After last week’s entertaining but shallow dive into media perception and the politics of how to conduct oneself as a celebrity, this week’s episode is comparatively much smaller. Throwing away the the two/three story system of the last few weeks, it’s a single well-constructed, funny, and effortlessly smart story about Van, a character who’s previously been pushed into the background. Here are five reasons why the show works so well when it scales back its ambitions, and just focuses on character.
1. London’s ok, I guess, just too much rain
There’s few more bittersweet feelings than meeting up with an old, very successful friend you haven’t seen in a while. And this episode brings all those dynamics rushing back—the passive aggressive sniping, the constant sizing up, the attempt to bring things to the past with a shot at a mutual acquaintance—through the dinner confrontation/conversation between Van and her friend Jade (a standout Aubin Wise).
Time has passed, and their interests and their views of personal value have totally changed. Jade wields that phrase, “personal value” with a sense of righteous fury. Where Van’s everyday thoughts are now about juggling Lottie, making enough money for rent, and budgeting for the future, Jade is traveling around the world with NBA star flames and complaining about the weather in London.
Their uneasy dynamic is everywhere. It’s not just in the details of their conversation, where Jade abbreviates “private jet” as if that’s an obvious thing to do, but in the way she dominates the proceeding. When Van first arrives at this tense conversation, it’s not more than a minute before she’s already picking out wine for the table, and ready to order Van’s meal if she didn’t jump in with her own choice. She has, after all, had far more experience with the finer things.
2. I’m busy, I’m good
Van’s outward life can’t compare with Jade’s, but it’s not as if she hasn’t considered her personal value. She doesn’t have the marks in her passport, or the stories about late night model shoots. Van has picked a life that she once looked down on—“You’ve become one of those girls we used to make fun of,” Jade says with a brutal sting. A kid or family is just another notch on Jade’s list of things to do, but Van thought she was going through the steps of adulthood.
It’s not just little things like Van’s preference of chopsticks for Thai foods, but the last years of her life that are in the conversation’s crosshairs. The camera stays tight in this ten-minute conversation sequence, lightly taking different vantage points that reorient the power struggle that’s happening on screen. But all the while, it’s gradually floating away until it’s wider and wider and the silence is awkward and telling.
Neither of them has had a single bite, but it’s only a moment later before Kevin, Jade’s latest romantic conquest comes to join them at the table. He’s brought along a friend, a corny dude who’s all too eager to size her up and attempt to flirt. She expected the scrutiny, but this is something else entirely.
But that all melts away in Jade’s final olive branch in the form of a blunt in a parking garage. They’re back in their groove, and all of their current differences have just melted away. They’re just having a good time passing it back and forth, and letting all of the bullshit of their life slip away. It’s at that moment that Jade’s life seems a little less charmed.
3. Matchmaking, because that always goes well
And all of a sudden, it’s the next morning, and Van’s in her bed. Who knows whether they ended up at the listening party or how many drinks followed that blunt. The key was left in her door, and her phone is vibrating, reminding her of that “drug test” that she conspicuously forgot while she was smoking. It’s only two hours until work, and she’s freaking out.