Why Everyone Needs To Watch Amazon's "Fleabag"!

What can I say about "Fleabag" that hasn’t already been said before? Probably not much, but in case you haven’t yet come across this masterpiece, let me introduce you to it.

"Fleabag" is born from the mind of its star, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who originally performed the story as a one-woman play in London but was soon given the freedom to expand it into a comedy series with the BBC and Amazon. The first season drew praise for it’s emotional honesty, as Fleabag (that’s what we’re calling our protagonist because we never get her name) navigated relationships, grief, and the endless intricacies of human life alongside a cast of characters that, though not always likeable, were almost always relatable.

I’ll be honest, it took me a few tries to really get into "Fleabag"’s first season, probably because it takes a little time to figure out who you should be rooting for – if anyone. We’re used to our shows making it easy on us, but "Fleabag" is not about to give us an easy way out. But, by the third episode, the British sitcom about a café owner grappling with the death of her best friend, a difficult family, and navigating a mess of unfulfilling relationships, had me securely in its grips. It’s no wonder the show made a legion of fans around the world, and did so in just six 23-minute episodes.

Though the first season was always meant to be a stand-alone, Waller-Bridge took pity on us and brought it back for a second, and final, season. And thank god she did. In its sophomore season, "Fleabag" somehow became even more enchanting. And I don’t use that word lightly. It so gracefully adds to the characters we’ve come to love and concludes with an ending that is both so overwhelmingly heartbreaking and beautifully satisfying that I don’t think we’ll ever see something close to it again.

Everything wonderful about this show is preserved, from Claire, Fleabag’s high-strung, emotionally repressed sister, to the intimate, conspiratorial feel of Fleabag breaking the fourth wall to confide in us, her audience. There is her passive-aggressive soon-to-be stepmother (played remarkably by Olivia Colman, our true Queen), the guinea pig café, and a lot of unresolved feelings that somehow seem to apply to almost everyone that watches the show. But most of all, there’s a hot priest. I don’t want to spoil too much, but I will say, the relationship between Fleabag and this Priest is the best I have ever seen, and I’ve seen almost everything.

There are few shows that can turn heartbreak into hope with the ease and humor that "Fleabag" gifts to us. My only advice is to watch it as soon as you possibly can -- you will laugh, you will cry, and you might just be a little bit better off afterwards.