*Spoilers for episode 4*
Oh man, here we are at the penultimate episode! I had definite misgivings about this show early on, but it’s really come around for me. It features continually excellent performances from Joel Fry, so that obviously helps, but beyond that, I’m liking the show itself too. Let’s get into it!
First, the main spoilers from episode 4. Alice had been staying with her mom while Daniel needed space, and at her mom’s urging, she shows up at the house to win him back. It’s while Marni’s there, which of course doesn’t help. It all ends in a pretty devastating argument between them. Meanwhile, Izzy gets some concerning medical news and calls Steve to go with her to the doctor, despite their breakup at the start of the episode. It turns out her tests came back normal, with one notable exception: she’s pregnant.
Izzy and Steve invite Alice and Daniel to a fancy restaurant, where they drop the baby bombshell. After an initial outburst, Alice fights a losing battle to hold back her emotional reaction and act happy for Izzy.
Our character of the week is Dom, played by Tyrese Eaton-Dyce. While Alice had already had Izzy when she and Daniel met, Dom is the child that they had together. He gets less focus than Alice, Izzy, and Daniel. In this episode, he struggles to let himself enjoy spending time with his crush Rome when he’s stressed over everything that’s going on with his family.
For a while, I thought this was going to be a bottle episode, set entirely in the restaurant. But this only makes up the first half of the episode, with the second half devoted to various character combinations—largely Alice/Daniel and Izzy/Steve, though there’s also a bit of Dom/Rome, with the mother-daughter relationship between Alice and Izzy looming large even when they’re not sharing the screen together.
In some episodes, it’s felt like Alice’s anger/desire to punish Steve has outweighed her love/concern for Izzy, but here, her relationship with Izzy comes to the forefront. It feels like this is the first time in the series that we’ve seen Alice make a genuine effort to put someone else’s feelings first, even if that’s incredibly hard for her and she’s only semi-successful. She stands up in the middle of the restaurant and shouts for someone to take their drink order, she goes to the bathroom when her “happy” tears are getting out of control, and she reminisces about vaginal tearing. But despite all that, she actually is trying, and there are some good moments between her and Izzy here.
Daniel doesn’t like this turn of events any better than Alice does, but no surprise, he does a much better job of putting a good face on it. He asks after Izzy’s health and assures her it’ll “be lovely to have another little one running around the house.” As for his own reservations, he waits and voices them to Steve when Alice and Izzy are both away from the table. Shoutout to Daniel as the dad who stepped up! Joel Fry plays all of this wonderfully, navigating Daniel’s tension/apprehension but playing nice for Izzy’s sake.
To make matters even more difficult, this whole conversation is happening against the backdrop of the existing friction in Alice and Daniel’s marriage. They’re the first two to arrive at the restaurant, both under the impression that they’re just meeting Izzy, and Alice asks, “Is she parent trapping us?” At first, Daniel smiles along with her joking, but then she starts making light of their fight, which he doesn’t appreciate. So even before Steve and Izzy arrive, things are tense between the two of them, and yet they do still care about each other. There’s a good moment where Daniel sees Alice struggling to cope with the baby news and isn’t sure if he ought to reach out with a comforting gesture.
In the interactions that are just between Alice and Daniel here, there’s a bit of a theme of them starting to reconnect and then getting derailed. Daniel feels Alice doesn’t prioritize their relationship, and she’s not doing a stellar job of convincing him otherwise. Although it’s clear that Alice does want to resolve matters with Daniel, she keeps getting them off track, whether it’s by joking about something he takes seriously or coming in with some brutal honesty that just makes him feel worse. By the end, he’s retreated into his own worst habits—avoidance and a tendency to get a little petty/passive-aggressive.
One more episode to go! Will any of these messy, damaged folks work it out? At this point, I’m not quite sure what “working it out” would look like for them. Guess we’ll see!
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