I’ve started keeping track of when I pause the show because I need to collect myself and take a minute. This episode I paused it at 8 min, 19 min, 24 min, and 25 min. Whew.
This week we open on Arabella fantasizing/remembering sex with Biagio that is passionate and intimate and tender, there is a window open and gauzy curtains blowing in the breeze and there’s that part of sex where you just kind of collapse into the other person and breathe the same air for a short period. Then she wakes up next to Zain. This scene was cringe-y for me even though it didn’t seem to matter in the scheme of the show at all but her alarm goes off to do yoga and she starts playing a video (??) at full volume in the same room and puts his shirt on and is taking pictures and he’s fine with it but I felt like that was rude? Or maybe I would just never be comfortable waking someone up like that/being loud when someone just woke up?
But he’s fine, he takes a shower, and while he’s in there Bella is scrolling through podcast recommendations and hears one that talks about men who take condoms off in the middle of having sex and the subreddits where men can trade tricks/tips on how to do it and what they say, and in describing some of them it’s exactly what happened to her with Zain. She leaves immediately (no pants no shoes!!!!) and then buys some clothes in a thrift store and goes to a hair appointment.
WE SEE HER HAIR! This was such a cool fucking moment, white culture knows next to nothing about black women’s hair care and I appreciated being in this space!!!! They take the pink wig off and her natural hair is in cornrows underneath. They’re discussing what style she wants to do when she gets two calls, one from her publisher reminding her of a meeting at the office in 3 hours and then that is interrupted by the crime office where she reported her assault. She SHAVES HER HEAD and we only know that because it’s like that in the next scene at the station. Bella is flanked by Kwame and Terry while the officer tells her SO much information. They have a DNA sample, they have made an arrest??, and they need to eliminate consensual partners so Biagio needs to go to a cooperating office in Italy and submit a DNA sample.
While at the station, it’s clear that Bella is starting to feel more in control and like herself again around the assault and this only highlights how much Kwame isn’t. I really appreciate how this show doesn’t ‘spotlight’ one character at a time, like sometimes shows will do a “this is Kwame’s episode to focus on him” and everyone else’s stuff is on pause but here, everything is just kind of going on at once and that’s absolutely a huge part of why it gets so overwhelming at times because you’re trying to hold all of it at once but that’s how life is and I respect that they do that. It’s hard to remember in friendships your shit isn’t the only thing happening at this moment, whatever that moment may be.
Arabella leaves to go to her writer’s meeting and finds out the big boss of everything, Susy (played by Franc Ashman) is a black woman and you can tell how happy she is, simply beaming, (I sense this woman is going to let her down because there’s been some weird stuff about race from her already but we shall see). Arabella agrees to do a reading tonight and immediately confides she was raped. I love how they show the shift from her being unable to acknowledge that that’s even what happened to her, to being able to be so blunt and even make jokes about it (at one point she’s like, “Why didn’t I tell you about my raper?” to Zain). This shift in language is really accurate to me and indicative of the progression in how she’s feeling about it. I think it’s very well conveyed.
There’s a weird moment with Zain and Susy’s assistant that we’ll revisit later. Bella asks if Terry can read for her, it’s all set. She just needs to call Biagio to tell him what’s up. Meanwhile, Kwame has googled and is sure that what happened to him is a crime. (Oh right, at the station Bella also asks if removing a condom without telling your partner is a crime and they confirm, yes, it is. We also learn that maybe she was raped in the mouth? I think I heard it right, but I think she was forced to give him oral).
Kwame goes to report by himself. This part broke me. It felt like they were trying to show how the police handling of a report can either aid in a survivors recovery (what Bella had, and both officers were women) or it can re-traumatize and further push them into silence, which is what happened to Kwame. Every single thing that officer (male) did was wrong. Pushing him to answer questions he has said multiple times he doesn’t know, disregarding the information he is giving, judging, blaming, acting uncomfortable, disregarding safety precautions, simply not caring on any level. I wanted to scoop Kwame up and fill out his form with him myself which of course makes no sense because they are in England and this is, a TV show. But it was awful and I hope there is at least one person that has previously always said, “Why don’t they report?” who sees how badly this mostly well-intentioned but stupid officer did and then shuts the fuck up forever about that.
Ok zip, back to the reading, Terry is nervous but Bella is preoccupied and manages to talk to Susy’s assistant. It was kind of cryptic language but she confirms that they hooked up then says something like, “It is impossible for a woman to protect herself from his charms,” which feels like predatory language and I was unsure but to Bella it’s very clear and when Terry backs out from the reading (my heart was also going out to Terry!! She’s so nervous and no one’s checking in/telling her it will be okay!) Bella goes onstage, where Zain and his reader are already seated and his mom is in the front row. First she thanks her publishers saying she’s so happy to be there with them then,
“Zain Saureen is a rapist. He took a condom off in the middle of having sex with me, implicated my shock, and gaslighted me with such intention that I didn’t have a second to understand the heinous crime that had occurred. I believe he is a predator, one woman has come forward and informed me of the same experience so I’m not the first. If I don’t take this opportunity to say this now I certainly won’t be the last. He is a rapist. Not rape adjacent, or a bit rape-y, he’s a rapist under UK law.”
We need to take a minute and appreciate this. Whoever wrote this I want to commend to the highest degree, it’s so clear and forward and simple and correct. There is so much bullshit around this stuff that even I, a feminist who shaved her head, was thinking, “This is really public, are we sure?” and that’s how deep this shit is. We literally saw him do it and I’m still guessing. I appreciate so much how this show is constructed because just as much as it shows how other people aren’t shit, it shows how you aren’t shit. And to weave two narratives that are similar in content but contrasting in reception-like last episode how there were two rapes, one we all recognize and one that’s harder for many, or in this one, how reporting an assault that’s handled with care vs. one that is so poorly mishandled.
So, this speech was filmed and it seemed to be going viral when the girls are sitting at a bar later and Susy’s assistant is with Terry and Bella. I’m worried either that she’s going to say she didn’t say that later (that Zain didn’t rape her) or that Susy and the publisher (where Zain is also signed) support him instead of Arabella. That would suck. Also someone posted an article about something? It seemed big but I didn’t know what it was. About Zain being a predator somewhere else? The girls were looking at it but we didn’t get further clarification.
The last thing that sucked is later that night Arabella is in bed telling Biagio that she was roofied. His first reaction is to blame her and yell (this is bad!!!!!! Please never do this even if it’s coming from a place of care or fear it’s very very bad and almost impossible to recover from) even though she took a drink from him when he was a stranger which was obviously fine. He screams, “You are fucking up my life,” and, “If you watched your drink you wouldn’t have been raped.” Then I couldn’t tell what she said, something, “I’ll talk to you again.” I can’t tell if it was like a ‘Talk to you again you’re being an asshole right now’ or a ‘I’ll never talk to you again.” We’ll see. The next minute and a half were absolutely perfect-she starts crying then almost immediately shifts to taking pictures of herself and holding up a fist and the middle finger. She posts a fist one and all these supportive comments flood in and she keeps hearting them and then this big magenta animated heart comes out of the phone and hovers between them, while Janelle Monáe’s Pynk plays (which is one of the best music videos ever made).
There has been little to no music in this series, just when they’re at clubs and stuff, and this felt WHEW very important. That instinct to when you’re feeling overwhelmed with sadness to post about it so it’s removed from you and something others can observe rather than something you have to feel? That felt…close. And the heart, I think it’s so cool we’re 5 episodes in and still seeing new structural elements. This show is so fucking good. I will never stop worrying about everyone, Kwame is still alone, why are people not asking if they are each okay? It feels strange that neither Terry nor Bella has noticed that Kwame is withdrawn and kind of shaken but maybe he’s generally on his phone a lot and they don’t see that much of a difference? Has it only been a week? Three weeks? I forget what he said when he was trying to fill out the report. UGH and the crime person said they couldn’t fill out a report because what he had was consensual sex. How in the world do you tell someone who came to the station to report it because it felt like such a violation that it was, actually, fine. Why isn’t everyone in charge good??? It’s infuriating.
My friend Kristin said this show is difficult but healing and my friend Gabriel said that watching this show is kind of like rape exposure therapy for me and I kind of think it is. I am being forced to see and think about things I usually just avoid because I see them as immovable horrors that are just fact but within this show I see things as more amorphous and fluid in a good way. Hard to say yet but I’m really glad it’s been made and is on now. Feels crucial in a deep way. A different friend (I have SO many friends and I talk to ALL of them about assault!) Emily sent me an Amy Berkowitz poem called “Paintings I Won’t Paint” that I’ve been unpacking last week and this one as well. I absolutely feel I’m in a trauma processing loop, or maybe once you wake up to that almost all art is about trauma, but I don’t think so.
My normal rating system is not appropriate so I will simply say, very good. Looking forward to next week, and the rest of my life.
I Heard The Book Was Better 