Excerpts: You want me to tell you what happened to you?
Excerpts: All right, tell the people. So they got robbed because they thought it'd be
Excerpts: cute to walk around West Philly at night with all this camera equipment.
Excerpts: Hell, I'd have helped rob you if I was there.
Excerpts: Anyway, here we are five months later because that's how long it takes for three
Excerpts: people with art degrees to save up for new cameras.
Excerpts: Welcome back. It's career day today. Unfortunately.
Chas: That interaction with they are aware that a documentary is being made of them.
Chas: And your example of how do
Chas: we get access to that janine and greg moment without
Chas: them feeling like they're being
Chas: watched and also narratively accounting
Chas: for the time jump and allowing them to just you
Chas: know create some new relationships as they come into a new season
Chas: is genius like that ava's got
Chas: yet another diegetic camera that
Chas: some characters aware of others are not and then i just love the coverage of
Chas: it because she's got cameras on each of them and the the mockumentary crew camera
Chas: is panning for coverage between the tv screens depending on who it wants to
Chas: be whose face they want to be looking at it's.
Mel: Very playful with the format in.
Chas: Ways that.
Mel: A lot of things like the office once it's sort of set up it sort of stays a
Mel: lot of the time within that that sort
Mel: of, you know, space that it's established in the first few episodes,
Mel: whereas this Abbott Elementary does get a little bit more playful with it.
Stu: With the form, yeah. I mean, my feeling is that the office, the documentary,
Stu: I think the English office isn't as playful, but I think the English office
Stu: actually leans a little bit more into the documentary aspect that the American office does.
Stu: The American office becomes a little bit like, oh, it's just a conceit,
Stu: whereas I think what they kind of have, Now, I mean, maybe it's just the limited
Stu: season thing with the English office. I don't know.
Chas: It's like the crash zooms in Succession, like they faded away throughout the show.
Stu: Yeah, the mockumentary element of the America in the Office ended up being the interviews, right?
Stu: That's like what they held the most to with the punchlines and those kinds of
Stu: the characters commenting on stuff and getting humor out of it,
Stu: as opposed to let's kind of lean into a little bit more into the reality of
Stu: what it would be like to have a crew here.
Stu: And I think the metaness of them allowing this other crew to come in and they
Stu: just signed a bunch of forms, it completely tracks. It completely tracks when
Stu: you get people to sign forms and even that season three opening where we find
Stu: out that the camera crew had their gear stolen.
Stu: You know, that line about art students. People who work in the arts have to
Stu: save up for five months buying new cameras.
Stu: There's like, you know, you talked about the fact that there was like,
Stu: do they interact with the crew? I feel that they do.
Chas: Right?
Stu: That there is just a degree of it. But it's not that the crew is commenting
Stu: on them, but I feel like there is a little bit of a sense, Ava,
Stu: particularly in that moment that we talked about in the security office where
Stu: she kind of like waves the crew over. There's a degree of interactivity there with the crew.
Chas: I think in terms of that question of who are the characters communicating with
Chas: when they're looking down the barrel of the camera is very different when they're
Chas: doing those interview performance moments where they are,
Chas: I'm being interviewed and I know that whom I'm talking to is an audience of
Chas: whatever this documentary is going to be.
Chas: They're not talking to the camera crew, but separately, you know,
Chas: they do have a relationship when they're looking at the camera,
Chas: when they're looking at the camera crew and the audience is different.
Stu: Agreed.
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Stu: Are we done with Abbott Elementary?
Chas: Yeah.
Stu: Shall we bag the flay?
FX: You know that feeling when a guy you like sends you a text at two o'clock on
FX: a Tuesday night asking if he can come and find you?
FX: And then you open the door to him like you've always forgotten he's coming over. Oh. Hi. Hey.
FX: Oh my God, definitely not. That does nothing for you.
FX: What? These are my clothes, boo. I've been wearing these all day.
FX: It's really not that bad, it's really not that bad. Oh, what are you doing?
FX: You got them all by the balls, cause I'm waterfalls.
FX: How did you meet? She used to be our godmother. But then their parents split
FX: up. Mum died. You really are very good looking.
FX: Thank you. Very. Thank you. Very.
FX: Thank you. It's been really nice to spend the day with a normal family.
FX: The only thing harder than having to tell your super high-powered perfect anorexic
FX: rich super sister that you've run out of money is having to ask her to bail you out,
FX: i'm just gonna ask her it's gonna come do you need to borrow money no.
Mel: Fleabag yeah so essentially if we've got uh high fidelity establishing its conceit
Mel: and abbott elementary having fun and playing with its conceit this is the episode
Mel: where fleabag Fleabag smashes its conceit looks into the fourth wall and breaks it with a hammer.
Chas: Oh, I think it breaks her.
Stu: We probably need to remind people of where we're at if they haven't watched
Stu: the show. And if they have watched the show, this is a little bit spoilerific.
Stu: But I mean, watching this again, I was like, man, Fleabag really is one of the
Stu: best written shows I have seen.
Stu: Like every line is so good. So, yeah.
Stu: I do. How do we even begin to summarize it? Cause it's really,
Stu: what's interesting is season one was based on her stage show and season two was not right.
Stu: And so season one, our point of view character is Fleabag.
Stu: And in a way it's a little bit of high fidelity because it's like the story
Stu: of her broken relationships, but her broken relationships are also with her
Stu: sister and her father, her father, her mom's died and she's,
Stu: and he's her father has remarried her gone mother and all those things are broken relationships.
Stu: And then there's basically a past storyline around Boo, her best friend, that has died.
Stu: And what we learn in season one is that Fleabag had an affair with Boo's boyfriend.
Stu: And that led-
Chas: To Boo having a traffic accident.
Stu: Yes. It's not suicide. Yes. Boo ends up kind of- They even have an argument,
Stu: don't they? And then it leads it into it. I'm not sure exactly.
Stu: But ultimately, the point is Fleabag feels responsible for Boo's death.
Stu: That's season one. Season 2 is structured around the impending wedding of Fleabag's
Stu: godmother to Fleabag's father And in the process of that meeting,
Stu: they're going to get married by this sexy priest Played by Andrew Scott Do.
Excerpts: You prefer weddings or funerals? Weddings His arms I think there's something
Excerpts: humbling about funerals Really?
Excerpts: Yeah, it's good to dwell on the next life You really think there's a next life? What do you believe?
Excerpts: Worm food Why? Why what?
Excerpts: His neck Why would you believe in something awful, when you can believe in something wonderful?
Excerpts: Don't make me an optimist, you will ruin my life.
Excerpts: Have you been to many funerals? A couple. His neck. And you never felt them go somewhere?
Excerpts: No, they were already gone. His beautiful neck. What?
Excerpts: You just said his beautiful neck. No, I said that they were already gone.
Excerpts: Okay. Weird.
Mel: His neck.
Stu: His neck.
Chas: His beautiful neck.
Mel: His beautiful neck. His arms.
Stu: His beautiful everything. Andrew Scott. And, like, that's important.
Stu: But there's also a little bit of a B-plot, which is Fleabag.
Stu: Her sister had a miscarriage, and Fleabag lied to protect her sister and say
Stu: that the miscarriage was her own.
Stu: Right so that's kind of the past thing we're in the middle
Stu: episode we're talking about episode four so we're smack bang in the
Stu: middle of season two which is kind of
Stu: where we're coming in where her relationship with the priest is
Stu: a little bit more cemented they're very flirty they're clearly
Stu: into each other but we're also going to be
Stu: getting something about the past like boo comes back into this
Stu: so i'll say my thesis is what is interesting about this
Stu: show and i've been i've been saying it throughout this episode but
Stu: i think what is interesting in that fleabag is
Stu: ultimately having what i would kind of call intrusive thoughts this is
Stu: her internal dialogue but she's having these moments like
Stu: the joke about the neck where she just can't keep on commenting on
Stu: his neck she can't help herself from having these kinds of thoughts and her
Stu: impulsiveness is actually what gets her in trouble anyway and this voiceover
Stu: builds to the fact that a the priest sees what she's doing right which is a
Stu: bit of a moment but there's a whole sequence of flashbacks in the
Stu: middle and the flashbacks are built into it where we see these
Stu: little moments moments moments moments and then we go into a bit of a retelling
Stu: of the funeral of fleabag's mother and that there is no fourth wall breaking
Stu: in that flashback because the fourth wall break is actually it's kind of like
Stu: not a fourth wall break it's that the the flashback itself is intruded upon fleabag.
Chas: So, let's share with the audience, our audience, hello audience,
Chas: why this episode in particular out of all of Fleabag.
Chas: Because we could have just done the opening episode of Fleabag and that would
Chas: be probably have replaced High Fidelity as a wonderful example of fourth wall
Chas: breaking. It is one character talking directly to us.
Chas: It's nearly always in the moment that she's talking to us.
Chas: Her moments where she breaks the fourth wall is always usually commenting on
Chas: what is happening at that moment.
Chas: She's usually telling us that she's lying or sometimes just looking at us to make us laugh.
Chas: She's involving us in her perspective of the world around us and letting us
Chas: in on the jokes that she sees.
Chas: And it's so incredibly funny. But I think the reason we wanted to do this episode
Chas: in particular is where her asides start to intrude on her life.
Chas: They're not separate from what is going on with the other characters.
Chas: And I had thought it was one moment, but it's actually three moments.
Mel: It's three, and I'm going to argue that it's four. Okay. And possibly five. So. All right.
Chas: Should we start talking through these moments? Because I feel like the reason
Chas: why we're picking this episode is because it does what High Fidelity does.
Chas: And then it, like you said, Mel, it smashes it.
Chas: It just uses it to, to me, it profoundly changed my relationship with Fleabag.
Chas: So it had a profound narrative effect from the Phoebe Waller-Bridge intends
Chas: as the writer and showrunner and performer that is separate.
Chas: It's not what Fleabag intends. Fleabag does not want.
Chas: What is happening to her relationship with us.
Mel: Well uh so this episode actually it's
Mel: fascinating it starts the exact same way that abbott elementary
Mel: starts which is fleabag kind of giving a sideways smirk to
Mel: the camera and then for the for the first bit
Mel: of it it follows on exactly as all the rest of the episodes to this point have
Mel: have followed on um until the main smash that we get uh which is hot priest
Mel: and it does have some lead up so fleabag and hot priest are in the cafe and they're talking and so.
Excerpts: You run do you run this place on your own no i opened it with a friend oh cool
Excerpts: right so you No, she... she, er... She what?
Excerpts: What? What? She... she what? She...
Excerpts: He's a bit annoying, actually. What is that? What?
Excerpts: That thing that you're doing. It's like you disappear. What?
Excerpts: What are you not telling me?
Excerpts: Nothing. Tell me what's going on. I don't need to hear it. Nothing.
Excerpts: Tell me. Come on. No. No, you told me. Nothing.
Excerpts: Nothing. Stop being so churchy. I'm not being churchy. I'm just trying to get
Excerpts: to know you. I don't want that.
Stu: Before that, she comments on his neck to us.
Mel: Yeah.
Stu: And he's like, what did you say? He doesn't acknowledge the camera,
Stu: but he acknowledges that he has heard what she has said to us.
Stu: And so that's confrontational because we're like, oh, when she speaks to camera,
Stu: are the people hearing it?
Mel: I actually think, though, and I want to jump back. I think that this had set
Mel: up in the episode prior that follows through because in the episode prior,
Mel: they're in the rectory talking and a painting falls off the wall.
Mel: She says something about, I don't believe in God and a painting falls off the wall.
Mel: And the priest says, oh, I love when he does that. So we're getting something as a response,
Mel: which that has a follow up in this episode as well,
Mel: where at the very end where another huge painting then falls,
Mel: which tying those together makes me think that the first setup is actually episode
Mel: prior when the painting falls off the wall. You might not think anything of
Mel: it because it's just a moment.
Mel: And then you get the hot priest going, who are you talking to?
Mel: So these are like cracks in the fourth wall that are sort of appearing.
Mel: You've got a small crack. You've got a bigger crack.
Mel: And then she goes, what? Nothing. She's very confused. And then he turns and he barrels.
Mel: He's like, who? What? And he's barreling, but like clearly searching,
Mel: like his eyes are sort of going back and forth and his head is searching.
Mel: And you just see this complete look of utter shock on her face because it's
Mel: clear that this is not just the only time someone else has looked at,
Mel: quote unquote, us, the audience, Beryl, but this is a new thing for her.
Mel: It's not like, oh, this has happened before, we just haven't seen it.
Mel: This is completely new for her.
Mel: That hot priest is breaking that and is speaking...
Mel: Essentially to us even though he's not 100 sure what's going on.
Stu: I will challenge that because in that cafe scene and
Stu: it was emma pointed this out so she as as i mentioned talking about uh high
Stu: fidelity the camera in fleabag is a little bit more like fleabag looking to
Stu: the corner or something that's slightly out of place but she when she barrels
Stu: the camera so there's a shot when she looks directly down at the camera and
Stu: it's andrew scott that turns over his shoulder and goes what What are you looking at?
Stu: And then we kind of cut to an angle that's basically 90 degrees from that. It's a right angle.
Stu: And we see him glance at the spot where the camera just was.
Stu: So I don't think that moment is to indicate that he isn't thinking of it as a camera.
Stu: He's just noticing that she is looking somewhere in the distance. The where do you go?
Mel: Where did you go? Yep.
Stu: She is looking somewhere at the distance and speaking sometimes aloud and sometimes speaking not.
Stu: Yeah. Right. I think there's a deliberate ambiguity there about whether or not
Stu: she's talking it or thinking it, but she is clearly doing a stew and kind of
Stu: wandering off and staring into the distance.
Chas: But they do it twice in that cafe moment.
Mel: Yeah, it's twice in the cafe.
Chas: So there's one moment, Sue, that you've just talked about where she looks away,
Chas: he follows his gaze, the camera cuts to a different angle, but then there's
Chas: a follow-up to that where she does it again and she looks straight down and
Chas: he follows her gaze and looks down the barrel at us.
Chas: And he's not looking at us because he doesn't see what she's seeing.
Chas: The filmmakers made a choice in a visual escalation.
Stu: Yeah.
Chas: That the first one is him looking where she's looking and going, what's going on there?
Chas: And the second one feels even more violent and even more intrusive because he looks at us.
Stu: Yeah, great.
Mel: Yeah. And I think if we look at them as the second and third,
Mel: and the first one is when they're walking outside on the street,
Mel: the first one could be written off as, you know, sometimes we think we're talking
Mel: to ourselves or like, oh, did I say that out loud?
Mel: So the first one, and then the second one escalates and the third escalates really hard.
Mel: Though I also, I have a question. I talked about the painting,
Mel: which happens, there's a painting that happens in the episode prior and then
Mel: at the very end of this episode, which definitely also feels like a fourth wall break.
Mel: And I don't, obviously this is an audio medium, so I can't really,
Mel: but there is a, in a flashback there's a
Mel: flashback where i think that boo
Mel: barrels the camera and it's just a look it's
Mel: in a shot and it's really interesting because nothing comes of it and boo is
Mel: alone in the frame and it's one of those things where it's a wide enough shot
Mel: and it's a short enough moment and also sometimes if you watch things every
Mel: once in a while you'll watch something where especially if
Mel: you're working with kids or especially if the camera's moving,
Mel: sometimes actors will glance across the barrel of the frame.
Mel: But I think it's, I think especially the fact that it appears in this episode that.
Mel: Feels very intentional. It does actually feel to me like Boo is the only other
Mel: person who truly saw, even every once in a while, what Fleabag saw before Hot Priest.
Mel: And it's just, it's a visual cue. It's a brief moment.
Mel: And it could be written off, but I think the fact that it was chosen to be left
Mel: in here, I think is very telling.
Chas: I want to ask you guys a question and I want
Chas: to lead on from so we just had the the cafe
Chas: moments and there was a
Chas: moment that i saw in this rewatch through this
Chas: lens that i don't think i really paid much attention to so
Chas: the priest leaves and then fleabag is walking just down a a nondescript suburban
Chas: london street and she looks behind her at the camera and then picks up her pace
Chas: and the camera stays still and she disappears peers around a corner.
Chas: And I'm suddenly felt like I'm being run away from. She feels threatened by me.
Chas: And Sue, you've talked about how in the flashbacks to her mom's funeral,
Chas: and it's really the only time across the two seasons where we've really dug
Chas: into her relationship with her mom.
Chas: Like you said, the first season was more about Fleabag coming to terms with
Chas: her feelings of responsibility for Boo.
Chas: And that flashback is prompted to my mind from the priest interrogating her
Chas: relationship with us, noticing it.
Chas: So, what did it feel like to you guys when suddenly her relationship to us has always been playful,
Chas: it's kept us involved in this narrative, it's made us feel like we know more
Chas: than anyone else, we're in on the joke, and then suddenly she's feeling I.
Stu: Feel like it's her losing control, right? And I think the camera following up
Stu: behind is that we thought she had control over the narrative.
Chas: Right?
Stu: In terms of the way it's presented, the way she's telling it.
Stu: We understand characters through how she sees them, right?
Stu: And she explains them to us, right?
Stu: I don't think we really like Fleabag's point of view at all.
Stu: And that moment when he recognizes that the camera's there, we're like,
Stu: oh, maybe she doesn't have as much control at all.
Stu: And that moment where it's basically
Stu: stalking her. It feels like something out of a horror film, right?
Stu: The kind of handheld POV shot in her, quicking pace, glancing over her shoulder
Stu: and stuff like that, makes it feel kind of intrusive.
Stu: And that's when it does have these kind of flash cuts to the flashback that
Stu: are somewhat intrusive.
Stu: It reminded me of a Yoko Ono experimental film from the 60s called Rape,
Stu: where it's a camera just following a woman for like 70 minutes.
Stu: I haven't watched the whole 70 minutes because it's not an easy watch.
Stu: It's effectively just a stalker. So I'm feeling that she's lost control and
Stu: that she is a little bit more powerless.
Mel: I took the opposite point of view. Not that she's lost control,
Mel: but that she has actually managed to run away for a moment from her intrusive thoughts.
Mel: And this, I think for me, it's almost a paired scene with the end in the confessional.
Mel: When she enters the confessional, she does not break the fourth wall once.
Excerpts: Keep going.
Excerpts: I've stolen things. I've had a lot of sex outside marriage.
Excerpts: And once or twice inside someone else's. There's been a spot of sodomy.
Excerpts: There's been much masturbation, a bit of violence, and of course the endless fucking blasphemy.
Excerpts: And?
Excerpts: Go on. And...
Excerpts: I...
Excerpts: I can't... It's okay, go on.
Excerpts: Frightened. Of what? Forgetting things.
Excerpts: People. Forgetting people.
Excerpts: And I'm ashamed of not knowing what I'm... What you want?
Excerpts: It's okay not to know what you want. No, I know what I want.
Excerpts: I know exactly what I want.
Excerpts: Right now. What's that?
Excerpts: It's bad. It's okay.
Excerpts: I want someone to tell me what to wear in the morning.
Excerpts: OK, well, I think there are people who can... No, I want someone to tell me
Excerpts: what to wear every morning.
Excerpts: I want someone to tell me what to eat, what to like, what to hate,
Excerpts: what to rage about, what to listen to, what band to like, what to buy tickets
Excerpts: for, what to joke about, what not to joke about.
Excerpts: I want someone to tell me what to believe in, who to vote for and who to love and how to tell them.
Excerpts: I just think I want someone to tell me how to live my life, Father,
Excerpts: because so far I think I've been getting it wrong.
Excerpts: But I know that's why people want people like you in their lives,
Excerpts: because you just tell them how to do it.
Excerpts: You just tell them what to do and what they'll get out at the end of it.
Excerpts: Even though I don't believe your bullshit, and I know that scientifically nothing
Excerpts: that I do makes any difference in the end anyway, I'm still scared. Why am I still scared?
Mel: She never breaks fourth wall
Mel: she's and it's a several minute scene if i
Mel: recall correctly she never breaks the fourth wall she's avoiding
Mel: us she's avoiding her thoughts she's completely consumed with her concentrating
Mel: on the priest and i think that whether for better or for worse both of these
Mel: instances are her managing to get away from her intrusive thoughts at least for a
Mel: moment it's something that she doesn't want to have to
Mel: think about so she runs away from it and manages to
Mel: not think about it and it's in the confessional it's
Mel: something she wants to say okay you know what i want this thing and if i let
Mel: this conscience or if i look at it or think about it for a moment i'm going
Mel: to lose my nerve or i'm going to uh lose the feeling the everything that I want
Mel: to be getting from this moment.
Mel: And so I think that those moments are almost paired to me.
Mel: The function is different, but the effect is quite similar in terms of like,
Mel: I'm actually just ignoring this right now, which it's interesting, right?
Mel: The control is, is it good if we just like push away our thoughts and I can't hear you.
Mel: So the terminology is quite fluid. Maybe some would say, well,
Mel: she has lost control, even if she's not thinking about it. the ability to think
Mel: about it and face it is control.
Mel: But I think that both of them are certainly showing that.
Mel: Facing it or not is what she's in control of at the moment well.
Chas: You guys both are using the term intrusive thoughts and i i love that because
Chas: that word inherently suggests not her control they are intruding they're not
Chas: invited or prompted by but.
Mel: If she's not eyeballing them right if she's not looking them slash us in the eye.
Chas: I i agree with your analysis about what it means when we are not having the
Chas: asides when she's not breaking the fourth wall that it's showing her i guess more present.
Chas: But in the first season, it felt like she was very much in control of whenever
Chas: she wanted to look at us and what she wanted us to know and not know.
Chas: You're talking about control of the narrative.
Chas: So, not only is she the step up from high fidelity,
Chas: you know, on the spectrum where high fidelity is a seven, what makes Fleabag
Chas: higher up that spectrum is to your point,
Chas: Stu, you she's placing the camera she's placing us
Chas: and it will often switch very quickly
Chas: she always knows where we are she's putting us where she wants us
Chas: to be whereas i feel that
Chas: with rob in high fidelity the camera
Chas: where we are located when she talks to us doesn't move
Chas: very much and she doesn't appear to be placing us
Chas: with the same amount of precision um and
Chas: so here it just feels like she's losing control of it the thing that made me
Chas: really gasp when I watched this episode for the first time when I when I first
Chas: saw it is if the hot priest can see it everyone else can see it and no one's noticed,
Chas: And if the hot priest can see her and she's just disappearing into her mind
Chas: or whatever, I suddenly felt, oh my God, am I Fleabag's mental illness?
Chas: What my experience was.
Mel: That feels like three very large questions piled on top of each other wearing a trench coat.
Stu: You're my mental illness, if that makes you feel any better.
Mel: I am Stu's mental illness. I think there's a difference, right,
Mel: between seeing and understanding.
Mel: So if you're saying that the hot priest doing this proves that everyone else
Mel: sees it and just shrugs it off then i do think there's either it's because they
Mel: don't quote unquote see fleabag they don't understand her or they don't have
Mel: intrusive thoughts and they sort of write off the fact that she does well.
Chas: He doesn't understand it he keeps asking where are you going what what are you.
Mel: But But he's trying to understand.
Chas: Right? Yes, yeah.
Mel: As opposed to, and I'll argue that by the finale, he does.
Chas: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know. So I watched this last night and Anna and I
Chas: went on a bit of a YouTube rabbit hole afterwards and saw Phoebe Waller-Bridge's opening from SNL.
Excerpts: Fleabag came from a very personal place for me. It began as a way to get Andrew
Excerpts: Scott to dress up as a priest and tell me that he loves me.
Excerpts: It took me six years and two seasons to achieve it, but I did it.
Excerpts: Yeah, I don't care about awards. I just want gay men to love me.
Excerpts: I called the character Priest in the script, but everyone started calling him Hot Priest.
Excerpts: Obviously, Andrew is hot, but this priest character caused such a hornstorm.
Excerpts: Andrew and I were trying to figure out what it was about him that was driving women so mental.
Excerpts: And we boiled it down and realized it was because he was doing this one thing.
Excerpts: Listening.
Mel: Yep, he listens. He tries to understand. He knows what she wants.
Mel: I mean, and then he tells her to kneel. So, you know, there's that.
Mel: But yeah, absolutely. He listens in a way that nobody else in her life other than Boo has done.
Chas: Yeah. Which goes to your point that if the, whether or not Boo barreling is
Chas: intentional or not, But if it was, it speaks to that, that she was the only
Chas: other person who may see Fleabag communing with us.
Stu: Boo's all flashback. I haven't rewatched the first season, but we only ever
Stu: see Blue in Fleabag's memory.
Stu: So it feels like, yeah, it's a representation of their closeness.
Stu: Yeah. So I agree with that. It's just I don't think it's Boo.
Stu: If we were somehow there was a prequel series, Fleabag is zero.
Stu: I'm not sure Boo would be looking at the camera.
Mel: But I think I think the idea is that whether it's in her memory or not,
Mel: or whether the fact that like Fleabag still clearly had some mental issues and was haunted by guilt.
Mel: The flashback that we get to Boo
Mel: is while Fleabag is sleeping with her boyfriend and Boo doesn't know it.
Chas: Right.
Mel: And Fleabag is haunted by guilt for what she's done.
Mel: And Boo did understand her. So even if the idea is that it's still,
Mel: you know, Fleabag's impression of Boo, understanding her and knowing her intrusive
Mel: thoughts about like, I'm cheating on you with your boyfriend.
Mel: You're like, why would I do this? I'm a terrible person.
Mel: I think that's still representative of that. And in some similar ways,
Mel: I think some people would argue, I'm not sure I would, that the painting falling,
Mel: for example, is God breaking the fourth wall to the priest.
Mel: Ways to tweak it with the painting and with Boo breaking it even in Mm-hmm.
Chas: So, Stu, you've made the observation, I'm not sure if you've made it in this
Chas: recording, that Fleabag only talks to us when she wants something of us.
Chas: And there's one final moment in this episode where we've come out of the flashback.
Chas: It does a really impressive match cut of Fleabag sitting on her parents' bed
Chas: in sunlight to Fleabag sitting in a church pew at night.
Chas: And Fleabag looks at us just before she kneels down to pray.
Chas: And I'm wondering, what do you guys...
Stu: How do we interpret that moment?
Chas: Yes.
Stu: Look at me, I'm about to pray.
Mel: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. The episode also ends with Fleabag looking at us and not saying anything.
Stu: Mm-hmm.
Mel: If they're her intrusive thoughts,
Mel: I think that it's asking not just for understanding, but for forgiveness.
Mel: And I've also seen the argument that the fourth wall break is her talking to
Mel: Boo, you know, the way that some people talk to loved ones who have passed,
Mel: you know, whether you go to the
Mel: gravesite or whether you talk out loud or whether you do it in your head.
Mel: And that's not a theory that I fully subscribe to. I do think it's interesting,
Mel: but I don't subscribe to it.
Mel: But I do think that if she will never be able to get forgiveness from Boo,
Mel: and she's attempting to be able to forgive herself.
Mel: And I think whether it's intrusive thoughts, whether you think that there is,
Mel: you know, some unknown unseen audience that she understands is there the same
Mel: way that, you know, sometimes people write autobiographies or, or whatnot.
Mel: I think that she's looking for forgiveness.
Stu: I think that I'm going to build off that because you're right.
Stu: That I've said, not just about fleabag, but that all the episodes,
Stu: the characters talk to the audience when they want something.
Stu: I think that is affected by how much control they have over that telling.
Stu: And I think what is interesting about what the characters say in the
Stu: Abbott Elementary reflects the fact that they know they are talking to the camera.
Stu: They know they're talking to a documentary crew that is going to inform how
Stu: they say and how they want to present themselves. There's a consciousness to it.
Stu: Similarly, High Fidelity is there is a consciousness of what she is saying,
Stu: even if it is an internal narrator that she has control over the story that she is being told.
Stu: Fleabag is interesting because I think early on, she definitely wants us to
Stu: think better of her, right?
Stu: But then if we come to this realization that part of her intrusive thoughts,
Stu: to use the term that we've been using, comes from trauma, one that she's a character
Stu: that's impulsive, but then that has created a situation of trauma that she's wanting forgiveness.
Stu: Then what she wants from the audience isn't anywhere near as conscious of what
Stu: the other characters in the other films and shows that we've looked at,
Stu: including the voiceover episodes.
Stu: Episodes right she is acting just as impulsively
Stu: and that reflects more of a deeper you know
Stu: to use the terminology it's a need not a want right so
Stu: she's got a need for forgiveness and part of like even her commenting on like
Stu: look at his arms about the priest at the beginning look at his neck is about
Stu: like forgive me he is really hot you know i can't help myself can i right he's
Stu: kind of that's That's a need, not a conscious want.
Stu: So I think, you know, when characters speak when they want something is also
Stu: characters speak when they need something.
Stu: I mean, it's such a weird dictaming, you know, need versus want.
Stu: I like it because you can basically inject it with your own shit.
Stu: She isn't pursuing a conscious agenda in the same way that I think Jack in Fight Club is.
Stu: Right. I think it's a more subconscious agenda. gender and that's
Stu: reflected by her control and this moment in particular where she's kind of beginning
Stu: to lose control makes us reflect and changes particularly for the final sequences
Stu: what we think of her and then how we kind of portray that and look the fact
Stu: that she's kind of impulsive and speaks her mind to the audience is kind of
Stu: what makes her humor like fun and transgressive right.
Chas: All right. A couple of questions. I agree that her asides are impulsive and
Chas: a reflection of intrusive thoughts, but I don't think we are her.
Chas: I feel that she's performative and she's sharing them with someone outside herself.
Chas: I don't think it's Deadpool level where she knows she's in a TV show,
Chas: but the fact that she places us at different physical locations around the room
Chas: so that she has to physically turn to look at us makes me, I don't know.
Mel: I do think she wants an external forgiveness.
Mel: She's trying to forgive herself, but I think she believes she can't do it without someone.
Mel: And I think that it is a slightly more ethereal someone.
Mel: Yeah, I don't believe she knows, oh, I'm in a TV show and I'm asking the audience.
Mel: But I do think that there is some metatextual sleight of hand that's going on
Mel: there of us being representative of her desperately seeking other people in
Mel: her life to validate her.
Chas: Yeah. And that moment where she looks at us before she gets down to pray,
Chas: I felt very strongly that she was asking for us not to judge her because she's
Chas: like an atheist and, you know, has been playing, you know, back and forth about
Chas: religion and stuff with a hot priest for three episodes.
Chas: And, you know, suddenly feeling compelled to pray.
Chas: And she looks at us asking something of us.
Stu: Yeah. I mean, I think it has a different effect.
Stu: I mean, who is the audience in the staged version of this?
Stu: And you've seen it, Mel, but we've seen soliloquies in shows before,
Stu: right? There's a long history of soliloquy.
Stu: Are they talking to the audience?
Mel: Yeah. And in that, it's much more of a, let me tell you this story that happened.
Mel: And she doesn't say, you, the hundred audience people assembled here tonight.
Mel: But it feels very much like, oh, I'm at a party and I'm telling a story.
Mel: And let me tell you this story. Oh, my God, you won't believe.
Mel: You know, some people in a stage play, even if it's a one person show,
Mel: they're talking, you know, to the back wall.
Mel: She's looking at the audience members as she talks in a lot of the scenes. So it's more of a.
Mel: Stand-up type of presentation than some.
Chas: One person.
Mel: Plays are for sure.
Chas: There's a really excellent analysis that it's
Chas: only a 10 minute youtube video of someone doing a compare
Chas: and contrast between the stage show and various moments from season one and
Chas: some of them are just she's obviously done that stage show for years and got
Chas: great success and the delivery is identical and it's fascinating but he made
Chas: the observation that just like what you said that because fleabag is narrating what is happening,
Chas: then has the gags as its commentary.
Chas: It's like she's telling everyone a story. Whereas when we're seeing the action
Chas: and she's only talking to us directly in these asides, then it's a very different
Chas: feeling about when the audience is involved.
Chas: The audience of the stage shows up is involved a hundred percent of the time
Chas: because she's telling us a story and she's aware that she's telling us a story.
Stu: It's also told in hindsight, by nature of it.
Stu: We're watching Fleabag on stage as this character telling this story from that
Stu: point in time backwards, whereas on the show, they're very much more in the moment.
Stu: And that actually is more similar to high fidelity and that kind of like,
Stu: I'm writing a book at the moment. Like, I am in the emotional present.
Stu: So, it's a shift of that kind of emotional presence, which is a really cool
Stu: term. We should use it more often.
Chas: Yeah. And I do think, you know, leading, hopefully segwaying somewhat into our
Chas: key learnings is that I feel that
Chas: breaking the fourth wall is a much more emotional tool than voiceover.
Chas: Like that to me is the big distinction that I've seen.
Chas: I think voiceover has a wider array of uses that it could be applied to.
Chas: Like we particularly identified from when in time the voiceover is coming can
Chas: have like a huge impact narratively.
Chas: But in this, it's always about bringing us deeply inside.
Chas: Like, Stu, you and I, we've often talked about, like, our major challenge in
Chas: film and television is dramatizing the internal, externalizing the internal.
Chas: And that's what breaking the fourth wall, at least in these three examples, clearly is.
Stu: So, why do people not do it more?
Mel: I think it can be seen as a narrative cheat. I think we don't always want the
Mel: audience to know everything the narrator does.
Mel: I think it can be hard to write and certainly to deliver in a way that makes sense.
Mel: I think there's a lot of reasons not to as well as reasons to.
Chas: Like not knowing what's going on in people's heads. Yes.
Chas: Creates mystery, creates drama, creates questions. And I don't think these,
Chas: in all three of these, it's not trying to hide what the characters are feeling.
Chas: It's doing quite the opposite.
Chas: It really wants us to be involved in the character's emotional state.
Stu: But there's an irony in particularly Fleabag and High Fidelity.
Stu: Mockumentary is slightly different. An irony between what they're expressing
Stu: about their emotions and what they're feeling, right?
Stu: And even High Fidelity has a degree of irony between her thinking that she's
Stu: a dick and what she's actually doing in these few moments. I'm like,
Stu: you're putting up healthy boundaries.
Stu: You've just been socialized to think that you need, you know, in a particular way.
Stu: I don't know if that's where it ends up going, but that's what I kind of felt in these few moments.
Stu: Like, oh, I'm such a dick for ghosting him in the bar. And I'm like,
Stu: well, if you feel unsafe, do it.
Stu: I'm kind of interested in that kind of irony. And so, it feels like if you've
Stu: got a kind of very emotional irony, Breaking the Fourth Wall would be a good
Stu: choice to do it as opposed to voiceover, which I do think we talked about.
Stu: We never did it, but we talked about the Thin Red Line, you know, or Tree of Life.
Stu: Those voiceovers are incredibly emotional and reflective, but they're not about
Stu: the emotional present. I just use the word reflective.
Stu: And I don't think Fleabag's voiceover is that reflective.
Stu: Right, you may make grand statements about his sister or godmother or whatever,
Stu: but it's not like, inside man is a war, a war against nature.
Chas: It is, like these particular episodes in the second season of Fleabag,
Chas: it is about revealing to us that she has been lying to herself.
Chas: Those intrusive thoughts are a defense mechanism that gets broken down.
Chas: It's like, if I can make fun of the world, I am safer.
Chas: And Hot Priest, by listening to her, breaks down her barriers and she is,
Chas: you know, deeply hurt and it uncovers that.
Stu: All right. So, what are our top five takeaways from this episode?
Mel: We each get five. I'm just- Oh, I love a list.
Chas: It's high fidelity.
Stu: You're like, that's number one.
Mel: Takeaways. Number one, I can break the fourth wall.
Mel: I think I really like the idea that not every moment has to fit what the world rules are.
Mel: You can have tiny, cheeky little things like the moment with Boo,
Mel: the moment in High Fidelity with the music's diegetic, you know,
Mel: the moment where the student breaks the fourth wall in Abbott Elementary,
Mel: which doesn't really happen very often.
Mel: You can still have a little bit more formal, as in form, fun with something
Mel: like this than you can in a sort of otherwise strict sitcom setup. So that would be one.
Mel: I think two, anytime you could get Andrew Scott to, you know,
Mel: star in your thing, that's probably great. You should take advantage of that.
Mel: Three, I think like you don't always have to be clear enough.
Mel: About it, right? You don't have to, the painting falling from the wall may or
Mel: may not be God, may or may not be talking to us, may or may not be talking to
Mel: hot priest, may or may not be talking to, we were saying, who is Fleabag talking
Mel: to? We don't necessarily know. That's fine. You don't need to.
Mel: You don't need to spell every last thing out when you break the fourth wall.
Mel: Like with some other things, it's much clearer who's being talked to.
Mel: I also really liked the fact that But Fleabag in particular uses a lot of J-cuts.
Mel: Once it's established, it's breaking the fourth wall.
Mel: Sometimes you think there is, and then actually you realize it sounds like a
Mel: voiceover, and then it's not.
Mel: And it allows you to play with that formally a little bit more.
Stu: For those who don't know, a J-cut means sound starts, and then we cut to the
Stu: picture, which the sound belongs to. It's a J because it's sound, then the line.
Mel: Is- You hear me talking, even though you're looking at a visual of a cute cat.
Mel: And then it cuts to me looking at the cute cat while in the middle of my sentence.
Mel: And I think playing with that formally in a place where you're breaking the
Mel: fourth wall means sometimes you don't know, am I being talked to?
Mel: Is a third person being talked to?
Mel: Who's being talked to here? So it creates a little bit more fun of that.
Mel: And I think as well, the idea of control is really fascinating.
Mel: So that five for me is when we're talking about how much control does the person
Mel: speaking have over their narrative?
Mel: And where is that lever in terms of that was was a really great takeaway between
Mel: all of these and Fight Club and, and sometimes even every once in a while,
Mel: like you're slamming the lever one way in one episode, and you know,
Mel: back up to 11 in the next episode.
Chas: I think that last one answers your question, Stu, as to why don't we break the fourth wall more often.
Chas: We don't want, for the most part, in most stories, we don't want our characters
Chas: in charge of the narrative. We want an element of the narrative happening to them.
Stu: Which is a little bit different, because I would say soliloquy is far more common
Stu: in theatre. Even modern theatre seems to have a win.
Stu: I mean, maybe it's just because, you know, they're, quote unquote,
Stu: breaking a leg, to actually use the source of the terminology.
Stu: You know, there's always part
Stu: of the performance is projecting a performance for an audience, right?
Stu: Yeah. I mean, not always. I mean, there are people that have far more experience
Stu: in theatre than me, such as yourself, and then there are going to be people
Stu: that are even more experienced than you in terms of theatre and go,
Stu: well, no, in modern theatre and blah, blah, blah, and Brechtian,
Stu: whatever styles that you don't really address. But you know what I mean.
Stu: I would say most theater and I've done immersive theater where you walk around
Stu: in an environment and the actors are performing the scenes meters from you and
Stu: you can kind of walk around there is a degree of kind of immersive theater that
Stu: still is aware that it's performing for an audience that I think isn't necessarily
Stu: an inherent part of the medium of cinema I.
Chas: Think I've spoken about this in in a different episode but one of the most powerful
Chas: theatrical experiences I've ever had was in,
Chas: there's an official, you know, proper professional production,
Chas: but friends of mine staged it and it was a three-hander, but they deliberately
Chas: put the stage between two sets of tiered seating in the audience.
Chas: So, the audience is constantly, we're watching the show.
Chas: On the other side of the show is audience. So, it was constantly reminding us
Chas: that we're watching a show in that Brechtian thing, but it was- it made us feel
Chas: like the show was very transgressive as well.
Chas: It was a retelling of a- as one of the Greek players. So, lots of,
Chas: you know, eating each other's children and whatnot.
Chas: So, it made you feel even more uncomfortable than just watching something that
Chas: makes you feel uncomfortable is watching something that makes you feel uncomfortable
Chas: and knowing that you're in turn being watched having that experience so i i
Chas: think that to me answers the question as to why we don't break the fourth wall
Chas: all the time yeah because.
Stu: It's harder to do in such a way that it's like how do they not have the control
Stu: of this it'd be interesting and maybe people can list as examples of films or
Stu: shows where multiple characters have pieces to camera that are not.
Chas: In documentaries the examples.
Stu: I'm reaching to with characters that can talk directly to the audience,
Stu: they're all found footage.
Stu: In a broad sense, I know found footage is more narrow now, but I actually,
Stu: for me, found footage should actually be defined more.
Stu: I mean, it's the found part that people react to, but, you know, mockumentary, I guess.
Stu: So, do you have a top five, Chas, takeaways from this episode or any other episodes?
Chas: Top five. I learned early on in this episode that those levers that I thought
Chas: it were all locked at one end are still very relevant.
Chas: I think all of these are incredibly consistent with who the audience is.
Chas: Mel, you said they don't spell it out. They don't. We have no idea who Phoebe
Chas: Waller-Bridge thinks or knows Fleabag is talking to, but it is incredibly consistent.
Chas: I think establishing that relationship, like who Rob in High Fidelity is talking to,
Chas: how the characters in Abbott react differently, depending whether they're talking
Chas: to who us as a mockumentary audience or the camera crew or each other,
Chas: whether they know they're being surveilled or not,
Chas: like who they're talking to is very important.
Chas: The lesson, you know, it wasn't so much from this episode, but rather your guys'
Chas: last episode on Fight Club.
Chas: How much control of the narrative are you giving to the character?
Chas: And it was nice to see how much the differences between Fleabag and High Fidelity
Chas: are directorial and visual as much as anything else.
Chas: Uh, portraying the differences in, in who is control of the narrative.
Chas: Um, and finally the big one, like you said, Sue, not to steal your,
Chas: your observation, but the, the big difference between breaking the fourth wall
Chas: on other things is just that.
Chas: Emotional present that there's not
Chas: really a better tool for clearly communicating the
Chas: emotional present of a character and
Chas: i mean i think again why does it not happen more
Chas: often you know we we look at portrait of
Chas: a lady on fire and that ending where they're looking at each other across the
Chas: theater and i would much rather just be watching them in silence knowing what
Chas: they're thinking rather than actually hearing one or other of them talking to
Chas: us about the turmoil of their emotions. So they are different experiences.
Stu: Yeah. Like, do you ever not stop talking? Like, that would be your feeling in
Stu: that moment. You start to become irritated by the character.
Stu: And the fact that Fleabag is slightly annoying is kind of part of the reason
Stu: that she- One, the episodes are only half an hour.
Chas: Rob's annoying as well. Yeah. Rob knows that they're annoying. Yeah.
Stu: Okay. So my top five takeaways for this episode, let's see if I can get to five.
Stu: One is obviously the control of the narrative ended up proving a really useful
Stu: tool, but the way that then that relates to how the character speaks,
Stu: that's kind of two observation two that I think is really useful.
Stu: This idea that on the want versus need spectrum, the awareness that the character
Stu: says of what they're saying is affected by how much control they have over the narrative, right?
Stu: The more control over the narrative, the more that they're kind of speaking
Stu: with at least a surface agenda.
Stu: There may be a quote-unquote subtext to that, but whereas I think the less control
Stu: they have, the more it's kind of reflective of their inner desire, maybe?
Stu: I'm not articulating that particularly well, I'm sorry. So, three.
Stu: The relationship, I suppose, four, between presence and the present is kind of really interesting.
Stu: I think it's actually kind of a fun pun, emotional presence versus emotional
Stu: present might be an idea that's worth unpacking.
Stu: Five, let me, I had it, I had it, I should have written it down.
Stu: Nope.
Mel: I've got, I've got a six. I'll give you your fifth is that I'm quite curious
Mel: to see some of these scripts and how they write when the switch or does it say
Mel: fleabag barrels or does it talk about Rob's headphones being diegetic and that sort of thing?
Mel: I think especially again, when I was talking about like stuff like the J cut
Mel: stuff, like the diegetic stuff about Boo, which I hadn't really noted before.
Mel: Now, I'm really curious now to go back to those scripts and see some of these
Mel: really specific moments, how they were written.
Stu: Yeah i mean you'd think for a screenwriting podcast we would have actually looked
Stu: at the screenwriting oh well not all.
Mel: The scripts are available i'm pretty sure i tried to find that high fidelity script and.
Stu: Maybe this wasn't.
Mel: Looking in the right place but a lot of tv scripts aren't available unless they've
Mel: been submitted for emmys.
Stu: Yep yep and i think the fleabag one that he's floating around is season two
Stu: episode one that you actually otherwise have to buy the scriptures which i have
Stu: had on my christmas list for like three years and it still Who hasn't gotten it for Christmas.
Mel: This might be the year.
Chas: Hopefully Emma will listen to that.
Chas: Thanks as always to our amazing patrons who bring you more Draft Zero more often.
Chas: In particular, Alexandra, Jen, Jesse, Laurie, Crob, Lily, Millay,
Chas: Paolo, Randy, Sandra, Thees, and Thomas.
Chas: And thanks to you both for holding the fort while I went away.
Chas: Way, I was going to say this might be the conclusion for, you know,
Chas: the talking directly to the audience series, but there could be one more and
Chas: there could be musicals as well.
Stu: We're just going to go back to our normal programming of talking indirectly to the audience.
Chas: Thank you both so much.
Mel: My pleasure.
Stu: Bye.
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