It’s a joke in and of itself that Fleabag (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) of Fleabag and Deandra “Sweet Dee” Reynolds (Kaitlin Olson) of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia both end up in Catholic confessionals. Two seasons into each series, we are well aware that either character being in a church goes against everything we know about them. These are messy women, with messy lives that are frequently derailed by messy, dirtbag men. It should go against everything we know about Fleabag and her compulsive sexual behaviors and generally disordered life, or Sweet Dee and her chaotic, narcissistic, alcoholic lifestyle, to see them in this space of order and atonement and ritual. Except, of course, that we know both women are infatuated with the man on the other side of the confessional. Dee and Fleabag are trying to have sex with their respective priests, because of course they are.
Fleabag sits in her confessional begrudgingly. The latest object of her (often compulsive and highly sexual) affections, known only as The Priest (Andrew Scott), sits on the other side of the booth. Fleabag at first moves through the unofficial, after-hours confession in her usual ironic, disarming manner, mentioning sex and lying and cheating in a quippy, unbothered way. Finally, though, Fleabag breaks a little, edging toward the truth: “I want someone to tell me what to wear in the morning…what to eat, what to like, what to hate, what to rage about…” Fleabag continues, “I just think I want someone to tell me how to live my life, Father, because so far I think I’ve been getting it wrong.”
Dee, in contrast, is eager to throw herself into her confession; determined to make the object of her affections, old-high-school-classmate-turned-priest Matthew “Rickety Cricket” Mara (David Hornsby), fall for her. “I’m in love with a man I can’t have, Father,” Dee coos. The harder Matthew tries to insist that she leave him alone, the more desperate Dee becomes. “You wanted me once,” Dee whines against the confessional window, referencing a high school crush Matthew had on her, “and now that you can have me…and oh, Matty, I mean you could really, really have me…you don’t want it anymore?”
Priests are a sharp turn from the men that Fleabag and Dee usually have sex or spend time with. Dee and Fleabag are perennially surrounded by men with distinctly scummy personalities. Fleabag spends her time either having sex with men who tend to obsess over a single part of her — her youth, her small breasts, or even just the way that she’s so willing to have sex so easily — or in semi-coerced social interaction with her distanced, wavering father (Bill Paterson) and her crass, lecherous, alcoholic brother-in-law, Martin (Brett Gelman). Dee spends her days in a dismal dive bar with an all-male friend group who call themselves “The Gang,” that includes her twin brother, Dennis Reynolds (Glenn Howerton), her (sort of) father, Frank Reynolds (Danny DeVito), and two other men, Charlie Kelly (Charlie Day) and Mac McDonald (Rob McElhenny). Dee lives like the rest of her friend group does: choosing the cruelest, most narcissistic path in her relationships, drinking too much, and causing chaos for the sake of it.
The men in Dee’s and Fleabag’s lives tolerate them, at best; at worst, they are actively abusive, preying on Fleabag for sexual or emotional gain, or in the case of Dee’s friends, bullying her for sadistic sport. And yet, instead of running away from these men and the oppressive roles they force Dee and Fleabag into, the two women opt instead to accept head-on the reputations that the men in their lives create for them. Fleabag and Dee both work endlessly to turn their relationships with these men into something meaningful, playing into their perceived roles as trashy, messy, dirtbag women in hopes of eventually obtaining some form of acceptance and approval.
Even Sweet Dee and Fleabag’s very names highlight the way they are perceived. Fleabag is a nameless being; no one ever calls her anything, she just is her shitty behavior. And The Gang’s long-running nickname for Deandra — “Sweet Dee” — feels like a sort of mockery. Dee is not sweet; she’s gritty and messy and cruel like the men she spends time with, and the affection the nickname implies is obviously lacking. Her name is often peppered with additions of “bitch,” “whore,” and “slut” when The Gang is talking to or about her.
Both women constantly seek the most fleeting evidence of acceptance from the people around them. Fleabag learns to compulsively seek out sex as proof of approval, as a coping mechanism for the grief and disorder of her life, and perhaps even in an attempt to reclaim the reputation she holds with her friends and family as a messy, trashy woman. In one moment early in the first season, Fleabag muses on her love for sex:
I’m not obsessed with sex. I just can’t stop thinking about it. The performance of it. The awkwardness of it. The drama of it. The moment you realize someone wants your body. Not so much the feeling of it.
Fleabag is disinterested in the potential pleasure or connection that sex may hold, instead just finding it to be the quickest way to find a fleeting sense of validation. And despite the men she has sex with rarely offering any sort of meaningful connection, it seems to be one of the few times she can momentarily feel like she is doing something right — a sensation, she admits during her confession with The Priest, that she feels rarely.
Yet in leaning into her reputation as trashy and promiscuous in hopes of finding some form of stability and acceptance, Fleabag instead is subjected to continually worse treatment by the men in her life. When she asks her brother-in-law to keep a secret for her from her sister, Claire (Sian Clifford), Martin asks what “cost” it will come at. “A finger up the asshole? A nipple tickle?” he sneers. He forces a kiss onto her. When Fleabag tries to come forward to Claire about the event, Claire dismisses it — Fleabag’s promiscuous, messy reputation precedes her. “I’m sorry,” Claire tearfully says, “You just have to see it from my point of view.” There is no winning, no way of accepting or giving into the way she is perceived, as she is continually pushed to new lows.
While Dee also has the occasional sexual encounter (many of which are unenjoyable, uncomfortable, or totally unpleasurable; the likes of men who announce Dee as their rock bottom, or a man working at a competing restaurant who Dee sleeps with to try and get information for The Gang), her friend group does not see her as a sexualized being. In fact, Dee having sex at all repulses them, often leading to beration, despite the rest of the group obsessing over getting laid and developing increasingly strange sexual interests over the show’s 14 seasons.
Dee’s desperation for approval is made apparent through her acceptance of an onslaught of abuse from her friends in exchange for being permitted to simply exist around them. When The Gang shouts at her, she sits quietly and takes it. At most, she weakly fights back, but she almost always lets them have the last word. Any prank, transgression, or cruel ruse set up against Dee is always forgiven, which only encourages The Gang to find newer and more malicious ways to force Dee into new rock bottoms. In the particularly miserable episode “The Gang Broke Dee,” her male friends concoct a plan that makes Dee think her dreams of becoming a stand-up comedian are coming true in exchange for a few coerced sexual encounters with agents and managers, only to reveal it was all a ruse to make her feel worse about herself. But Dee continues onward in the friend group, as she always will.
And this desperation to be approved of is malleable, applying to men outside of the gang as well. Perhaps nothing encapsulates Dee’s absolute desperation to be validated by men as in “The Gang Gets Held Hostage,” when Dee comically almost immediately develops Stockholm Syndrome toward their captors — the gross, incestuous McPoyle brothers (Jimmi Simpson and Nate Mooney). This episode is also a powerful encapsulation of how much Dee is willing to take from literally anyone as she is slapped, licked, kissed, screamed at, and berated by both the McPoyles and The Gang. Her persistence in sticking around is ultimately revealed to be for a tiny, pathetic sense of importance. In “The Gang Makes Paddy’s Great Again,” Dee admits, “I kinda like being the only woman, ‘cause it makes me feel special.” Dee being allowed to simply be in the same space as the rest of The Gang is somehow enough for her to justify the immense toll being the only woman in this abusive group clearly takes.
I am struck by the way that, in this endless toil to please men who refuse to even validate Fleabag and Dee, let alone love or desire good things for them, they are both so drawn to priesthood. The two confession scenes from each series were released over a decade apart, and while Fleabag and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia are both technically comedies, they are vastly different in comedic styles. Where Fleabag has a distinctly British bent to its comedy, Always Sunny is entrenched in American satire. Where Fleabag often mixes its comedy with some vulnerable, emotional gut punches, Always Sunny insists on constant unseriousness, rarely edging even close to sincerity. And yet both women, while exhausting themselves in their search for a sense of fulfillment and validation from male attention, end up sitting in a confessional and crushing hard on a priest.
If one were to look at Dee and Fleabag through the dismissive lens that the men in their lives do, one could deem this attraction as a part of their desperate search for some new, ultimate taboo, a craving for a man that they cannot possibly have, or a desire to muddy and create chaos in a space that is considered proper, ritualized, and clean. And maybe that is part of the attraction. But I also see, both in Dee and Fleabag’s confessions as well as their general pursuits of Matthew Mara and The Priest, a craving for love and stability and, perhaps most notably, a craving for this love and stability to require someone making a sacrifice on their part. For The Priest or Matthew Mara to be with Dee or Fleabag would mean giving something up; not just a career, but a spiritual calling. And for two women surrounded by men who refuse to sacrifice anything for them — not other relationships or time or their pride or even basic compassion — how dizzying is it to think about a man who would change his very relationship with God for you?
So yes, there are the superficial motives that line up with Dee and Fleabag’s reputations; both women are, ultimately, trying to have sex with the priests in part to prove their desirability to themselves or those around them. And yet in both of their confessions, regardless of their ulterior motives, the women begin chipping away at something else. Both Dee and Fleabag begin revealing just how powerfully they desire the ability to shape themselves into the roles and parameters that men have set out for them. Expressing this desire to be wanted, to be had, and to be guided, in this spiritual space of confession makes this longing to do things right for male approval seem not compulsive or superficial, but instead a part of their deepest, most spiritual beings.
At the end of both of their confessions, the two women ask for their priests to provide salvation through the approval and acceptance they have become so desperate for. Fleabag quietly begs, “Just fucking tell me what to do, Father.” Dee pleads to Matthew, “I could be your wife, and I could spend the rest of my days making you happy.”
And both priests do end up making some sort of sacrifice to be with Dee and Fleabag. Matthew actually fully leaves the church, but Dee — perhaps unable to process someone actually making a sacrifice for her, perhaps unable to be attracted to someone she now can have, or perhaps unable to imagine a life outside of the one she is so settled within, awful as it may be — fully and totally rejects him. The Priest and Fleabag sleep together a few times, but he ultimately ends things. The Priest and Fleabag do, however, admit that they’ve both fallen in love; a major difference from the distanced intimacies that Fleabag has experienced so far on her journey.
But I think it’s a blessing that The Priest doesn’t let things continue and that Dee ultimately is repulsed by Matthew Mara’s proposal. Neither Dee nor Fleabag would actually find salvation from the way they perceive themselves (which is, unfortunately, the way the men around them have decided they are perceived) in subservient relations with ex-priests. The same process of moulding oneself into what these priests may want in partners would just be the same life under a different, more socially palatable name.
These two confessional scenes feel incredibly revealing to me. It is rare to see Dee or Fleabag — who both are usually surrounded by and throwing themselves into noise and chaos and mess in hopes of finding a sense of validation and security — actually talk about what they genuinely want. And what’s so startling is that neither woman wants much at all. Fleabag and Dee do not confess a longing to be free or happy or fulfilled; all they both want is for just one person to appreciate the way that they endlessly strive for approval at any cost. Their ultimate fantasies — being told what to do, being someone’s wife — are far cries from some desperate, impossible dream. And I think often about how this longing to be validated for trying to shape oneself into a woman that successfully obtains male approval appears in two vastly different shows with vastly different intentions. I think these moments reflect a complicated feeling that is easier to find resonance with than we would like to admit.
