Single Drunk Female: Freeform’s Best Kept Secret Is Even Better in Season 2
Freeform’s Single Drunk Female was hands-down one of 2022’s best television shows. You’d be forgiven for not knowing that fact, however, given its unfortunate name that conveys almost nothing of what makes the show so special. So, allow me to enlighten you: No matter what you initially might think, Single Drunk Female isn’t actually the story of a twentysomething party girl chasing love and laughter in the big city. It’s not the second coming of Girls or a sop to Freeform’s coveted YA demographic—there are no Pretty Little Liars here. Instead, the show’s realistic depiction of the struggles and far-reaching consequences of alcoholism is like nothing else on TV at the moment. And the series just keeps getting better in its second season, a richer, messier, and more complicated exploration of what addiction and recovery actually look like.
The series follows Samantha Fink (Sofia Black-D’Elia), a twentysomething writer who realizes she’s an alcoholic only after her binge drinking has cost her her job, her driver’s license, and her independence. She’s forced to move back in with her mother, go on probation, and face the truth of what her addiction has done to her life. Over the course of its first season, we see Sam take the tentative first steps to real recovery: She joins a twelve-step group, she takes a crappy job to pay the bills, and she tries to make amends to the people she’s wronged along the way. But where Season 1 ends with Sam reaching a year of sobriety, Season 2 asks what comes next. And the answer is both unexpected and wonderful.
A different, less thoughtful sort of show probably would have teased its audience with the threat of relapse, showing us a Sam who was actively backsliding or otherwise struggling to hang on to the hard-fought sober gains she won in the show’s first season. But Single Drunk Female is a much better, and more complicated drama than that, and its second season reflects the same welcome depth and maturity that helped make its first so great. The show never lets us (or Sam herself) forget that she is an alcoholic living with the constant temptation of addiction—and there are multiple moments in which it’s clear she’s at least thought about falling off the wagon—but it also takes care to show us that there’s more to her recovery than the simple act of not taking a drink. Much like her dependence on alcohol was always a symptom of Sam’s larger emotional problems, its absence is also only one piece of her recovery, and one part of the much larger story of her life. And while Season 2 is still focused on the ways Sam navigates this next phase, it also recognizes that her story is one piece in a larger canvas.
Season 2’s briskly paced 10 episodes bring us into the next phase of Sam’s journey, one in which she’s trying to figure out what she’s supposed to do next. She’s a year and a half sober and she’s got a job that doesn’t involve stocking grocery store shelves. She’s trying her hand at dating again, and she’s working to set boundaries for herself and the people in her life, both personally and professionally speaking. She’s learning to navigate relationships without the crutch of alcohol and to take responsibility for her own choices, even when they’re messy or terrible.