*Spoilers from episode 1*
Much like White Van Man, Alice and Steve continues the trend of Joel Fry being good but sparingly used in the pilot, then coming in strong on the second episode. While I’m still not convinced that this show is for me—uncomfortable subject matter, multiple unpleasant characters, palpable levels of secondhand embarrassment—Fry’s performance here is really fantastic!
Despite Steve and Izzy’s promise not to tell Alice about their hookup, it of course comes out. What’s more, Izzy makes it clear to Alice that this wasn’t a one-off—she really likes Steve and wants to make a go of it. Alice is just incandescently angry about this, calling Steve a “pedo loser” and refusing to talk to Izzy when she wants to mend fences. As she and Daniel commiserate wondering what Steve and Izzy would possibly talk about together, Alice hatches a scheme. She invites Steve over for dinner, along with several of Izzy’s friends, hoping to make it clear that Steve is hopelessly out of his depth with young people.
Our character of the week is Steve, played by Jemaine Clement. (Neat to see Joel Fry working with another famous Kiwi! I wonder if Fry’s connections to Rhys Darby and Taika Waititi helped put his name in the casting conversation.) Even though Steve is in the most compromised position here, having slept with his best friend’s daughter who’s half his age, Alice’s wicked combination of passive aggression and scorched-earth rage winds up swinging the pendulum of fault more toward her. Steve is a bit hangdog, repeatedly apologizing to both Alice and Daniel—he tells Alice, “I don’t want you to think that I don’t know how bad this is,” and he assures Daniel that his attraction to Izzy is brand-new. But as Alice arranges the dinner party from hell, it becomes less about what Steve has done and more about how Alice is reacting. As a result, Alice is punishing the crap out of Steve (and to a lesser extent Izzy,) but the actual narrative is going a little too easy on him.
Oh my god, it’s painful. It’s so painful!! Alice is all smiles at dinner but wastes no opportunity to get her digs in. No matter what the conversation is, she turns it to reflect badly on Steve. Remarks about the environment? “Steve doesn’t believe in recycling.” A discussion about films? “Steve loves Woody Allen!” As the night devolves, Steve wins some brownie points with Izzy’s friends simply on the back of Alice being increasingly rude, crass, and vicious. So despite her very understandable anger about her best friend sleeping with her 26-year-old daughter, Steve somehow becomes the more sympathetic one to the rest of the group.
What’s more, it’s not just Steve who gets hit by her rage. Along the way, she also humiliates Izzy and emasculates the shit out of Daniel. The latter brings us into another troubling wrinkle in the whole thing: Alice and Steve are decades-long best friends, yes, but far back in their history, they used to date. Multiple times throughout dinner and after, Alice brings this up, going so far as to talk about what Steve was like in bed. Her mother, who was also invited to the trainwreck, tells Alice, “He’s your ex-boyfriend who’s probably been in love with you for ages,” and Alice announces to Izzy, “He’s only sleeping with you because he’s a sad old man. And you probably remind him of me!” Like I said, painful.
That’s the mess Alice has dropped Daniel into. He’s very sympathetic to her anger and finds the relationship just as inexplicable, and he’s concerned for Izzy in this whole thing. But as much as Daniel wants to be there for Alice, he’s not on board with her wrecking-ball approach.
This episode gives us a much fuller look at Daniel than the pilot. It looks like he often goes into a freeze response amid conflict—there are numerous scenes where he sits in stiff silence, averting his eyes while Alice ices Izzy out or goes the extra mile to embarrass Steve. He frequently rubs his brow like this is causing him physical pain, and there’s an instance where he covers his face as if he can’t bear to watch. Because Daniel spends so much of his screentime silently witnessing the unfolding disaster, Joel Fry was an excellent choice for this role. The way he uses his physicality throughout keeps Daniel’s perspective present, even when he’s not speaking.
Daniel’s secondary approach is to try and smooth things over, either changing the subject to distract from Alice’s warpath or gently attempting to talk her and Izzy down when tempers flare. Naturally, Alice doesn’t think either of these are good enough. At one point, she yells, “Fucking coward! Daniel, why aren’t you saying anything?” But even if she thinks Daniel isn’t sufficiently loud about his anger, that’s not to say he isn’t upset too. He is. There are a couple scenes between him and Steve where Daniel shifts between tightly-constrained stewing and speaking his thoughts plainly, albeit quietly. When Daniel and Steve pick up dessert for the dinner party, there’s a great bit where we can see Daniel putting himself together to address the cashier. One moment, he’s practically shut down, looking down and nodding as Steve insists he never thought about Izzy in that way before now. The next, he’s walking over to the cashier, taking a deep breath before he musters up a smile and says, “Hello!” in a friendly tone.
God, it’s so well done! Daniel is more than a little repressed, and conflict is clearly excruciating for him. He’s surrounded by people who are much more outspoken and put their own feelings first. Alice emasculates him at every turn (and one of his teacher colleagues does the same in front of a student,) and yet he isn’t just a door mat or a pushover. He chooses his moments—maybe not the ones Alice would want, and maybe he doesn’t go far enough for her—but he can make himself heard when he needs to. In Joel Fry’s hands, it’s compelling to watch Daniel’s reactions, and he never gets lost in the shuffle of the louder personalities around him.
